Poetry @ Wits. Zak, I must stress that homophobia and racism was not the point of the poetry slam but a couple of the the poets made comments in their poetry that shocked me. I was surprised that students could be so behind the times.
At the same time I really feel that freedom of speech is really important and they have a right to express these opinions. Perhaps some gay students could take part in the poetry sessions and get other points of view expressed too.

I couldn’t agree more. There is a surprising number of closeted students who, like you say, do not have the most understanding family and friends. And because of this, many of these students would never go to a gay club out of fear of “being seen” by someone they know (of course it’s an irrational fear, but you don’t realise it when you’re in the closet). Many aren’t even lucky enough to have internet access to locate resources online.

LGBTI organizations exist for people like this. I have received countless emails from anonymous senders wanting to know what UP & OUT is all about, and what we do. I have yet to see some of these people at our socials, but some actually do scrape up the courage and attend our events, where they can be themselves and make friends. Imagine where they’d be if there hadn’t been an LGBTI society on campus. Many of us have been out in the gay scene for so long that we forget what it’s like to be in the closet.

Socials at Legends. From next term we will host more socials elsewhere (not always at Legends).

We will be hosting an UP & OUT house party at my place in July sometime, like the one last year – we’ll let you know once that is finalized. We are also thinking of Sundowners at Oom Gerts after the last exams (just before rewrites). Tell us what you think of these ideas.

Oh, and which do you prefer: Huckleberry’s or TriBeCa? (Or any other venue that you think will be good for socials).

Alex 😉

Our apologies. Dear Tuksstudent,

I have read through your grievances, and I understand where you are coming from.

Yes, I admit we have lost focus of what’s really important to our members this year. Our socials haven’t been as frequent as last year, mostly because we got a little carried away with other undertakings. When our new management was elected in February this year, we decided to do things that no other LGBTI student society has ever done in this country. One of these is to host a week-long gay inter-varsity exchange in July 2007. Our sister societies at UCT, Stellenbosch, Rhodes and WITS all pledged their support. We spent most of our efforts planning the event and securing sponsorship (it was the first time any of us had attempted an undertaking this big, and none of us really knew how to go about it). However, a large portion of our sponsorship fell through and we have now postponed the inter-varsity until July 2008. Also, together with Amnesty International and the UP Sociology Society, we co-organized a protest march against the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe on 18 April 07. Once again, a lot of our resources went into the planning of this march with respect to advertising, UP Security and Metro Police.

In addition, we are celebrating Heritage Day this year by hosting a cultural week on campus, which includes a two-week long art exhibition in the Old Merensky Library where LGBTI artists will exhibit their work.

There are financial reasons why we are doing many of these things: Christo, who earlier commented on Luiz’s article, is completely right about the financial side of things. Running any student society is very expensive (our annual website hosting fees alone eat up a large chunk of the budget), and the money one must pay the university for the privilege of putting up just fifty posters is obscene. The money we get from membership fees doesn’t go very far, you know. But these expenses are justified; it is important that we market ourselves, so that even the most closeted students know about us.

These events have generated and will continue to generate money for us, which will ultimately allow us to take part (with our very own float) in Pride 2007 and Jool 2008.

Looking back, I realise that this is not what I intended when I started UP & OUT last year. We have lost focus of what is really important to our members. Perhaps having many socials is more important than, for example, having a float at Pride.

I will personally ensure that we revert to having more frequent socials, and at more diverse venues.

However, keep in mind that UP & OUT does have an email address where you can contact the society (gay@tuks.co.za). We have never heard from you before, so in future you might consider sending us a carbon copy of your list of gripes, so we needn’t find out about them in the Sunday press 🙂

You (and any other UP & OUT members) are welcome to get involved in running the show. Our committee always welcomes people who are prepared to (actively) assist in shaping the society. We are, after all, only students and we all have exams to worry about. So the more help we can get, the better 🙂

Regards,
Alex Ringelmann

Chairperson
UP & OUT
gay@tuks.co.za
084 327 6214

Seems the Tukssudent hits to the core of A problem… u know, why do these organisations exist and what can they offer? If a gay guy wants to go clubbing alone or with a friend, he can go clubbing.. In a club the opportunity for “talk” is very limnited… unlikely to foster any kind of understanding or rapport…Or address campus-related issues…But mayb there are other events as well, where the latter might be discussed?

UP&OUT Socials. The first two socials this year were kinda good, the ones that weren’t at Legends. Have to agree that the socials at Legends are really non-events since you dont really know who is from UP&OUT or Tuks and who isn’t. And you cant really chat and “social”-ize in a club all that much like at Tribeca. Hope they change their minds!!

UP&OUT is not as glamourous and wonderful as this article tries to illustrate it as. It is analogous to a blogger on myspace trying to catch as many “fake” friends in one session as possible. The members (you have to pay a fee to be one) have little say & influence in what the council of UP&OUT decides on and council members like Sergio don’t take recommendations into consideration in any case. This is a disparate and incoherent society at best.

I’m dissappointed to see they want to have a monthly Legends social. At the previous social more than a quarter of the members of UP&OUT didn’t pitch for the Legends social and usually every second member that attends a social brings an outside friend along. Up&Out will definetely lose a lot of support from its members if its determined in heading on its current course. They should rather head back to the drawing board and try and cash in on the concept that sparked the whole phenomenon earlier this year and last year.

PS. The socials at nightclubs like legends are terrible. There is very little room for interaction and only a fraction of the members enjoy these seedy types of clubs. You can hardly call it a social when it’s merely an invitation to a large group of people to go clubbing at one spot…

The purpose. In my opinion, when these organisations get started, their main purposes are being vocal on campus to create more awareness of gay students and their needs and to create a social platform on campus for gay students. One might think that students as such do not really need such organisations on campus with clubs and all that being so eaily within reach, but in Stellenbosch I found that there was indeed such a desire.

You are 100% correct when saying that enthusiasm dies after this presence has been established on campus, but it is then when the organisation can start making a significant contribution to the lives of those who are not yet up and out. In Stellenbosch we started a project called CloSup (Closet Support), a system through which gay individuals who are in the closet, who are struggling with a relationship or a break up, or whatever else, could anonymously get in touch with gay-friendly professionals who could help them.

At grass-roots level we had a buddy system, where the struggling member is teamed up with another member who can be his buddy – the one who will be there to talk to or just hang out with. The buddies were monitored to avoid any indiscretions or abusive actions, but in my experience provided a much-need ear and shoulder. Should the problem be of such a nature that the buddy could not assist, the struggling member was referred to a pre-selected, gay-friendly psychiatrist at the University’s Counselling Department for formal counselling and support.

Besides this kind of service, a lesbigay society on campus also monitors events on campus, becoming the “face” should say a homophobic situation be reported.

I won’t ramble on about this for much longer, but I firmly believe that these organisations/societies play a significant role on university campuses. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be accepted by their friends and family when they come out, and as Luiz pointed out in this article, university is most probably the place where that first peek from behind the closet door might happen.