Cal Poly’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Center will host its annual Pride Week from May 9 to 15. The week will feature more than 15 events for the LGBTQ community of San Luis Obispo, their allies and anyone who wants to learn more about a widely misunderstood group of people.
“I look forward to Pride Week all year,” Kris Gottlieb said. “It will be a blast for anyone who comes.”
The week was kicked off Sunday as members of Spectrum (Cal Poly’s LGBTQ club) painted the Cal Poly “P” in rainbow colors. Spectrum attained permission to paint the “P” for Pride Week from the Mustang Maniacs, who are in charge of maintaining the “P.”
The last time the “P” was painted rainbow colors with permission was five years ago, but every night, someone hiked up and repainted it white.
“We are hoping it will stay rainbow all week this time,” said biological science senior and Pride Center student coordinator Seth Winkenwerder. “But if it doesn’t, we’ll be right up there painting it rainbow again.”
Aside from the painting of the “P,” Pride Week officially begins in Sequoia Lounge at 8 p.m. with the “Pride Week Kickoff” event, where students can learn about the Pride Center. The event, as well as three others, is sponsored by the University Housing Company and is restricted to Cal Poly students, primarily those who live on campus. All events not presented by University Housing Company are open to the public.
Pride Week’s second event will be held Monday on North Mountain Lawn, and will also be presented by University Housing Company. This “Rainbow Tie Dye” event will be held from 4 to 6 p.m.. It will a great opportunity for students to have fun and network socially, said Jessica Cresci, a recreation parks and tourism senior and Pride Center student coordinator.
“It’s (Pride Week) not just for gay people,” said architecture junior Elizabeth Chamberlain. “It’s for Cal Poly students.”
The third event is a film presented by Spectrum. The film is titled “A Queer Guide to Entering the Work Force,” and will be shown on Monday in Building 52, Room C-36, from 6 to 7 p.m. Directly following the film, a “LGBT Square Dance Workshop” will be held in the University Union (UU), room 207 from 7 to 9.
Tuesday will feature three more events. From 11 to noon in UU room 220, Soup and Substance will present a panel of transgender people who will discuss their experiences living in San Luis Obispo. The event is titled “Breaking the Silence: Transgender Voices in the SLO Community,” and will feature a free meal.
At 7 p.m., University Housing Company will present “Cooking in the Canyon” in the large conference room in Poly Canyon Village. This will be a chance for LGBTQ students and allies to hang out and cook vegetarian fajitas.
Also beginning at 7 p.m., the Pride Center will host “Let’s Get it On!: Safe Sex Workshop.”
“Pride Week is a time for the entire campus to celebrate gay rights, to be educated and raise awareness,” physics senior Chris Brown said. “Many of these events will teach people important information that they wouldn’t necessarily be exposed to in normal classes.”
Wednesday’s events will be kicked off with an “Ally Training Workshop,” which will be held from 12 to 2 p.m. in UU room 219. This is one of the most popular and important events. It will be an opportunity for people to learn acceptable terminology in the LGBTQI community and how to be an effective ally.
That evening, Women’s Program and Services and Spectrum will present a film titled “If These Walls Could Talk 2.” The screening will be held in the UU, room 220, from 7 to 9 p.m.
Also, from 8 to 10 p.m. in Yosemite Lounge, University Housing Company will be host its final event of the week. “Gay, Straight, or Taken” will feature six to seven Cal Poly students in a game-show setup, where the audience will try to guess who’s gay. It has historically been one of Pride Week’s most popular events.
Thursday’s events begin with a barbeque lunch hosted by Theta Chi. The lunch will have vegetarian options and will be held on Dexter Lawn from 11 a.m. to 1. The meal will cost $2; the proceeds benefit the AIDS Support Network.
The Pride Center will later host a “Transgender 101 Workshop,” from 2 to 4 p.m., in the UU, room 219. This workshop will cover various terms under the “transgender umbrella,” as well as explore different institutional, societal and individual prejudices present today.
