The ASUCD Pride Festival will celebrate the LGBTQIA community at the Quad with vendors, food, activities and live music
By KAYA DO-KHANH — campus@theaggie.org
On Friday, June 3, ASUCD will host its first-ever Pride Festival. The festival is a celebration of the LGBTQIA community on campus, and it is open to UC Davis students, as well as individuals from the greater Davis and Sacramento community. The event will take place at the Quad from 3 to 7 p.m.
Before second-year political science major and Pride Festival Board Chair Ashley Chan was the ASUCD Gender and Sexuality Commision chair, the previous board chair had planned on holding a pride event, but after COVID-19 hit, such a large-scale event was no longer possible. According to Chan, when she was appointed as the Gender and Sexuality Commission Chair, she made it a priority to hold a pride event if feasible.
“I made it clear in my confirmation hearing that if the pandemic allowed for it, if the public health situation allowed for it, I wanted a pride event,” Chan said. “At first, I thought maybe a parade would be the way to go, but I thought about it, and a pride festival makes more sense, because it allows for the ability to honor LGBT businesses and help them out, especially since they’ve been so hard hit in the pandemic.”
The first two hours of the event will include a variety of local businesses owned by queer and transgender individuals serving as vendors, and there will be different planned activities. Some of the vendors will sell pride-related products like pronoun pins, jewelry and stickers. The second half of the event will have live performers and musicians.
“I’m excited to see our community supported, to see people come to our event because they feel represented, they feel cared for, they’re looking to get something out of the event,” said Gracyna Mohabir, a fourth-year economics and environmental policy and analysis major and the co-chair of the Pride Festival Board. “I feel like with the pandemic, we’ve been robbed of the spaces that queer communities usually share at pride events.”
The ASUCD Pride Festival Board has a goal of connecting students to resources on campus and in the area, providing access to housing and mental and sexual health resources like the LGBTQIA Resource Center, according to Mohabir. Additionally, the board has reached out to organizations in the City of Davis such as the Davis Phoenix Coalition, which puts on the Davis Pride event each year. The board hopes to promote open discussion about topics that are not often addressed, like overall health as a queer or transgender person.
“I’m really excited that we have a group of diverse individuals who are a part of the queer and trans community on our board,” said third-year American studies major and board member Emma Bishoff. “I think it’s really cool that this is run by students for students.”
Written by: Kaya Do-Khanh — campus@theaggie.org
