The Future!!!!!

Firstly I’d like to thank Takeshi for all his hard work in the last year; I agree with what has been said, whilst we have had fewer numbers for some of the time we have built up relationships and given the group a sound basing, with a great website and forum.

As regards the year to come, I am hopeful that we regain some of the momentum we’ve lost slightly, but, and I can’t say this enough, it depends on members getting involved and getting along.

I am keen to see the group get more involved in the local Reading gay community and have already met with some people from Reading Pride; I really want the LGBT to have a presence at Pride and am talking to the people who run the Youth Zone about collaborating with them. There has been a feeling expressed that the ‘Uni people’ tend to keep to themselves and don’t mix much with the local community and I hope to dispel this. There is no reason that young people from outside the university, or especially from T.V.U. can’t join us for events and socials.

Socially, I know that people have some great ideas, and things we are discussing include a possible trip abroad [a nightmare of organisation but very cool!] and a few more trips to places outside of Reading like Southampton, Winchester, Guildford etc. I also feel that a group of our size should be able to hold a termly gay night at our own Union, inviting surrounding Uni.s and advertising it to the local young gay community. This would require commitment and support from members and I want to know if people think it is something that could work.

There’s plenty more we have ideas about, such as Education events, and I hope we can discuss them both virtually and in person. The new committee will be energetic and committed in improving the society; I think we have the potential to be one of the best in the country but we need an active and engaged membership and that has unfortunately been lacking a little of late!!!

Andy Adams
President 2007-08

Bowing out...

As of the end of the Spring Term your new committee has come into office, and it's time for us old committee to say farewell! It's been an interesting year and I think we've achieved a lot - laying some solid foundations for future years' committees to build on.

Online, we have set up a new website, mailing system, forum, and Facebook presence. The group also now has its own constitution, and we have started to form some links with local and national organisations. So whilst it may have seemed like a fairly quiet year in terms of events and general membership, we have been busy behind the scenes, discreetly preparing our world takeover. ;)

I wish the new committee the best of luck, and look forward to seeing what they have in store for us in the coming year - yes, you don't get rid of me that easily! Once a LGBTer, always an LGBTer... On behalf of the outgoing (outgone!) committee, I thank you the members for being a part of the group, and I hope you will continue to support Reading LGBT!

It's all happening in February

We've been busy bees this month! It's all change at LGBT... we've finally got ourselves our own proper up-to-date tailor-made constitution, which is great news. We have also held elections for next year's committee - or should I say this year? The new committee will take over office from the Summer term, their details will go up in the Committee section of the website soon. There is a new committee structure, which was implemented as part of the new constitution, and is designed to support the changing demands of the group. Incidentally, we're still looking to fill the following positions:
Social Secretary (2 positions available)
Campaigns & Education Officer
Male Welfare Officer

...so if you're interested, get in touch!

Today, Ruth and Takeshi attended a UCU training event in London entitled 'Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Equality in Post-16 Education'. The event was attended by HE/FE staff, managers, and there were a few other students too. The opening session was a speech about the issues surrounding LGBT equality in HE/FE, which brought up the very interesting question on how to implement LGBT equality and tackle the potential conflict that comes with doing so.

The training included a workshop on Gender Identity Equality, which included an introduction to the legislation that exists for trans people in the UK, and issues that need to be addressed, helped by some case study discussions.

The other workshop that we attended was on Sexual Orientation Equality. There was some discussion of the legislations and their history, and issues in policy-building. This may sound dull to some of you but it is this kind of policy-making that ensures that the support and protection is there for you as an LGBT person in a HE institution such as the university!

There was a panel session in the afternoon which emphasised the importance of LGBT visibility and that we must challenge the assumptions that if no-one complains about anything LGBT-related within our institution, it does not automatically follow that there is not a problem. Breaking the silence is often a big issue in itself!

