St. Thomas celebrated Pride Week April 11-15 as a part of sexual abuse awareness month.

Campus events brought attention to some issues the LGBT community faces that are often challenging for society to talk about.

“I think a big thing for me when I think about Pride Week is that it’s about celebrating LGBTQ+ identify in our St. Thomas community, and I think that is a wonderful way for St. Thomas to embrace our diversity within our community,” Vern Klobassa, director of communication and training for student affairs said.

According to Vanessa Cornett-Murtada, director of keyboard studies at St. Thomas, Pride Week is a result of a long-term change that has roots back in 2007 when a climate study done at the university showed that the LGBT community felt unwelcomed on campus. In response to these results, faculty and staff formed a group to address the climate at St. Thomas.

“It has taken some really positive changes….It has taken us a few years to be able to work with students and administration to get to the point where Pride Week can become a reality so that we are not just tolerating diversity, we’re celebrating diversity,” Cornett-Murtada said.

Some of the events on campus included the screening of a documentary, “Do I Sound Gay?” Day of Silence/Night of Noise — a national movement that highlights the ways in which the LGBT community experiences discrimination and silencing — and a Purple Bench discussion that focused on the intersections between race, gender identity, sexuality and sexual violence.

“The Purple Bench brought together the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, the celebration of Pride Week, and the honoring of sexual assault awareness month,” Sexual Misconduct Prevention Coordinator Emily Erickson said.

Erickson believes the weekly Purple Bench discussions — which focus on a different topic each time — build community and give students a space to talk about a variety of issues related to diversity. It provides a weekly time to connect, reflect and discuss, especially with complex issues like gender.

“We talk about gender in a binary, but for a lot of people, their gender does not fit into one clear man box or woman box. They may have gender expression of all genders … and may not look stereotypically or societally acceptable male or female,” Erickson said. “And if your sex has always matched what is expected of gender in your society — the sex you were assigned at birth and the gender you feel in your brain — of course one has never thought about the difference between those.”

St. Thomas senior and QSA President Liisi Reiser attended events this week as a way to show personal pride.

“Pride Week to me means that I am able to be who I am. I try to get involved on campus, and help make it a better place for people. Maybe not so much myself or the people who we have currently, but for the people who come after us and the future classes that come through,” Reiser said. “As president and as a senior, I am trying to leave the campus better than when I came.”

This week embodies two of the core mission statement convictions at St. Thomas- diversity and dignity, and Cornett-Murtada believes Pride Week is a wonderful way to put those convictions into practice.

“It is an important step forward for us, and it is important to have that kind of celebration institutionalized so that it becomes apart of the fabric of our university, and it’s no longer an unusual thing but something we do annually to celebrate,” Cornett-Murtada said.

Carolyn Meyer can be reached at cameyer@stthomas.edu.