Suffy With Jarrett

callingbitchesoutliketheumpire asked: What's gay life like at Suffolk? I figured I'd ask cuz I'm attending in autumn.

For LGBT students at suffolk, we have an active Rainbow alliance. They put on a bunch of events throughout the year, including a drag show, an ally luncheon, and a bunch more. We even had Robyn Ochs come speak this year, which was a great experience. I loved hearing from her. 

In addition to that, there’s an event called Family Dinner which is open to all students, but geared towards LGBT students. It happens weekly (this year it has been Tuesday nights) where they get together to eat pizza and discuss whatever they really feel like talking about. It can be really relaxed and social, or consist of deeper discussions about politics, religion, etc. 

Recently, I believe we had a few speakers come in part of queer literature. I wasn’t able to attend them though, so I can’t speak much to how they went. 

Lastly, out Student Government Association is cosponsoring with Rainbow Alliance in the Day of Silence. Their hope is to get as many student leaders involved with it this year as possible. 

All these events happen through Diversity service, which is on the 4th floor of Donahue. When you come here, I’d suggest popping in and getting to know them. You can work with them to create events in a direction that interests you. 

That’s an overall gist. If you have anything more specific, I can try to do my best to answer that as well. 

I don’t know if you know who she is, but Robyn Ochs is an amazing activist and educator.

She speaks on a multitude of topics and will be addressing Suffolk Students about Beyond Binaries.

I will try to post some pictures and a summary of the event once it has happened.

It’s today at 1 pm in D 403 :)

Last Wednesday, my graphic design II class went to the ICA (institute of contemporary art)

It was an amazing experience and I had never been there before. The exhibit was Figuring Color: Kathy Butterly, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roy McMakin, and Sue Williams. The exhibit had over 65 works from the artists mentioned previously.

There was one, very cool interact piece by Felix Fonzalez-Torres, that was a pile of candy in which the original combined weight was the weight of him and his long-term partner. Viewers were encouraged to take some of the candy with them, and they could eat it if they wanted or not.

Some of my favorite pieces are below, and they were done by Sue Williams.

Sue Williams, Color Pile (2002) Photos courtesy of the ICA

Sue Williams, American Enterprise (2009). Photos courtesy of the ICA

It’s spring break. Finally! I was about to die. hahah

One of the cool things about spring break is that at Suffolk there are a multitude of Alternative Spring Break options. They go through our SOULS office and they go to a bunch of different places.

They’re also really affordable!

I have not been on one myself, BUT my good friend and fellow blogger, Rebecca, has! Check her blog out to see if she pots about the grand ventures she’ll be going on this spring break!

Hello there!

This past Saturday was Suffolk University’s 5th Annual Multicultural Summit. The Multicultural Summit is a day long workshop where you gain skills that help advance your ability to communicate with others and generally has several elements of social justice worked into it.It always falls in conjunction with Unity Week at Suffolk, which is a week devoted to celebrating diversity and community at Suffolk.

This is the second summit I’ve attended and both have been great experiences. The way they are set up is to have a speaker, this year it was Kathy Obear, who shows you tools to use to improve your communication. You then put those tools into practice with other members there.

The summit is a great place to meet people you don’t know because so many different people across the university attempt to go and it’s highly encouraged to interact with the people you don’t know all that well.

This summit focused on identifying what situations cause you to become overly emotional, tiggered, when engaging in difficult dialogues. From there, we learned ways to try to channel our emotions into productive communication goals and to pick up on behaviors being exhibited instead of judgements and assumptions. Finally, we attempted to identify the sources, or roots, of these triggers so we could understand why those situations triggered us.

Importantly, Kathy stressed that knowing the tools isn’t enough to use them all the time. She admitted that sometimes she forgets to use them and that she has to remember that it doesn’t make her a bad person. I think it was really empowering to be given some tools by a professional and have them admit that they struggle to use them sometimes too.

All in all, it was a great experience. I met lots of cool people and I think as a group we learned a lot and will hopefully be able to use the skills we gained.