Pride week comes early at UNC Chapel Hill

Pride came early at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, which launched events on Apr. 10 to celebrate the LGBTQ community. 

UNC’s Pride Week, which commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the university’s LGBTQ Center, happened in April because the semester ends before Pride Month in June, according to the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel. 

The Carolina Student Union Art Gallery hosted the first of five events by featuring an LGBTQ exhibit throughout the week. 

[RELATED: Students can attend ‘Queer Sex Ed’ at this Christian university]

Another event included student volunteers and LGBTQ Center staff stationing themselves in “The Pit”–a central, iconic location on campus–for Pride in the Pit. The Daily Tar Heel reported that activities included “a trivia game for visitors to test their knowledge about LGBTQ+ topics” and “button-making.” 

Students were invited to participate in a “Rainbow Walk” on Apr. 13, with Pride Week culminating in “The Story of Us: Oral Histories of LGBTQIA+ Alum.” During this performance, a cast of mostly alumni actors read accounts of LGBTQ student experiences at UNC “from the 1950s through the 2010s,” Indy Week reported.

The description of Pride Week also says that alumni led tours with “previews of LGBTQIA+ spaces on campus,” and they “provide[d] insight into some resources available for queer students at Carolina.”

[RELATED: ‘O’ My! UF students invited to paint their sexual experiences at ‘Sexxx Week’]

In July 2022, UNC hosted Queerolina, “an online history exhibition” launched by the Carolina Pride Alum Network (CPAN) as part of “The Story of Us.”

Audio recordings shared through Queerolina feature UNC alumni describing places on or around campus that served as popular locations for hookups. 

Campus Reform contacted all relevant parties listed for comment and will update this article accordingly.