FUND FOR REUNION/PRINCETON GALA
A Non-profit Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Princeton Alumni, Students, Faculty and Staff
P.O. Box 1481, Princeton, New Jersey 08542
| NEWS FROM THE FUND FOR REUNION/PRINCETON GALA A Non-profit Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Princeton Alumni, Students, Faculty and Staff P.O. Box 1481, Princeton, New Jersey 08542 |
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| Volume VIII, No. 1 | Summer, 1993 |
Amid the pomp and revelry of Reunions '93, members gathered to look to FFR/Princeton GALA's future. Cafe at Murray-Dodge, our reception at Betts Auditorium and our dance at Terrace Club attracted numbers comparable to past years.
At the reception on Saturday, June 5, Secretary Shawn Cowls announced the roster of new board members: David Beaty '50, Mark Blasius *78, Rebecca Bulmash '85, Shawn Cowls '87, Thomas Grant '64, Gordon Harrison '68, Bob Hotes '85, Dick Limoges '60, Philip Mahin '85, and Michael Phillips '90. The board was elected without objection.
During the informal discussion that followed, Board members fielded questions about the Fund. Many of those attending expressed a desire to strengthen links between alums and students. The upshot: a community meeting will be set up at Princeton on or around Alumni day in which our membership outside Princeton can meet the campus community.
The night before, the FFR/GALA's Friday night Reunions cafe was enlivened by a surprise visit from Elihu Inselbuch '59, incoming chair of the Alumni Council.
Inselbuch, a New York lawyer, said he was making an effort to reach out to alumni groups that have not traditionally been part of the council's mainstream.Inselbuch replaces Dorothy Bedford '78, whose two-year term ended July 1. During her tenure, Bedford became the first Alumni Council chair to reach out to lesbian and gay alumni, offering the Council's assistance to FFR several times.
Shawn Cowls '87, the FFR secretary who was present at Inselbuch's visit, said later: "He seemed quite comfortable in talking to us, though he didn't seem too interested in knowing who was there who was an officer of the organization."
"It's a mixed reaction," Cowls said. "On the one hand, I was glad he came. On the other, I don't know if it's going to be the same kind of close relationship we had with Dorothy."
Once again, FFR sponsored a LGBT friendly dance at Terrace Club. Over sixty dancers paid a donation to cap Reunions with a very gay time. As occurred last time, all fliers announcing the dance on campus were torn down the first day of Reunions. On a positive note, our events were listed in the Reunions Guide for the first time!
Approximately thirty current and former students followed the orange and black banner at the March on Washington, on Sunday, April 27th. Other Princetonians were sighted marching with state contingents or other groups.
Many participants avoided sunburn by heading to the rally on the Mall immediately, bypassing the parade past the White House. This grand jamboree of lesbian, gay, and generally queer (generally activist, that is) politics mixed street fair, convention and people power in a stunning display of solidarity.
While some in the American media, transfixed by the "gay moment," doubt the durability of a rainbow community, (e.g. "Gay liberation...attempts to unify people only glancingly alike. As such, perhaps, it is designed for obsolescence." New York Times, 6-13-93) events like the March demonstrate its remarkable unity.
University administrators have invited Karen Krahulik '91, a graduate student at new York University, to be coordinator of the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Alliance of Princeton, while leaving the "half-time" status of the position unaltered. Karen was a member of the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Task Force for two years while an undergraduate. She is a former captain of Princeton's women swimmers. Karen's acceptance assures a smooth transition, as she has been no stranger to the campus in the past two years. She now studies history at NYU with a bent towards LGB topics. Expect to hear more about her in newsletters of the coming year.
Susan Montero, a dean at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, has been named to the new post of Dean of Student Life. A notice in PAW cited her work with LGB students there. Princeton's new Dean will oversee all aspects of campus life.
FFR/Princeton GALA sponsored a brunch picnic in Central Park on Gay Pride Day, June 27th for residents of the tri-state are. Participants sipped mimosas and feasted on bagels near the Sheep Meadow around noon before heading toward Fifth Avenue and other points to celebrate the community in all its gorgeous diversity. Eagle-eyed readers may have noted in their 1993 Pride Guide that Yale GALA threw a picnic party located more eccentrically on the Great Lawn. Perhaps the NETGala reception held in former years at the Center on W. 13th Street could be revived as a picnic in the Park next year (if Elis are not allowed to choose the locale...).
