Officer report - History Month and Love Without Borders
Posted by LGBT Officers,
04/03/2010.
Hi guys,
It's been a great but packed last term for us! History Month was a massive success: the committee really engaged and contributed, and we heard loads of great talks and discussion of different issues. We received some really good feedback from people attending the events, and we hope that people enjoyed being part of it. We also really hope that it's inspired the next Officers to aim as high as we did in putting on a whole month's worth of stuff, because when you have a committee as enthusiastic as ours, it can be done.
The Living Library on Tuesday was a joint venture between YUSU LGBT and YUSU Women's Committee, and was another fantastic success. Readers and books alike gave great comments on the hole experience, and it seemed that the kind of conversations people were having really captured perfectly the ideals behind the Living Library and meant everyone learned something. Although we have yet to calculate the final stats, we had well over eight hours of loans and over fourty readers.
Coming up next week, we have our mini-campaign Love Without Borders:REVISITED, in which we look back on the last year since we ran Love Without Borders and examine how LGBT rights have changed around the world. On Tuesday, we have a really exciting speaker from the Centre for Applied Human Rights here at the University, who's going to tell us all about his experiences talking against the
Ugandan anit-homosexuality bill which you can read in pdf
here, and on Friday members of our committee and the international community will be talking about how LGBT rights are different around the world, and how they matter to them. We'll also be on Vanbrugh stalls throughout the week asking you to sign a petition against the bill, so please come and talk to us and find out more and wear one of our special Love Without Borders badges to show your support.
On Monday, they'll also be another blood drive on campus. There's currently a ban against men who've ever had sex with men giving blood, so we'll have some people around there encouraging others to donate, because we can't. Right now, we need safer and better restrictions, but that's not what we've got, so we're asking everyone who can give blood to do so while gay men can't. Again, we'll also have a petition for those who think that this ban is unfair, and you can read about the ban and sign it yourselves
here.
We hope to see you at something over the next couple of weeks,
Peter and Elanin