“I’m very excited about pride week,” journalism freshman Alice Terz said. “Even though I’m straight, it is tons of fun, and a great chance for the majority on campus, to support the cause of a minority.”
Thursday night at 8, the national social fraternity for gay, bisexual and progressive men Delta Lambda Phi will host its annual and notorious “The Dollhouse: Drag Show and Benefit,” at Downtown Brewing Company. Tickets will be $12 in advance from Boo Boo Records or Ticketweb.com and $15 at the door.
Friday will feature an event presented by the Courage Campaign titled “Courage Academy: Progressive Voter Education.” The forum will be held from 11 a.m. to 1 in UU, room 216, and will discuss issues concerning the LGBTQ community that will be voted upon in the upcoming elections.
“The biggest idea behind Pride Week is to spread the word: to educate and celebrate,” Winkenwerder said. “It’s great to have a whole week of our own because otherwise it is difficult to get the message out. There’s a lot of people who aren’t happy that we’re as active and visible as we are, but for the most part they stay quiet about it.”
Pride Week’s closing event and grand finale will be the “Pride Week Prom: Studio 54,” featuring DJ Mikey Lion, and a remake of Andy Warhol’s glamorous Studio 54 nightclub. The prom will be held on Saturday night in Chumash Auditorium from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. and costs $10. Hors d’ourves and beverages will be served. Allies are welcome and encouraged to come everyone needs to bring a Cal Poly ID or accompany a Cal Poly student.
“This is a good chance for people who didn’t get to go to prom in high school, to re-live what they may have missed,” Cresci said.
Some high schools do not allow students to attend proms with gay partners, and people are also more reluctant to “be out” in high school, Cresci said. “Here we provide a safe environment and a prom you won’t forget,” he said.
Overall, Cresci said the LGBTQ community has seen little objection in San Luis Obispo, aside from bad looks.
“Though San Luis Obispo is more conservative than larger cities in California (like LA or San Francisco), most people are pretty respectful,” she said. “If they disagree with you, and it’s generally just a matter of them being ignorant or uninformed.”
Pride week is certainly an excellent collection of events to raise awareness and respect throughout the community. It is one of the only events on campus that celebrates diversity on a basis other than ethnicity. Of the dozen or so events associated with pride week, there is only one with which I take issue; the painting of the ‘P’.
The events of pride week are excellent ways for different students to be informed about the LGBTQ community on campus. I would have to guess that the vast majority of students and community members are AT LEAST tolerant (this runs the full range between apathy all the way up to being an Ally of the community). The ‘P’ however, is a symbol that visibly represents all Cal Poly students, regardless of their own beliefs, and therefore, painting it to represent the LGBTQ community speaks on behalf of a minority, without consulting the feelings of the larger group which the symbol represents.
To be tolerant of someone else is to simply let them do as they will without harming anyone, Because the ‘P’ serves as a visible representation of all Cal Poly, painting it any color other than white or some scheme of white, green, and gold makes a statement. In this case, the statement is often a point of contention, and moderation was not, in this case, adequately considered.
Placing signs around campus, letters and articles in the Mustang Daily, sandwich boards, and handouts all have origins that can be traced to their respective authors. Painting the ‘P’ makes a statement to the community without consulting the whole of the group it represents.
For this reason, I suggest the Mustang Maniacs and the Administration reconsider their decision to change the color scheme of the P for pride week.
Certainly as Americans, we all have the right to offend and be offended, and hopefully I haven’t done much of either here.
Just my $0.02, and you got them for free.
HR-
The way I see it, the given permission to paint the P in rainbow colors this week shows that Cal Poly is tolerant (and perhaps even supportive) of the LBGTQ community. What I really don’t understand is what I perceive to be your concern, that such tolerance and support could be construed as a poor representation of the university as a whole. If you could please explain that further, I’d really appreciate it.
TC,
If you turn around the argument just a bit and let the black groups on campus paint the P black for a week or let the women groups transform the P into the female symbol, its a bit easier to see where HR is coming from.
