U of U to Hold LGBT Awareness Week

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The University of Utah’s LGBT Resource Center will hold Awareness Week from April 12–16. The week is observed annually to help raise the visibility of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students and other members of the school’s community, and to encourage straight students, staff and faculty to become allies to students of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

While Awareness Week has always been about making allies in the broader community, this year the event is also asking gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to look inwards when searching for allies, said Cathy Martinez, the resource center’s director.

“This year’s theme is ‘Together We Can Break the Silence,’” she said. “Within the LGBT community, as a whole, when we speak of allies we’re usually talking about straight allies in the community who support and affirm who we are and that we should have equal rights. But within the LGBT community we can be allies to each other. [For example], gay men can be allies to lesbians, and to bisexual and transgender people.”

The week’s discussion panel, held April 13 in the Olpin Student Union Building’s den, will emphasize how being an intercommunity ally can work, Martinez continued. This year, the discussion panel will feature staff from local gay and transgender-friendly groups who will discuss the broad definition of the word ally.

“[Some of them] consider themselves to be straight allies, or allies to people within the community, like someone who identifies as cisgender [non-transgender] and is an ally of those who identify as transgender,” she said.

Martinez also said that the speakers will not be the directors of organizations like the Utah AIDS Foundation, the Utah Pride Center or Equality Utah, but rather other staff members who don’t often get much attention.

“Often we hear from the directors or the executive directors who, I think, are very important, but we don’t always hear from those who do the day-to-day program work,” she said. “Everybody has a story [about how they] got to where they’re at. And for students who want to potentially go into these fields, I think they need to know what it’s like to work for a grassroots organization or an LGBT organization so they can do this work.”

Awareness Week will also include a Safe Zone Training session. This resource center regularly offers these workshops to educate the university community about the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender staff and students and the discrimination they face. On April 13, the center will screen Out in the Silence, a documentary by filmmaker Joe Wilson about homophobia in his rural Pennsylvania hometown which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The Ally of the Year Award, which recognizes an individual, office or department that has demonstrated commitment to fair treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members of the university community, will be presented at the Allies Social on April 15. The week will close with a commemoration of the Day of Silence on the patio of the Olpin Student Union Building from 1–2 p.m. on April 16. The Day of Silence is observed each year by junior high, high school and college students, who do not speak all day to raise awareness about the violence and discrimination directed towards gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

For more information about Awareness Week, contact the LGBT Resource Center at 801-587-7973.