I don’t want to be melodramatic, but for all I know, this was one of the largest gay festivals this entire state has ever seen. (I thought the state’s flagship campus had been doing things like this for years, but it turns out this was their first year, too.) We did some brainstorming yesterday about next year.

Same:

• Music blasting on the quad.
• Readings from literature by GLBTQ authors.
• Speakers telling their own coming out stories or explaining why they’re GLBTQ allies.
• Little rainbow cards to give to cranks who want to tell us why we’re all going to hell: “Today is not a day for debate. Today is a day to listen to the voices of GLBTQ community members and their allies.” hand it to ’em and walk away.

Changes:

• Spend more time in advance lining up readers and speakers.
• Full page ad in the student newspaper with the names of GLBTQ community members and their allies.
• Get a big, beautiful balloon rainbow.
• More rainbow flags.
• More group photos with students, faculty, and administrators.
• Music: Create a huge playlist on a laptop, print it out for listeners to peruse, and take requests.
• Deliver t-shirts and buttons to the powers that be and ask that they consider wearing them on October 11.
• More pizza. (We had 30, and that still wasn’t enough.)
• More buttons. (For people who didn’t pick up t-shirts on Monday.)
• Recruit philosophy majors to run interference with those who want to argue endlessly over Bible verses. (There were only three guys in homemade “Coming Out for Christ” t-shirts skulking around the edges of the quad, but there might be more next year given how successful a day we had this year.)

w00t!