For Mott Community College students Nex Newvine and Grace Ingram, the college’s Gay-Straight Alliance has provided them with the opportunity to simply find community.
“It’s really kind of a safe place to explore your identity, it’s just such a welcoming community,” said Ingram, who is finishing up her associate’s degree in fine arts and hopes to pursue further education and a career in immigration and civil rights law after graduating from Mott. “When we have meetings and there’s a bunch of people, we’re able to just kind of bounce things off of one another. It’s something that I never really got to experience in high school. And when we see new people, like we have a new member who just came in and it’s just so cool to see him kind of find joy in the space. And I was like, oh, I did that too! I was in your shoes a little while ago.”
Although the student group’s primary focus is to provide a supportive environment for LGBTQ+ students on Mott’s campus, it is purposely inclusive of everyone.
“That’s why we’re the Gay-Straight Alliance,” said Newvine, who is also finishing up a fine arts degree at Mott and plans to transfer to the University of Michigan-Flint to study music. “We want to create a community within Mott that lets everyone in.”
The group plans to celebrate that community with an event later this month at Flint Local 432. The Gay-Straight Alliance is hosting ‘Glamapalooza’ from 5-7 p.m. on March 22. The event will celebrate self-expression and feature fashion, performances, and more. Charcuterie boards are available for $7 each and non-alcoholic drinks can be purchased for $5 each.
“GSA is always looking for ways to do outreach with the community and show people what we’re doing and what we’re about,” Newvine said. “So this is kind of like a showcase of performance art by queer people in and around the community.”
Entry for the event is $10 per person, or five non-perishable food items that will be donated to a local pantry. Cash entries also receive one free drink ticket.
“It’s really just kind of a celebration of queerness and queer identity, especially right now when everything is so suppressed,” Ingram said. “It’s just kind of a way for us to celebrate and it’s also our last big event with the GSA (before graduation).”
They’re also excited to be able to host the event at The Local, one of Flint’s iconic spaces for young people.
“I love The Local,” Newvine said. “They have been so helpful. They even donated some money to us, which was extremely great. It is just the ideal space to host events.”
GSA does several events throughout the year. In the past, those have included group meetings, movie screenings, and other community events. Some help raise funds for the club or other LGBTQ+ initiatives at Mott and others, like Glamapalooza, also try to collect donations for local organizations, like Crossover Outreach. Their meetings are in-person or virtual to encourage any forms of participation people are comfortable with, and they also have things like a private Discord chat where members connect and share upcoming events, pictures of their pets, art, poetry, and other things to get to know each other.
The group has also participated in events with FLAME, which is Mott’s faculty and staff LGBTQ+ group, and participated in the Michigan Community College Association’s Gay-Straight Alliance conference. Some members of the group were able to participate in the Equality Michigan LGBTQ+ Capitol Day last year, where students had the opportunity to advocate in Lansing for more inclusive legislation and funding for LGBTQ+ people and organizations.
For Ingram, the group was especially helpful when she was just starting out as a student at Mott.
“I saw GSA, and I was freshly out of the closet,” Ingram said. “It was just really cool to be able to go in and meet a bunch of different people and kind of build community with people I’ve never had the opportunity to meet before.”
Ingram and Newvine are both happy that, as they approach graduation, they’ve been able to see participation in the group grow during their involvement.
“When I joined GSA, we really weren’t doing any events and had maybe like five people show up regularly,” Newvine said. “I feel proud to be a part of the reason it has grown, especially seeing new people who we haven’t met before. In terms of future Mott students, just showing up, coming to events, reaching out, that is the best thing that you can do to be a part of the community.”
Ingram encourages anyone interested in being a part of a supportive, positive group to consider joining.
“It’s about building community,” Ingram said. “You don’t have to be queer to show support for our community. As long as you’re there and you’re friendly and you’re happy to be there, we would love to have you. This group itself has made such a difference in not only the way I view queerness as a whole, but the way I view myself. I think if you have the opportunity to safely get involved as a queer person with a queer community, I couldn’t recommend it more.”
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