Happy National Coming Out Day to all lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or otherwise students at Birmingham! 11th October has been a celebration of open homosexuality, bisexuality, transexuality since 1988, and recognises the difficulty that many experience in coming out to our friends and family.
Coming out under those circumstances requires a tremendous amount of courage; take a moment today to recognise and take pride in that 
Friday marked the official return of the National Blood Service blood van to campus. As some of you know, we ran a campaign to encourage the giving of blood in place of a gay/bisexual man, while campaigning for a more sensible policy.
The blood van was in the Guild car park almost all day collecting blood based on prebooked appointments. See Fabian’s interview with Nick Petrie for his perspective on the actual visit and the donation process.
Rob and I (pictured above) ran the “Give Blood Because We Can’t” in the form of a stall across from the van between 12PM and 3PM. The purpose of this was to:
We also gave copies of the sticky posters and petition sheets to our fellow committee members at the societies fair, who distributed them to helpful and supportive people. I’d particularly like to thank RockSoc, MetalSoc, the Christian Society, the Chaplaincy for their help with this.
We were also visited by Nick and two of his lovely editors from Redbrick, who have compiled an article on the visit and our campaign.
The campaign was a huge success. We had in excess of 270 signatures, encouraged people to give blood if and when possible, and the NHS staff at the blood van were very appreciative. Particular credit has to go to Rob Unwin for the amount of work he put into this campaign, but I’d also like to thank Kai Weston and Johnny Davis for helping make this possible.
Welcome Week is the most crucial time of the year for the LGBTQ Association, as I mentioned in my previous blog post. This post recaps our successes of this week and the foundation we laid for the coming year.
(There are more photos on my Facebook album).
Wednesday marked the LGBTQ Association’s first event – a coffee afternoon in the LGBTQ room.
Incidentally, I don’t have any photos of the event; the idea was for people to socialise in a safe space. Taking photos is kinda subjective 
The turnout has a pretty good turnout and a laid a solid foundation for the societies fair and the barcrawl. One or two even joined Kai and Ashleys’ door-knocking crew.
The annual societies fair on Thursday and Friday of welcome week was well-attended by most of the LGBTQ committee, who were greeting members and non-members alike with good attitudes and a load of freebies.
Copies of our welcome week booklet were distributed to new and returning members, as well as information on our events and tickets to the barcrawl that same evening. Fairly standard but it did raise awareness.
Door-knocking, flyering and the coffee/befriending afternoon certainly did set up a solid foundation for membership, seeing as we sold in excess of 90 tickets to the barcrawl. The typical turnout for the freshers’ barcrawl in previous years is around the 60 mark at best – great success
The LGBTQ Welcome Week Barcrawl covered Joes (the Guild), Angels, Route 2, The Fox and finally the Gale (at which point, our stewarding duties were done 
).
The feedback we’ve had from members thus far has been good; they all seemed to enjoy themselves, as did we, the committee. The Freshers have had a good introduction to the Birmingham gay scene, and the whole thing went without incident. Personally, we (the committee) loved it; we really had a chance to mingle with the Freshers and show them they had an association that cared
I’m hoping to get some concrete feedback from members who may be interested in “Gay Thursdays”; regular unofficial barcrawls to the gay village. More on that over the next week after the commitee has next met.
Now this is interesting…
While working on the ’slogan’ picture for the new LGBTQ booklet, I needed to grab a few pictures from the net, and discovered something interesting.
Search for “kissing” on Google Images. The majority of results on the first page are overwhelmingly homosexual in nature. Five years ago it would have – if anything – been lesbians only in some majorly male-chauvanistic context. I’m impressed; it’s an indication that progress has been made in seeing homosexuality and bisexuality becoming more widely accepted.
Good times!
Few photos from halls doorknocking. Admittedly, most are posing, but we *are* being all smiley and positive.
Myself, Rob and Kai covered Prichatts House on Monday, with Sarah and Elaine covering Oakley Court. Not one out LGBTQ student was in when we door-knocked; in fact, it turns out that the Freshers’ fair drew most people – LGBTQ or not – to the Guild.
Tuesday saw Ashcroft and Jarrett covered by myself, Sarah and Rob; Sarah and Elaine dropped leaflets around the Hub in Shackleton in time for dinner on the Vale.
30
Ashley and Kai’s intrepid crew of members old and new covered Tennis Courts and flyered the rest of the Vale late on Wednesday afternoon. There were more LGBTQ students about on this run, who are now interested in the committee and LGBTQ support offered by the Guild and Uni. Great success.
Hey guys!
Hope you’re looking forward to coming/coming back to the University of Birmingham. We are the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Queer (LGBTQ) association and we aim to represent, support, empower and hopefully entertain self identifying LGBTQ students.
We’ve got a fair amount going on during welcome week! Firstly, we’re going to be holding a Befriending Coffee meeting in the LGBTQ room in the Guild, where you can come and chat to some of the committee in a friendly and relaxed setting.
We’re also going to be running a stall at the Societies fair on Thursday and Friday, which is an excellent place to find out what awesome societies exist at the University of Birmingham, not least the LGBTQ! Come and sign up for our mailing list, steal some freebies off us, or just come for a quick chat!
Another thing you can do at either of the aforementioned events is buy tickets for our awesome FRESHERS BARCRAWL! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138352653587#/event.php?eid=156703530361 Thursday nights are by far the best nights for LGBTQ students, as all the major clubs in the Gay Village do drinks offers to suit the student budget. Tickets are going to be £5 and will include entry to Nightingale’s Club and transport into town, and you can’t say fairer than that, really.