Students concerned by the silence about Princetonians felled by AIDS quilted a memorial and marched with it behind the Class of 1968 in the 1993 P-rade. This marvelous object contains the names and classes of sixteen alumni whose PAW memorials cited AIDS as the cause of death. The prime movers of the project were Sarah Goltz '96 and Chris Hartleben. Sarah and fellow members of the 2 Dickenson St. Coop contributed their labor while the initial duo dug into their own pockets to finance the project.
Sarah then displayed the quilt and a memorial book for friends of the 16 at the 25th reunion. The display prompted nearly $300 of donations to defray the expense of the materials
Although inspired by the NAMES Project, the Princeton quilt is not designed to meet the NAMES criteria, nor will it be deposited with that group. Containing no individual panels, the quilt leaves room for the addition of other names as they are made known. Viewers at Reunions were invited to sign an accompanying book and write memorials.
Goals for the quilt include continual updating of its contents, display at Princeton and its use in AIDS education and prevention efforts on campus. Quilters believe that the experience of viewing the quilt may make concrete the reality of the epidemic for current undergraduates inclined to consider themselves immune.
Michael Hollander '68 and other members of the class of '68 made this display possible, earning the gratitude of supporters of AIDS awareness. FFR hopes to display the quilt at our next major function.
FFR awarded two current Princeton students funds to support academic work on topics of interest to the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community.
Ellis Hanson, a graduate student in Princeton's English Department, received a $250 travel grant, helping him to present his paper on "Paranoia and the Voice in Almodovar," the noted openly gay, Spanish film maker. The paper - part of a larger essay to be published this summer in Cinema - was presented at "Queer Sites:" a gay and lesbian studies conference sponsored by the new College of the University of Toronto, and held in that city on May 13-15 of this year. FFR was able to step in when University funding proved impossible to obtain. Ellis helped curate "Queer Articulations," the lesbian and gay film festival held this past spring.
Sarah Carbone, '94 received $400 for travel, room and board relating to her work on a senior thesis in the Anthropology department. Sarah is examining conflict over bisexuality in San Francisco, Berkeley and Seattle.
Her work this summer is an extension of her Junior year independent work, in which she used feminist anthropological models to evaluate the identity debate between lesbian feminists and bisexual women and the resultant politics.
FFR/Princeton GALA is committed to supporting inquiry into neglected topics relating to lesbian and gay life and promoting high standards of excellence in gay and lesbian studies. If you know of people in need of such support, please encourage them to apply. All proposals should include a breakdown of estimated costs and a brief summary of the work intended. Anyone currently eligible for membership in the Fund may apply. Note that this encompasses people not studying at Princeton during the application period.
If you wish to send donations specifically to support our grant program, please mark your donation "Attn: Scholarship Program" on check and envelope. Many thanks to board member Mark Blasius GS '78 for evaluating applications.
In the last newsletter Jen Kates shared with us her impressions of the progress made in the past two years towards making Princeton a place where lesbian and gay students can live full and open lives. Jen emphasized the importance of the underpinnings of this growing community - University support, no matter how paltry, allows progress to be sustained.
The quest for permanent status for an employee of the University devoted full-time to LGB concerns has proved very frustrating. Administrators refused to grant either the LGBA or LGB Task-force a representative on the Dean of Student Life search committee, whose recently named candidate, Jen tells FFR,
"will have incredible amounts of power."
The LGBA was told it was not a full "center" entitled to a representative. In essence gay students were told that they were not really a "minority." "That says, 'We really don't know where gay students belong'," Jen responds. But students at Princeton are telling the University that they do belong, even at Old Nassau.
Q: Will current activists have replacements as they graduate? Is it likely?
A: It is likely. It's really incredible how many more students are coming out every year; we have all kinds of sophomores who are out and are peer educators on campus. One of the reasons we have big awareness events on campus, like Pride Week, is that is inspires more and more people to come out.
There are out students [now], they live in the dorms, they have friends who are straight and gay. They really have forged a place for themselves.
Contacting Us:
We can be reached at:
Fund for Reunion/Princeton BTGALA, P. O. Box 1481, Princeton, NJ 08542
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This document was last modified on March 13, 2005.