Thinking About Allies During Pride and Allies Week

As the Queer Resource Center’s Community Outreach Coordinator, part of my job is getting straight people to care. The more time I spend working on bringing allies into our space, however, the more I realize that a significant gap in ally-directed education has developed in our community. Put simply, our allies are learning how to respectfully participate in intergroup dialogue about queer people in a low-stakes academic context, but they aren’t developing pragmatic ally skills meant for the real

LGBTQQIAA Amherst: Then and Now

“Biddy Martin lied to me.” If I wanted to be inflammatory, that’s how I’d characterize queer life at this college, but the truth is, Amherst these days is actually a pretty good place to be gay. It hasn’t always been that way, though. As recently as the 1990s, queer students on this campus faced open harassment, discrimination and death threats. Someone carved a call for suicide into a gay student’s door. Another group went for something a little more highbrow and sent their death threat throu