QueerCo’s Pride Festival by Caitlin Roeltgen

The first Pride March was held in 1970 in New York City, and since then, June has become a celebration of identity and hope throughout the world. Utrecht has its own Pride, which features a boat parade and street parties all over the city. This year, it was on June 6, but there was another Pride event that weekend, even closer to home: our own campus’s festival! 

From June 4 to June 7, QueerCo hosted an on-campus Pride Festival in collaboration with over fifteen other committees. Some events were focused on education, like LawCo’s guest lecture with Prof. Türkan Ertuna Lagrand, while others were more about just having fun, like PartyCo and BarCo’s Pride Party. The weekend was filled with sparkles, glitter, rainbow face paint, and celebration of queer identity. 

The committee itself, QueerCo, originally started out with a different name: PrideCo. Tu Tu, QueerCo’s current chair, explained that when it started, PrideCo was focused more on “advocacy and awareness,” because that was what campus needed most at the time. Also, it was centered around organizing a boat for the Pride Parade, but due to budget, commercialization, and other logistics, they quickly shifted to other goals. After a recent brief lull in activity, QueerCo was revived last academic year, led by Bence and Dana, which Tu Tu also took part in. Around that time, it also “shifted away from [advocacy], and now it’s just become a space for people to be queer and have fun.” 

The festival, and the events that made it up, were definitely fun. I wasn’t able to attend as many events as I would have liked, but my favorite was probably between MusicCo’s jam session and Wellbeing Team’s cookie decorating, though I may be a little biased. I especially enjoyed the cookie decorating because it’s oddly relaxing to hand-place hundreds of rainbow sprinkles on a cookie, and I also got to watch QueerCo deck out downstairs Dining Hall in all different pride flags. Tu Tu thought the whole weekend was a success: the events were creative, and compared to last year, a lot less “squished” time-wise. Of the events, they liked the Rainbow Boba Sale with Ducks n’ Soup – another board they’re in – the most, and for good reason (beyond just delicious tea!). 

The sale was a fundraiser for QueerCo’s Gender Care Fund, an initiative designed to support queer students in the future. It’s “first come, first serve, and then you fill in a form to explain what you need it for, and that gets sent to UCSA,” Tu Tu explained. Once you’re approved, “you purchase the item, provide a receipt, and then you get reimbursed,” a similar process to typical board reimbursements. QueerCo is responsible for maintaining the fund through awareness and fundraising, and, for people looking to use the fund, QueerCo has a list of accepted items (since there are some things UCSA can’t reimburse). It’s been a long process too, as they detailed: “This whole year, it’s been evaluated by parties such as the Independent Body, the Auditing Team, and UCSA, and so, it’s a very long process. There's been a lot of back and forth to ensure the policies surrounding the fund meet all the necessary guidelines and are fair for the students who need it. And hopefully, we’re coming to the end of that, so that it can be put into use next year."

Next year, beyond the fund, there are plans for another festival in June. In the meantime, though, one more message from Tu Tu: “Please collaborate with QueerCo for the next Pride Festival and make it even better!”