The Rainbow Pride Union, founded in 1971 to provide a safe space for LGBTQ+ students, is hoping to rejuvenate its organization with changes to its E-Board and a renewed focus on collaboration and queer liberation.

Mansha Rahman, RPU’s president and a junior double-majoring in art and design and Spanish, shared recent changes to the organization. Last year, they said, the organization reached out to the Q Center, where current and previous E-Board members worked, to bring about new leadership.

“RPU went through a bit of a dry spell for a couple of years, but with our new E-Board, I hope to bring the organization back to what it once was,” Rahman wrote.

The organization’s primary objective is to create a long-lasting sense of pride within the LGBTQ+ community by providing outlets for members to express themselves politically, creatively and socially through various events and activities. They advocate for education on issues of importance, specifically emphasizing the intersectionality between race, gender, sexuality, religion and identity.

RPU has been a political group that has fought for queer liberation since its inception, added Thomas Holland, the events coordinator and a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in teaching. He said he hopes to return the club to its roots in political activism.

“Firstly, while the club, even going back to the 70s, had a social element to it, serving as a space for queer students to meet like minded people who might share similar struggles and perspectives, it was also an inherently political organization, putting together ‘teach-in’ style events, protests, and fighting for queer liberation,” Holland wrote. “As such, we have started to move the organization back in a more political or social direction, taking actions like signing on to the Divest From Death statement,” referring to a campaign started last semester that passed a resolution in the Student Association Congress to express support for principles of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

Holland said he wanted to honor the organization’s history and the efforts of those that paved the way for the queer community on campus by displaying it in a way that is accessible to students to preserve the memory of those who helped cultivate the organization.

The organization’s main goal for this year is to revive its campus presence and increase engagement levels, which have waned in the past couple of years, partly due to the pandemic in 2020. The E-Board looks to promote its organization to a broader audience through both expanded social events, like last semester’s Second Chance Prom, and a commitment to political activism.

“We understand RPU was a lively campus organization and we hope to be just as popular and colorful as we once were,” Rahman wrote. “RPU’s history as an organization on Binghamton’s campus has always been considered political, but especially safe and a way to promote awareness. I am confident that there are students who need RPU as an organization just as much as I did when I first entered college, and I am confident that our E-Board this year will do an amazing job at promoting our events and having the place we deserve on this campus.”