An Oregon State University student newspaper story by Sydney Sullivan, "OSU celebrates Queer History Month," OSU Barometer, posted online Oct. 16, 2017, says, "According to Cynthia Konrad, director of the Pride Center, Queer History month has been celebrated since the mid-1990s and was built around National Coming Out Day, which occurs on Oct. 11.. . . The events this year at OSU will be hosted by and in collaboration with numerous groups including, LGBTQ+ Multicultural Support Network, the Ettihad Cultural Center, the Women's Center, the OSU Queer Archives, the Rainbow Continuum student organization and the Pride Center, according to Konrad. . . Queer History Month should also be set apart from Pride month, according to Lucielle S. Balls, a community organizer, drag legend and queen of the beaver 2012. . ." I will have more to say on the history of student drag performances in a future post. (Also see previous post OSU students support drag, gay marriage and anti-gay newspapers (10/25/12))
The student newspaper story also says, "Natalia Fernandez, curator and archivist of the Oregon Multicultural Archives and OSU Queer Archives, works with the OSU archives towards conserving queer history for future generations." She also says, "The OSU Queer Archives is one small part of the broader history of Oregon and of queer history in the United States. Our vision is for OSQA to highlight the stories within the university and its local communities and to also be a reflection of statewide and national issues and themes." Since its establishment in the fall of 2014, OSQA has strived to highlight LGBTQ+ stories already within the OSU Special Collections and Archives Research Center. The OSQA oral history collection alone has over two dozen interviews and counting. (I'll have more to say about the OSU Oral History Collection in a future post.)
Due to my worsening low vision blindness and disability, I have been unable to meet with Cynthia L. Konrad, director of the OSU Pride Center, as I have done with previous OSU Pride Center directors, however, I recently was able to send her an email request to update the two history pages on the OSU Pride Center website, so that they will both link directly to the OSU Library page that has a link to a PDF copy of my OSU history, instead of these two pages pointing offsite to a webpage that might change or even disappear in the future. Specifically, the two pages are dce.oregonstate.edu/pc -- "Our History" and dce.oregonstate.edu/pc/history -- "Welcome to the Pride Center! About Us" -- only one of the pages links directly to the OSU Library page below:
My history documents the first gay student group at OSU to be formally recognized by OSU administrators, which was formed in 1976 and has been continuously running under different names since then. It focuses on the history of queer students and staff located on the Corvallis Campus of OSU, but it also mentions activities in Corvallis and elsewhere to provide a historical context. It is not meant to be a history of Corvallis as some people have mistakenly thought by reading the short histories on two OSU history pages above.
See previous posts:
- OSU Scholars Archive has PDF of OSU gay history from OutHistory dot org (11/2/13) -- see permanent OSU library page Thomas Kraemer, "Corvallis, Oregon State University gay activism 1969-2004," printed to PDF from OutHistory.org in 2010 permanently stored by the OSU Scholars Archives @ OSU
- OSU Queer History Month hits front page of student newspaper (10/8/15)
- OSU Pride Week 'Can You Queer Me Now?' 2015 (5/8/15)
- Student produces video history of OSU LGBT community (5/16/15)
- OSU queer history month speech (9/20/06)
The Oregon State University Cultural Resource Centers (dce.oregonstate.edu accessed Oct. 23 2017) list the following Centers:
- OSU Asian & Pacific Cultural Center
- OSU Centro Cultural Cesar Chavez
- OSU Ettihad Cultural Center
- OSU Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center
- OSU Native American Longhouse Eena Haws
- OSU Pride Center
- OSU Women's Center
