GSA hosts LGBTQ+ dinner
Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) sponsored a dinner to celebrate and show appreciation to allies of the LGBTQ+ community as well as educate the FMU community about allies.
“The purpose of this event is to get people out here to know and get more educated on how to be an ally besides ‘Oh, I am an ally because my friend is a gay’,” GSA President Elijah Moton III said. “Just like people within the LGBTQ community, allies face issues too. People stigmatize them because they support the LGBT.”
The ally dinner was held in the Palmetto Room of the Ervin Dining Hall on Nov. 17, 2016. The event was open to all students. Twenty-seven students and faculty attended the ally dinner, four of whom served as presenters in a panel session.
The dinner was opened by remarks from Moton, a junior psychology and political science double major. Moton welcomed and thanked those in attendance. These remarks were followed by dinner.
“We choose to do this event in a dinner type setting because we wanted the allies to feel like they were appreciated,” Moton said. “We want to show them the love and care we have for them.”
A panel session was held after dinner. The panel was made up of Dr. Beckie Flannagan, professor of English; Dr. Lance Weldy, professor of English; Dr. Candice Lapan, professor of psychology; and Christina Xan, senior English major.
Each member of the panel shared his or her own personal stories of situations where he or she fell short of being an ally to the LGBTQ+ community and how he or she learned from those experiences.
Flannagan shared a story about how she found out someone close to her was gay and how she stopped speaking to him and acted unaccepting towards him – someone she had once been very close to. She said that she realized her actions were not fair and decided that she would never be unaccepting again.
Weldy spoke about growing up in a conservative environment in which he avoided a friendship because he did not want people to associate him with being part of the LGBTQ+ community. Weldy discussed the different forms of being an ally to the LGBTQ+ community, specifically being a faculty ally. In the conclusion of his speech, Weldy praised FMU for being an ally and supporting the GSA student organization and the students and faculty who are part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Lapan spoke about the importance of being an active ally rather than just saying that you are an ally.
Xan discussed how she had also come from a conservative background that did not allow her to even ask questions about the LGBTQ+ community. Xan said that after she graduated from high school she began to question how people loving each other could be so wrong. Xan concluded by saying that being an ally is being a part of something bigger than yourself and supporting the basic human right to love.
After the panel session, discussion was opened to those in the audience. Many people within the audience shared their stories regarding the LGBTQ+ community. Several of the attendees expressed how grateful they were for the GSA student organization because of the support and sense of acceptance they received from the group.
“I think this event was an extremely beautiful event,” Alexus Parker, senior nursing major, said. “We never really had anything like this on FMU’s campus before really talking about allies, but I think it was really necessary to let people know that the GSA does exist and that allies are really important to us.”
Freshman art education major Mary Cline McKnight also said that describing who an ally is was helpful.
“I think it is super progressive that our campus is doing things like this,” McKnight said. “It shows how far our GSA is expanding and I think this helped people understand what an ally was and gave them a personal connection.”