CQA Speaker Series Kicks Off With a Smashing Success!

Huge props to Laura and the CQA team for what was a fabulous night at our first CQA Speaker Series yesterday. There were about fifty people in attendance; thanks for coming out! We had six panelists at the event: Winnie Varghese, Priest at St. Mark’s Church; Nicole Schwalbe, the University’s Lutheran chaplain; Reverend Manny Santiago, Columbia’s Methodist chaplain; Justin Rosen, a GS/JTS graduate who works with Jewish nonprofits; GS Dean Peter Awn, a former Jesuit Priest for twenty years and currently a professor of Islam; and our very own CQA Social Chair Learned Foote, a member of an evangelical Christian family from Michigan. The panelists had many terrifically inspiring and insightful remarks regarding the intersections and voids surrounding the topic of Religion and Sexuality. For a pretty good review, please check out BWOG’s take on the night.

The Speaker Series is going to become a monthly event where we give knowledgeable folks a platform to inform the Columbia community about pressing concerns for LGBTQIA people. Keep your ears and eyes open for our upcoming April Speaker Series. And if you have any topic suggestions, please leave them in the comments! Or better yet: come to our weekly meeting – as always, open to EVERYONE – at 2pm on Sunday in the Stephen Donaldson Lounge (Furnald Basement).