Students celebrated the queer community during Pride Week last week, with events drawing large crowds but also attracting criticism from prominent gay bloggers.
The festival, co-ordinated by UniQ, included a film screening, a presentation on gender by New Zealand’s first openly intersex person, games of “Bingay”, an open mic night, and a traffic light party.
VUWSA’s Queer Officer, Tom Reed, was impressed by the festivities.
“It was great to see the attendance up from last year’s festival. UniQ have improved the quality of events and I am looking forward to attending many more UniQ events,” he said.
Despite its popularity, the week’s organisers received strong criticism from local bloggers Aaron and Andy.
“We can only really describe UniQ Wellington’s move with Pride Week this year as a fuck-up,” they wrote on their blog, which is widely read by Wellington’s queer community.
The pair said the fact Pride Week was only promoted on the Monday it began was unacceptable.
They also labelled the events “lazy”, suggesting they were organised by other groups and would have happened without Pride Week.
In a response to the bloggers’ criticism, UniQ Secretary Victoria Collerton-McKay accepted promotion had started
too late.
“This was a huge mistake and we accept full responsibility for it,” she said.
However she rejected the suggestion that Pride Week had failed, saying students had a great time and the week was underpinned by a strong sense of community.
Students who participated told Salient they felt Pride Week could have been better publicised, but was still fun.
When asked about the bloggers’ claims events were lackluster, an attendee of the popular traffic light party said they “don’t think the people having the orgy in the corner of Club Ivy would agree with them on that.”