The Shippensburg Pride Center truly has flourished in the year it has been around. It's offered a safe space for LGBTQ+ students to gather and receive support. It's thrown a lot of special events for coming out week, including an open mic, tabling in student buildings, and offered a coming out in work panel. Beyond these special events, it hosts monthly support groups and luncheons. Beyond everything, it's offered security to a minority who's not always known what safety was.
Yet, as much as I love everything the Pride Center has done for the campus in general, there is one special project I'd like to highlight. This project is known as the Q project.
The Q project is based on a book and comes to life when students submit letters of their own to the one and only Pride@ship.edu. These letters are anonymous and are by undergraduate students for first-year students — or even their first-year self. These letters are being printed with the same font and as far as I'm aware, are currently being compiled into a binder.
The letter Q project connects students with other students, offers insight into the struggles, sorrows, and joys college has to offer. It's enlightening for first-year students to read what older students have gone through so they'll receive some support. After all, that's the main goal of the Pride Center, to create a place where love wins and support is offered.
If you are already Shippensburg University student I hope you'll write your own letter to either first-year students or your first-year self. If your an incoming Shippensburg freshman I encourage you to check out the pride Center and read some of these letters. If you're at another university I encourage you to enact some version of this project in your home school for the benefit of all- the future writers and future readers of those letters. Those letters may make a drastic difference in some fellow student's life.
