Pride Season at the Alexander College Library

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Alexander College wishes everyone a Happy Pride Season!

Pride Season begins in June and ends in September. It is a time for us to reflect upon the resilience, skills, and contributions of the LGBT+ community. It is a time for us to celebrate diversity in all its forms, and to move forward in our personal, academic, and professional relationships with kindness, tolerance, and respect.

LGBT+ stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender.” The plus is a symbol of inclusiveness that also covers identities such as two-spirit, intersex, asexual, non-heterosexual, non-heteroromantic, and non-cisgender.

Alexander College’s mission is to “[strive] for excellence in higher education for students from many cultural backgrounds and language abilities by providing internationally recognized university transfer courses and degree programs, individual support services, and campus activities to foster local and global community engagement.”

Pride Season integrates into our College’s mission in the following ways.

First, it shares a key part of Canadian culture with our students, most of whom come from diverse cultures all over the world. In Canada, we have a cultural and legal basis for tolerance of marginalized communities such as the LGBT+ community.

When a community is marginalized, it is often historically oppressed, maligned, and/or targeted for disrespect. The LGBT+ community is one such community, which has dealt with homophobia and transphobia for years.

Despite our progress, there is still work to do to promote tolerance, and Pride Season is instrumental in doing so. Pride Season is an important part of Canadian culture that we hope will inspire and educate you as an international student!

Second, Pride Season is an excellent time to highlight the resources available to all of students, also of particular relevance to our LGBT+ students.

As mentioned, LGBT+ individuals can face discrimination, even in Canada. Therefore, we invite our LGBT+ students to take advantage of the Health and Wellness services available to them at our College. Alexander College students are eligible for up to 10 free Health and Wellness Counseling sessions each calendar year.

If you are an individual struggling with your identity, or facing homophobia or transphobia in any form, we welcome you to take advantage of these services.

Finally, local and global engagement is central to Pride Season. In terms of local engagement, we invite you to get involved in events held by the Vancouver Pride Society.

Global community engagement is facilitated by exposing our students to new views that, should they return to their home countries, can provide a new intellectual and emotional toolkit to engage with LGBT+ policies back home.

As Ghandi said, “be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Together, we can end marginalization, discrimination, and intolerance in all its forms at our College, in Canada, and in the world!