Sadly for us committee-folk, it’ll be back to the doldrums the Friday morning after while you’re still enjoying your hangovers. On Thursday and Friday we will be doing a light bit of campaigning on the National Blood Service’s ban on Gay and Bisexual Men giving blood. We’ll send out more concrete details of what we’re doing nearer the time, but we would be very grateful if any politically minded LGBTQ people could lend us a hand if we need it.
On Monday the 28th we’re going to be part of the inter-university “Women’s Night” to Chic’s “Little Miss Mondays”, http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138352653587#/group.php?gid=39472641310&ref=ts which is shaping up to be a great night whether or not you’re a fresher. We’re also going to be starting up our film nights on the Sunday Night at the end of that week, which are a good opportunity for everybody to get together, watch a film, and talk/discuss/argue/war over it.
If you’ve skipped to the bottom of this long message because I’m rambling, I don’t blame you. All the details of these events should be on the facebook group, http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138352653587#/group.php?gid=36482000208&ref=ts fan page, http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=138352653587#/pages/University-of-Birmingham-LGBTQ/62445989949?ref=ts or website www.lgbtq.co.uk
We hope to see you at as many of these events as possible,
LGBTQ Committee
The second event of the term is an inter-university women’s night out to Chic’s Little Miss Mondays. We’re hoping that it’ll be a great chance to both introduce girls from different unis to Birmingham’s lesbian scene and also to each other. It should be a really great laugh for all and a nice change for us girlies to have our own night out. So make sures you come along. 
The annual LGBTQ Welcome Week Bar Crawl (or fresher’s barcrawl as most people call it) is one of the most notorious nights on our calendar and certainly not to be missed.
Take a break from your Fresher’s Fest events (if it clashes – sell your ticket… guaranteed profit) to come and make friends as your LGBTQ committee manically tries to introduce everyone to everyone else (so don’t worry about coming on your own) before introducing you to Birmingham’s famous gay village.
We’ll head into town from 8pm onwards and whilst we obviously encourage responsible drinking, it’s usually a case of ‘last one standing’… because you’ll obviously be all too exhausted from the dancing to stand anymore…
Birmingham’s gay village has quite a few venues, so we’ll only realistically be able to go to a few on the barcrawl -but don’t worry over the first few weeks of term, we’ll try and introduce you to them all. For this first barcrawl, we’ll be hitting the Angels, Route 2, the Fox and the Nightingale club. Keep your eyes peeled on the calendar for upcoming events where we’ll hit the other venues…
TICKET INFO:
Whilst we like to keep all as many as our events free as possible, we will be selling tickets for this event at a measly £5. Ticket price is to cover entrance into Nightingales who charge an entry fee on Thursdays, and also your travel into town. (Bargain.)
If this doesn’t sound like your thing… not to worry. We put on a wide range of events so there’ll be something for everyone.
Hi to you all! First post; fun times.
The University’s Housing and Accommodation Services have seen fit to propose piloting an ‘LGBT house’ scheme. Before anyone points out that I forgot the ‘Q’…I’m quoting them The aim of this scheme is to allow LGBTQ students to live with housemates of the same sexuality.
When I first heard about it I thought it was an interesting idea. It stands to reason that LGBTQ students would find the idea appealing; potentially it alleviates concerns of homophobia, biphobia or transphobia that a student may have when looking at University Accommodation. On that basis alone I think it’s a good idea as a supplementary option; and it’s certainly fesable now that the Guild’s new Student Housing Advice Centre is in full swing. I spoke with Ed Sparkes, Vice-President Housing and Community about this last week and we agreed on a lot of key issues.
Thinking about this in-depth…how are people ever going to learn to overcome biggotry if we segregate yet another minority like this? Our University is supposed to provide an atmosphere of equality and diversity. If we segregate people into groups like this then diversity is instantly compromised.
In my first year I lived on the lower-ground floor of Hampton Wing; an all-male floor. I was the only non-heterosexual resident (that I knew of) and when my flatmates were all aware that I was bisexual. Most of them had never had out LGBTQ friends, didn’t quite understand the concept of bisexuality and one or two were a bit funny about the whole idea. By the end of our first year we were all close friends and we still are. I lived with three of them through my second and third years until their degrees had finished. I like to think that living with them helped rid them of homophobia and biphobia, and me of any heterophobia. Arguably conducive to eliminating biggotry and encouraging diversity and equality among our students.
OK, I’ll admit I was lucky in who I ended up with. I’ve had friends who were beaten up by homophobic flatmates and had to be relocated. Had I ended up in a similar situation I’d happily take part in an LGBTQ housing scheme. That being said; would a group of gay men situated on the Vale be any safer if they were all put together in a known “gay flat”?
Lastly…the classic housemate woes. The last thing we want is students making the misguided assumption that, just because they have something as personal as sexuality in common with their housemates/flatmates, that they’ll automatically get along. I know people who picked their housemates exclusively from LGBTQ association members and still endured an unpleasant year. Sexuality is hardly a governing factor when it comes to getting along with those you share with.
Overall, I’ve picked out a few pros and a few conns. However with all of the conns in mind, I don’t see a problem with piloting this scheme purely as a supplementary option mainly for students who have encountered homophobic bullying in halls or student houses. Provided that we make the students well aware of the conns and don’t discourage the tried-and-true method of student housemate hunting, this scheme may have potential.
There’ll be more on this as it develops! Questions, suggestions, comments all welcome and wanted!
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