The P, to me, is a symbol that all of Cal Poly can get behind and feel represented. To paint the P to call attention to any particular group only takes away from the campus as a whole.
BR
TC,
Brian has summed it up pretty well. The ‘P’ encompasses all poly students. It is meant to be something we can all identify with, and representing a particular sect of students with its symbolism or color scheme detracts from its purpose.
Hope this is a little clearer.
~HR
TC,
Brian has summed it up pretty well. The ‘P’ encompasses all poly students. It is meant to be something we can all identify with, and representing a particular sect of students with its symbolism or color scheme detracts from its purpose.
Hope this is a little clearer.
~HR
I think it is important for everyone here to realize that the rainbow is not just a gay rights symbol but also a symbol that is representative of diversity.
I also think that it is important for people to realize that the standard color for the Cal Poly P is white, which does represent a certain group at Cal Poly. This group that is represented is also the universal standard at Cal Poly: white.
Dante,
A few points you raise need to be addressed:
#1 The P is not painted white to represent white students on campus; it is painted white to be as visible as possible.
#2 The rainbow symbol does not represent diversity. This is LGBT week and the reason that group is painting the P rainbow colors is so the Lesbians, Gays, Bis, and Trans are represented.
#3 I think of the P as Cal Poly’s flag or name. The P represents all of Cal Poly and within the body of Cal Poly are straights, gays, whites. blacks, think, fat, and everything in between. To intentionally exclude 90% is an injustice to the rest of us.
You should research the symbolic history of the Pride flag so that you stop spreading information that is false!
Nobody is being excluded and nobody is being unfairly treated. Brian, you can still live your life as a straight-white-male even if there is a rainbow P. The whole point is to raise awareness and to make a visible statement that Cal Poly is a place of tolerance.
First and foremost, we don’t want to make generalizations here, especially those based on something contrived and irrelevant like race. Generalizing Cal Poly as ‘white’ is inappropriate (and ambiguous).
Secondly, I want to make clear the difference between tolerance and support. Tolerance is the absence of having a problem with something; it is passive. Support is far more active. Students at Cal Poly, though largely tolerant, may not necessarily want to be visibly lumped into a minority (by minority I mean a group consisting of less than a majority of a larger population, just to be clear) group based on a statement made via a symbol with which they identify. So, however tolerant, some students at Cal Poly do not want to be identified with certain sub-communities for whatever reason (political, social, ideological, it doesn’t matter), which is why the P should not be changed to reflect different groups on campus.
Finally, whenever a public statement is made, though it may have one intended meaning, its meaning is useless unless the proper meaning is perceived by the people seeing it. What am I getting at here? That even though the pride flag traces its roots to tolerance and diversity, it has been a symbol of the LGBTQ community for about the last 30 years. So even if the intention of the color scheme is to raise awareness and celebrate tolerance, it is largely perceived as a symbol of the LGBTQ community, and the fact that this was selected for pride week does not help the argument for the paint as a simple message about generalized tolerance.
And again, our discussion here is a touchy one, and I understand people have very passionate feelings about both sides, but we really need to keep our conversation here above the level of generalizations.
Thanks!
I think its naive to say that Cal Poly is not white, and in my opinion I do not think that it is out of the question for Cal Poly to support this minority considering Cal Poly’s history.
I don’t have time to spend on this anymore, I just wish that people would be cooler at this school.
It’s completely ignorant to say otherwise… Majority of students = white. Majority of staff = white. Majority of administration = white. Who has control over the school? All of the above, largely the administration… This is a fucking white washed school, and hopefully it will be more diverse in the future but accepting this is drastic for change. Whoever said it is NOT a white school needs a reality check.
Also, saying that the color of the ‘P’ represents white people? That’s just ridiculous….
How the hell are people getting angry over a fucking “P” getting painted in rainbow colors for a whole fucking week. Seriously, do something with your life.
The majority of Cal Poly students, faculty, and administration are culturally white American middle class.
To say Cal Poly is just “white” is too ambiguous, there are also a lot of people of Hispanic origin that are “white” too, hence why I think we ought to get away from generalizing.
