In 2005 The CU at Brookes held a series of talks, one of which was titled ‘Homosexuality and the Bible._ The talk was very biased, judgmental and one sided and so we, the Lgbt society, felt obliged to put the other side across to our fellow students. This proved to be more difficult than we thought as there were not many people that were able to spare the time to talk to only a small group of people - we needed a larger audience.
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, so it_s important to have a presence for not only for them but also for the rest of our universities communities to see yes we are here and yes it is normal. As part of the Brookes lgbt soc I was surprised at the number of emails we would get of closeted students wanting support.
We don’t yet have equality and we need to continue the fight until we have it. I was shocked after attending my first NUS LGBT conference, I had no idea of the extents and problems LGBT people face. I was lucky enough to be one of the delegates from my uni but its important that all those students, both Lgbt and straight, can experience what we can at conference.
Additionally in 2005 we had been invited to several other uni’s and wanted to invite them back to Brookes, we then thought why stop at one, lets invite them all! So National Student Pride was conceived!
It’s time that students from every uni in the UK come together and make history, lets make this years Student Pride the biggest gathering of Lgbt students ever, lets do our part to wipe out homophobia from our universities!

Tom Guy
Co-Chair National Student Pride