Introduced in 2002, Campus Pride started as an online group called Campus PrideNet, which provided services to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) and ally students and faculty on college campuses. The founders eventually expanded their project into Campus Pride as it is today. Its outreach now includes a leadership camp that three Elizabethtown College students — junior Sarah Fender and sophomores Katelyn Gebbia and Jason Mountain — attended this summer.
The nonprofit organization’s mission statement explains their commitment to creating leaders at the college level. The statement reads: “Campus Pride serves LGBTQ and ally student leaders and campus organizations in the areas of leadership development, support programs and services to create safer, more inclusive LGBTQ-friendly colleges and universities. It exists to develop, support and give ‘voice and action’ in building future LGBTQ and ally student leaders.” The overarching goal of the camp and the organization, as a whole, is to rid college campuses of LGBTQ prejudice, bigotry and hate.
“I do think that the camp’s mission was accomplished. The mission was to train us to become better LGBTQ activists in order to help promote positive social change on our respective campuses,” Mountain said.
The organization has been working toward that goal through several programs, including the “Queer” magazine, college-circulated PSAs and documentaries and Camp Pride Summer Leadership Camp. The three students who attended the camp this year are in leadership roles on campus and hoped to learn more about fulfilling those roles.
“I attended as a sort of introduction to the Thinking About Gender, Sex and Sexuality (TAGSS think tank) research project we will be working on this year, but I also wanted to gain the supporters and mentors that I knew Camp Pride would provide,” Fender said.
The camp is unique in its “for students, by students” mentality. The advisor camp, which operates in tandem with the leadership camp, bears a similar concept; each camp is run by the people who it serves and vice versa. The Campus Pride website lists the learning outcomes of the leadership camp as “identify and describe components of [one’s] own identity, discuss ways in which queer or ally leaders fit into queer contexts and communities working to create positive change, identify key resources and best practices available to create and implement a more inclusive and safe campus, apply leadership skills to create change on home campuses and equip [student leaders] to be social justice advocates for life, identify and work with a network of peer and national leaders and present current and emerging issues impacting queer communities in the United States.”
The days consisted of workshops and lectures about social change and the role of these students in promoting it. The workshops were focused on training the attending students to be leaders on their campuses in regards to LGBTQ issues, from making every campus friendly to making them safe. The speakers promoted means of social change that could be instituted on a collegiate level in hopes that the culture on college campuses could be changed in part because of what the students have learned at this camp. Students and advisors were encouraged to bring their respective campuses’ available resources, so that they could be discussed, utilized by others and revamped, if necessary.
“My favorite part of camp was working with like-minded individuals. It’s not very often that you are able to be surrounded by peers who have had similar experiences to yours, and who have the same passion you do for social change. It was really incredible,” Fender said.
She called the experience life-changing and is thankful to have left Nashville, Tenn. a different person than before. She plans to participate in the camp again, after having had such a great first encounter with the camp. These students, who are already active in campus LGBTQ education, now have the resources provided by the camp and the other students in attendance.
“I would have to say my favorite memory was going to the caucuses every night. There was a caucus for everyone there: a gay man’s caucus, a lesbian caucus, one for all of the middle sexes as well as one for people of color. It was great to gain perspective from other people like yourself,” Mountain said.