We attended a peer group session with the other students present at the training, from which we took away some great ideas for how to facilitate change within the university, at a local level, and up to a national level too - despite the distraction of being filmed by a camera crew at the time! We hope to be able to put these ideas into practice in the near future.

It was an interesting day, notably for the insight into how LGBT equality is (or isn't) addressed by HE institutions themselves. At Reading LGBT we're quite used to working closely with the students' union and NUS to ensure LGBT representation for our student members, but at a university level for both students and staff, can we say that the same amount of effort is put in? If it turns out that University LGBT policy is completely adequate and everyone is happy, then no harm, no foul - but if not... I think we have identified an interesting and challenging area to address.


And finally, next Tuesday is our Charity Fancy Dress party in Cafe Mondial, to celebrate LGBT History Month, in conjunction with the Liberal Democrat society's campaign against homophobic bullying. All proceeds from this event will be donated to local information charity BeYou and national AIDS charity Terrence Higgins Trust. So get out your outrageous costumes and join us for a night of fun! Details on the website homepage - you can also add yourself to the Facebook event. See you there...

NUS LGBT Activist Training

Last week, Takeshi, Ruth, Andy, Nat, Stewart and Dave (VP Student Rights & Diversity) travelled to Oxford to attend the NUS LGBT Activist Training Day (South regsion), hosted by Oxford Brookes Student Union. Representatives from many of the NUS LGBT groups in the South of England were there, though I think Reading had the most delegates there!

Some of us attended a workshop about running a good LGBT society, while others attended a workshop on campaigning and activism, so between us all we have gained some useful skills for making our LGBT society really good!

We had a talk by Stephen Hobobo, a prominent LGBT rights campaigner from Changing Attitude Nigeria, who really opened up our eyes to the prejudice that LGBT people face in Nigeria, and the lack of rights that they have. It can be so easy to forget that despite some shortfalls, these days LGBT people in the UK do enjoy a fair few rights that we can end up taking for granted.

This led us into a kind of brainstorming session for how we as LGBT societies can take action on the campaigns being run by NUS LGBT:
- Bullying Sucks - combatting homophobic and transphobic bullying in HE and FE
- Donation Not Discrimination - campaigning for the blood ban on gay & bisexual men to be lifted
- LGBT History Month - ways to celebrate and educate LGBT history during February
- Love Without Borders - campaigning for LGBT equality in other countries.
There were some really good ideas which we hope to implement in our future campaigns, so watch this space!

Throughout the day and after the training we had the opportunity to network with delegates from other LGBT groups in the region. It was interesting to learn about how other groups were running, and there was a wide variety in the size of the groups and how active they are... I'm happy to say that Reading LGBT definitely appears to be one of the more active ones! Go us!

There were a great deal of contacts made (evidenced by the big Facebook adding frenzy after the event!) and hopefully this means that we can form closer links with other LGBT groups in the region, to organise joint and co-ordinated activities. It was a very interesting day, if you'd like to hear more about it just ask one of us!

Refreshers Fayre

On Monday, we had a stall at Refreshers Fayre, which was put on as a part of Week 6 Refreshers Week. As always with these things, it was pretty dead, but we did get a few new signups, and anyone who came to see us at the stall will know that we were giving out sweeties and condoms and stuff again, so it wasn't entirely pointless!

Apparently this Refreshers Week was organised more by Student Services and so forth who wanted to repimp the things they do, and the Union kinda hopped on board with that. So it doesn't replace the Refreshers Fayre we do in the Spring Term, we'll be doing that as well!

More opportunities to take free sweets and condoms than ever before!

Wow, it works...

Isn't it lovely....

Shiny, shiny...

The blog is looking quite nice, I hope you'll agree! It's now linked from the main site on the "fun stuff" page. We hope to be able to replace that section of the site entirely with just the blog itself eventually, but give us time... we (and when I say we, I actually mean I) are still learning!

For now though, I am going to be rather pleased with myself, and leave it at that.

More updates soon!