Minutes 1/25/13

• Introductions/What did you do over break?
• Let's do Crush for your Crush again
• Program that allows students to send an anonymous crush soda with a note to anyone for free. Additional sodas cost $1 each.
• Need to table next week
• Lots of professors want to have dinner with members of Prism. 
• Prof. Bernoff definitely interested
• Other professors? - Prof. Yong, Prof. Dyson, Dean Sumi
• Gaypril is coming up in a little while. We should not be outdone by the other colleges! Plans:
• Let's have a career forum
• Ally training?
• Other things to do this semester? 
• More movie nights! Anyone know of good movies?
• Anyone who wants to go to the Western Regional Conference at Santa Cruz near the end of February, let Chance/Kevin know! The QRC is sponsoring it.
• Tonight, Bring a Friend to the QRC Social. Chance is walking down at 7pm
• Current events:
• Russian state Duma is banning "gay propoganda" and it's backed by the parliament
• They are also weeding out gay recruits
• Rhode Island is starting to weigh approving gay marriage
• It will be the last New England state to approve it
• An email will be sent out about changing the date of meetings soon!

Catch-Up Minutes!

11/16

• Transgender Day of Remembrance on Tuesday
• body outlines in blue tape representing the number of people who were killed in the last year due to hate crimes against trans* people
• over the weekend: plan to flyer and finish body outlines
• Angelica is doing a Trans101 workshop in the Aviation Room
• It's been a year since DADT was repealed, so now academies have a lot of LGBT students
• The talk on being genderqueer and Jewish talk tonight

11/30

• We answered questions for a project that analyzed the way religion (specifically Christianity) and LGBT issues coincided at the 5Cs
• some questions asked:
• Is religion necessary?
• Has anyone felt oppression from religious groups?

12/7

• Supreme Court has agreed to take up 2 gay marriage cases from NY and Cali (Prop 8)
• United States vs. Edith Windsor (from 1996)
• trying to repeal DOMA
• federal government will not withhold gay marriage (currently up to each state)
• if DOMA fails, then no state can have anti gay marriage laws
• Decisions will come out in June 2013
• CA has passed a law to ban conversion therapy (an attempt to "cure" homosexuality) for minors 
• main argument against law is that it violates therapists' free speech
• most find this "therapy" invalid since homosexuality was removed from the DSM in the 70s
• Queer Burlesque - talk about how it went

12/14

• What events should we throw next semester? Still lots of money!
• big welcome back event?
• Univ. of Iowa added a question on its application about being LGBT
• specifically: "Do you identify with the LGBTQ community?" 
• does this include allies?
• Elmhurst College had this on their application at one point too
• use it for giving students information about campus groups/housing
• when will Mudd start asking this as well?
• we should start reporting statistics in our literature and brochures
• always say we are very queer friendly, but don't advertise it
• will it be used to fulfill a diversity quota?
• Affirmative action? Thoughts?
• necessary. not the best solution but best we have
• need small community at a school to attract others from that community
• LGBTQ will be treated similarly soon?
• Iowa recently passed gay marriage
• Boeing, which has offices in a state that just passed gay marriage (Seattle, WA?), refuses to extend benefits to same sex couples :(