national student pride is 5 years old!

After the Oxford Brookes Christian Union’s talk on ‘Homosexuality and the Bible’ in 2005 the Brookes LGBT society felt obliged to put the other side of the argument across to their fellow students but needed a larger audience to attract a well known panel of speakers. This coupled with Oxford moving their pride to July, when the students had gone home, resulted in National Student Pride!

following two successful events in oxford National Student Pride officially became in association with the NUS LGBT campaign in 2007 and was hosted by the Manchester Universities and sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

2009 saw the move to Brighton combining with the Multi Uni Pub crawl, an annual LGBT event hosted by Brighton and Sussex Universities. Over 1,000 students from all over the UK attended with as many as 3 Scottish Universities along with a whole pile of celebrities.

2010 was by far the biggest and best yet supported by The Prime Minister, Cameron and Clegg and hosted in Brighton. With a new patron: Dan Gillespie Sells, Lead singer of The Feeling and whole pile of new features it was one to remember! Sponsored by Bacardi there was a women’s room programmed by brighton pride women’s tent with live music, vip drinks in association with village drinks, CK models, celeb chat panel, political question time debate, comedy, cabaret, stalls, google goody bags and a massive club night with live bands and a surprise appearance from ronan keating!

the planning for 2011 is well under way and the team is determined to elevate the event to new heights!

Why do we need National Student Pride? University is often the first time people come out and although there are many LGBT students who are comfortable with who they are, there are also a lot of students who are struggling to come to terms with their sexuality. This is why we at Student Pride believe it is important to have a presence on university campuses not only for them but also for the rest of our university communities, to see yes we are here and yes it is normal.

Tom Guy
Chair and founding member of National Student Pride