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Volume 41, Issue 13
April 20, 2004
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April 20, 2004
Parade promotes tolerance
Students participate in gay event
Francesca van der Feltz
Mesa Legend
Members of Maricopa Community Colleges’
Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Association joined hundreds of participants
in the annual Arizona Gay Pride Parade April 3.
About 20 members of Maricopa Community Colleges’ GLHRA joined in
the festivities.
Members held banners and marched in the parade, which traveled down Central
Avenue in Phoenix to “create greater awareness and tolerance for
human sexual diversity in the state and city,” said Ritchyrd Handley,
a student at MCC and Paradise Valley Community College and secretary of
PV Pride, Paradise Valley Community College’s gay pride club.
Meghan Pellerin, president of PV Pride, said they also participated in
the parade to establish a presence for the GLHRA.
“In the community colleges there’s not as much diversity as,
say, in the universities … there’s not enough awareness,”
Pellerin said.
“A lot of people don’t know what schools have for us …
so we want them to know that we are here and we are active,” Pellerin
added.
Founded in 1990, the GLHRA exists “to support the rights and interests
of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees and students of the
Maricopa Community Colleges,” according the GLHRA’s website.
Most Maricopa Community Colleges have gay pride clubs that exist under
GLHRA, which serves as the “mother umbrella,” said Robert
Bower, who is on staff at PVCC and serves as an adviser for PV Pride.
Bower said he was “dumbfounded” that MCC does not currently
have such a club.
“It’s the demographics of the location of the school,”
said Handley, adding that MCC is not a positive environment for a gay
pride group to form.
“There would be a lot of hostility to a group being down in that
area, unfortunately. But that’s one of the reasons why we definitely
need a group down there, is to get more tolerance in that area and make
people aware there are gays, lesbians and bisexuals … that do attend
Mesa Community College,” Handley said.
Handley and Pellerin said they had made efforts to see if there was enough
interest at MCC to start a club, but had not yet been successful.
“We definitely want to help. We want all the colleges to have a
group,” Pellerin said, and added that she and others from the GLHRA
would support any MCC students who would be interested in starting a club
that would promote sexual diversity.
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