Big Year Planned for LGBTI at MLS

Dean Edwards
Volume 3, Issue 2, (Originally Published on Monday 11 March 2013)
 
Melbourne University student associations are undertaking some fresh ideas to build the university’s LGBTI community’s profile and social scene.
 
Last Tuesday, the Graduate Students Association (GSA) hosted around 20 students at Tsubu Bar, behind the Graduate Centre on main campus, for 2013’s inaugural queer mixer.
 
The GSA’s mixer was organised by the GSA Council’s queer officer, Solmaz Hosseinioon, who circulated the function introducing herself and providing LGBTI graduate students an outlet for sharing their ideas for strengthening the community.
 
While the GSA’s LGBTI calendar looks quiet for the coming semester, the Law Students Society’s new Queer officers, second-years Matt Condello and John Manwaring, are busy planning a bold agenda of ‘academically oriented’ sessions and networking events.
 
Manwaring expressed the difficulty many LGBTI law students face in ‘trying to find places in the profession and advocating causes, while not sacrificing themselves for it’.
 
Manwaring said that he and Condello want to revamp the Queer portfolio. The duo’s first major event for 2013 is the upcoming panel seminar, ‘Achieving Equality: Same-Sex Marriage, Politics and the Constitution’, with Professor Adrienne Stone participating alongside federal Greens MP Adam Bandt, state MPs Clem Newton-Brown and Jennifer Kanis and Australian Marriage Equality national director Rodney Croome.
 
The panel is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday, 27 March (with light refreshments following the discussion).
 
Manwaring indicated there might be an end-of-year event geared toward preparing LGBTI students for the diverse job market, to show students the possibility of working while being ‘openly gay and active in the gay community’.
 
Manwaring was optimistic of the Queer portfolio’s potential, stating that their plans for expanding the portfolio will take ‘a lot of patience and maintaining continuity’, and that ‘with persistence it could grow’.
 
Dean Edwards