Club Spotlight: AU Allies

By Jada Fong, Staff Writer

While the club may have been hard to find before, AU Allies is easy to find and easy to join now! The club emphasizes acceptance, safety and confidentiality for students in the LGBTQ+ community and allies to said community. You may have heard Allies is run through Campus Ministry, which may have caused some apprehension in coming to meetings. However, the club is a safe space of confidentiality in which students can express any thoughts, emotions or experiences that they would like without repercussions from Campus Ministry or their peers in attendance. It also provides a space for students to find peers like them, who may be facing the same trials and tribulations that come with being an LGBTQ+ student. This is not a place of stifling the LGBTQ experience or any adversity that the community has faced. Their faculty advisor, Deacon Paul, has made a point to keep the club alive with the help of the newly appointed student leaders, Aaron Christo and Jada Fong. At their general body meetings, they discuss topics such as sexual orientation, gender identity, and homophobic incidents on and off campus. Even though, some topics can be on the more serious side, they’ve also held fun, light-hearted events as well, including their LGBTQ+ Jeopardy Night, in which they learned some LGBTQ+ factoids and the winning team got to take home lots of candy, and their National Coming Out Day Chalking, where they covered Hagan’s pavement with positivity and pride! To join AU Allies, you can show up to any general meeting on Tuesdays at 8:00pm in Tsotsis 227 or email one of the student leaders (aaron.christo@assumption.edu, jada.fong@assumption.edu).