As part of Fall 2023 orientation, the Ithaca College Office of New Student and Transition Programs hosted Pride Fest, an event for students in the LGBTQ+ community and allies to celebrate pride and acceptance for one another and to find community. Although orientation has featured pride-themed events for the past several years, Fall 2023 was the first Pride Fest, which is a larger event designed to accommodate and celebrate more students. The move to Pride Fest makes a statement that the college has many LGBTQ+ students and wants to celebrate them, an especially important fact in 2023 when lawmakers and legislation across the country continue to target members of the LGBTQ+ community.
According to Trans Legislation Tracker, in 2023, 566 anti-trans bills have been proposed in the U.S. in 49 states and at the national level. Eighty-three of those bills have been signed into law. These bills target necessary support for trans people; they have restricted things like providing gender-affirming care to youth, students having the right to use different pronouns in school without written parental permission and banning drag shows outside of “adult-oriented” businesses.
Additionally, in 2022, Florida passed the bill which has since been referred to as “Don’t Say Gay,” which prohibited lessons on sexuality and gender expression for students pre-K through third grade. In April 2023, the bill’s restrictions were expanded to encompass grades four through 12, unless the instruction is part of a state-mandated health lesson that parents can elect to exclude the student from.
Finally, in 2022 and 2023, bans on books with LGBTQ+ themes and characters have seen an increased number of challenges and bannings across the U.S. According to the American Library Association in 2022, challenges to books were higher than they have been in the more than 20 years that ALA has tracked censorship in libraries and according to PEN America, 41% of those challenged or banned books had LGBTQ+ themes or characters.
To put it simply, LGBTQ+ people, especially LGBTQ+ students in the United States, are under attack in 2023, and it is increasingly important for the college to celebrate them and their identities. It is crucial for all students to find and connect with peers when making the difficult transition to college. For students in the LGBTQ+ community who may have had difficulties being accepted in the past, this is even more true.
College students from all different communities deserve to feel accepted and given dedicated space to find like-minded and similarly-experienced peers during their transition to college. It is essential that the college continues to host events like Pride Fest, but it is equally important that they do not stop there; the college should continue to demonstrate its support for the LGBTQ+ community as well as other historically marginalized groups.