At any rate, this is a tangent at best.
HR,
Stop bitching. The Mustang Maniacs basically own the P. If you want change, either join the Mustang Maniacs “permission-to-paint-the-P committee” or talk to them directly about your issue. Also, where did you get that the P represents all of the Cal Poly students? Sometimes assumptions are far away from the truth.
Relax a bit and enjoy Cal Poly’s racial diversity (White 66.4%, Latino 11.8%, Asian American 11.4%, Unknown/Other 7.9%, African American 1.3%, and Native American 0.8%) and gender diversity (Male 58.4% and Female 41.6%).* Obviously whoever created this survey wasn’t aware of the differences between sex and gender.
*Cal Poly Factbook 2008 – Enrolled First-time Freshmen http://www.ipa.calpoly.edu/publications_reports/factbook/fbfall08.pdf
“Decorating the P to spell out messages — even proposals of marriage — is a long-standing campus tradition, often reflecting the temper of the times. In 1964, the P was modified to GOP, in the 1970s POT appeared, and in the 1980s an ambitious group spelled out SPRINGSTEEN. The P is also frequently altered to the names of fraternities, sororities and campus clubs, with white bed sheets twisted into letters as the favorite temporary means of expression.”
http://lib.calpoly.edu/universityarchives/history/poly_p/index2.html
This post may ramble, but I take a strong objection to the following point, made by HR:
“To be tolerant of someone else is to simply let them do as they will without harming anyone, Because the ‘P’ serves as a visible representation of all Cal Poly, painting it any color other than white or some scheme of white, green, and gold makes a statement. In this case, the statement is often a point of contention, and moderation was not, in this case, adequately considered.”
This quote a direct argument against free expression. We live in a country where people can say what they want, but never are people required to listen. When it comes to the P, the Pride Center is only asking for tolerance–it’s only “speaking;” it’s not mandating that anybody “listen,” or change their views on any issue. Students and faculty are free to interpret the rainbow as they like, but to request that the Mustang Maniacs repaint the P white is simply censorship. It’s changing people’s minds for them. If the rainbow P represents tolerance, then painting over it is it’s own statement: hate.
Also, the argument that every “statement” needs to be not just tolerated but SUPPORTED by the majority is ridiculous. If that were the case, then no such “statement” would ever need to be made, on the basis that most people would already agree. Opinions would be continually strained through a sieve selecting only the beliefs of the group with greater numbers and the process repeated until the world became homogeneous. Through this method, there is no mechanism for change. The entire point of demonstration, Pride Week included, is to change the world by inviting people to become more aware, knowledgeable, and tolerant. This privilege of assembly belongs to minorities, even though their message may not necessarily be “approved” by others.
It’s also important to mention that the rainbow state of the P is only temporary; it will be repainted white once Pride Week draws to a close this weekend. This gesture allows other groups to express their own messages in a similar way as the Pride Center did. A white P is a white canvas. No group should claim its permanent ownership,and likewise, nobody should take the P’s design too seriously. It’s a concrete letter open to the minds of college students. Get over it.
You have essentially touched on the huge problem with public property. Namely that we all own the P since it is paid for by taxpayer money, anyone one of us have a valid claim that the P should be a certain way.
Its ironic to me that liberals tend to want all signs of Christianity to be banned from public land while they have no problem with a pro-gay sign being displayed on public land. Its a double standard and it goes both ways.
BR
If we want to get technical, everyone who attends Cal Poly owns part of the P since everyone who attends Poly is a Mustang Maniac. The Maniacs are funded through athletics which is funded through student fees. The reason people need to go through Maniacs to do anything to the P (painting, changing the P to an E…) is to make sure that at the end of the week (or agreed upon time frame) the P is changed back to its usual white. Maniacs also helps the request group by giving them road access (they have keys to the gate) as well as what kind of paint will cover best. If you have noticed in previous years, people have tried to repaint the P white, but they did not use the proper paint and you could still see the colors underneath.