Rainbow Alliance
Rainbow
Alliance is an LGBTQIA+ undergraduate student organization dedicated to
providing education, advocacy, and social opportunities for the queer community
at the University of Pittsburgh. Founded in 1972 as Gay Students at Pitt, our organization
has a long history of fighting for queer and trans rights on campus, hosting
safe space events every single week, and raising money for Pittsburgh LGBTQ+
nonprofits.
Our
main focus these days is providing safe spaces and social events for LGBTQ+
students on campus. Weekly events include crafty lounges and affinity groups,
while bigger annual events include dances, drag shows, and speaker events. Most
of these events are free for students to attend and many of our bigger events
garner 100+ attendees. We’re also still very involved in advocacy and our two
current focuses are a pro-trans sticker/poster campaign to combat transphobia
on campus and working with the university to designate a LGBTQ+ safe space
(outside of the Rainbow Alliance office).
This upcoming semester, Rainbow Alliance is celebrating its 50th anniversary alongside our annual LGBTQIA+ Pride Week, which is a pride celebration that we hold since most students aren’t on campus in June to celebrate. March 24-26 will be our 50th anniversary celebrations including an alumni brunch, our annual Panther Drag charity show, and an event with the Rainbow Alliance Archives which are housed by the Archives and Special Collections at Hillman Library. Then March 27-April 1 will be Pride Week, a weeklong celebration involving several organizations and departments across campus with events every single day.
While Rainbow Alliance is a large organization that caters to all of the campus LGBTQ+ community, being able to keep our events free takes a lot of funding. For our biggest celebration this year, the 50th anniversary and LGBTQIA+ Pride Week, we’d like to go as big as possible with publicizing all across campus. Any donations would go towards our publicity and marketing of this celebration, such as creating banners, printing flyers, and making merchandise. Additionally, our Panther Drag charity show is a free-to-attend show where local drag professionals perform and the tips are collected to give to a local nonprofit. Drag professionals deserve to be compensated for their time/effort, and so donations will also go towards compensating performers while still donating any profit to charity.