Observing Pride Week
Last year at this time, Miller’s pillars were surrounded by the colors of the rainbows—the universally recognized colors of gay pride. Faculty also hung pride flags out of their windows in Miller Library and other academic buildings in honor of pride week.
Miller tower is one of the most prominent symbols of Colby College; it is one of the first things you see winding up the highway to Colby, and its effigy adorns almost every Colby publication. For the colors of gay pride to adorn the center of campus, visually and symbolically represented a communal solidarity with the queer community on campus. For a week, the queer community literally took center stage.
However, the College’s bannering policy for the central quad allows for almost no display. The Office of the Dean of Students’ website states, “Display of materials in the central academic quadrangle shall be permitted only in exceptional cases.” Last year, The Bridge bannered the columns unaware of this policy and the administration allowed the display to remain for Pride Week 2010. However, The Bridge was not allowed to banner Miller again this year.
But for members of The Bridge and other allies on campus, it was so important to recreate this nascent and powerful tradition that students responded by standing in front of Miller’s column arranged as the rainbow. There were students, faculty and staff, queer and straight allies standing together to protect and perpetuate this idea of support and affirmation.
We at the Echo are split on how we feel about the bannering policy. On the one hand, bannering the columns is a beautiful action: to wrap the symbol of Colby in the pride flag, visually realizes the flag’s meanings about community, diversity, alliance and affiliation. It is easy to forget that queer people are told, both in overt and subtle ways, that their existence is shameful. Making Colby’s most potent symbol the representation of the larger community’s solidarity with its queer students celebrates queer people’s existences on this campus. And ultimately, that is what pride is about—celebration.
On the other hand, we recognize that the universality of Miller tower makes it a very powerful symbol for Colby. It seems unfair for any one group or organization to claim it as their own. The symbol of Miller tower should transcend any one group and stand as a symbol that all of Colby can claim as its own. Though all of us at the Echo wholeheartedly support the Pride movement, we recognize and respect that not everyone in the Colby community may, and they have just as much of a claim to Miller as anyone else.
We know there is some sort of middle ground in this debate, and we hope that for next year’s Pride Week some compromise can come together (we suggest a pride flag flying with the American flag on the quad). No matter what your stance on the banner is, we want to wish everybody at Colby a happy Pride Week and we encourage you to celebrate with your peers whether you identify as queer or not. Glitter and be gay.
—The staff of The Colby Echo
