From Activism to Community: My time as President

Arriving at DigiPen, the concept of an easily accessible LGBT+ club was exciting, especially coming from the middle of nowhere Texas where the GSA was mostly hidden from the student body. Seeing the rainbow table amongst the various other clubs at orientation immediately made me feel better. It was the first sense of community I had received at DigiPen. Over the course of the year, I made sure to attend as many meetings as my schedule would allow, help out with any event that was put on, and provide ideas and inspiration for what to do next with the club. This dedication led to me being elected as co-president at the end of my freshman year. I was filled to the brim with excitement as the then-president was beginning talks of expanding PRISM’s reach in the school, taking a more activist stance. That summer I waited for us to connect and begin our plans to make the next year better. When sophomore year came around, I reached out to the figure of what our next move would be. That was when I learned that the president had left the school, without telling me. I was left with one of the last identity-based clubs at DigiPen on my shoulders as a sophomore. I had tried to continue the plan of developing our more activism-based platform at DigiPen. That was when I really started doubling down on implementing the gender-neutral restroom and communicating with the various aspects of DigiPen. I wanted to increase PRISM’s presence at the school so I also created more community-based events such as tv show marathons during the semester LAN party and movie nights to show various LGBT+ movies. This was also the year I furthered the development of DigiPen’s pride week. I had events going on for every single day of the week ranging from presentations, to an item swap, to a fundraiser for an LGBT youth home in downtown Seattle. In complete honesty, that pride week was an utter failure. Only the item swap and the fundraiser were successful. The different presentations and Q&A were empty events that garnered little to no activity. Looking back on the failures of previous activism based events and goals at DigiPen, I had come to a realization that led me to change the heart of PRISM for the rest of my term. DigiPen is a very unique institute. Students here can be expected to work almost 60 hours amongst their various classes and assignments. This makes free time very precious. This also means that having a network of support is extremely important. Most of the students that depart from DigiPen leave because they did not have the support to help them get through this harsh experience. This is even truer for LGBT+ students. If they come from a similar background as myself, they can feel completely alone in their time at DigiPen. Out of the very few graduates DigiPen has, roughly 5% are LGBT. Compared to the relatively large LGBT population at DigiPen, it seems odd that so many would leave. This is because the sense of community in DigiPen was weaker than in other universities. We did not have an LGBT+ center, we did not have a diversity coordinator, we did not have an LGBT dorm hall. All we had was PRISM, and we were too focused on outside of DigiPen that we were starting to look over the people we should have been reaching out to. Starting my Junior year, I scrapped a majority of the activism plans that were on the back burner. I focused more on creating and advertising community. It was in this year that the PRISM discord started taking off. It allowed students who were unable to make it to the weekly meetings an avenue to still communicate with other LGBT people. The meetings focused more on having a place to relax and talk to other people that shared a similar experience. It wasn’t always about talking about our experiences; sometimes it was just discussing the newest episode of Steven Universe or a book we had found that had some fun representation. I wanted PRISM to feel like a premade friend group that anyone could quickly join as soon as they made it to DigiPen. It could be one of the first supports that they can lean to for help in the trying years of DigiPen. Like many DigiPen clubs, most attendance comes from freshmen which means that providing that support is essential while they develop their own friend groups and more personalized networks. By providing this safe place, more LGBT+ students graduated from DigiPen which means more LGBT+ developers entering the industry. I continued developing our Pride Week by having more community and activity-based events. I kept the item swap and fundraiser which ended up raising almost $1600 that year, $400 more than the year before. I then added a Steven Universe showing of the latest episodes, a Queer Eye Night, a personal pronoun pin event, and an LGBT+ Developer panel and mixer. The panel, screening, and pronoun pins were very successful that year along with the item swap. This just solidified the idea that I was doing the right thing in moving PRISM to a more community-based organization. This was also the year that PRISM won DigiPen’s club of the year award for the second time, a first in DigiPen history. Even though I moved the club away from activism, that did not mean I stopped being an activist that year. I had concluded our work on the gender-neutral bathroom that year in conjunction with the Student Senate. With their cooperation, we were able to convince the COO and facilities that this was a step that DigiPen wanted to take. They took the signs that PRISM had bought the previous year with club funds and replaced the gendered signs with them. From that year on, all restrooms on the second flood were officially gender-neutral. With my senior year, my final year as PRISM President, I knew that I had to focus on the transition of power. I did not want my successor to be left on their own trying to figure out how to run what was the longest-running club at DigiPen and officially the last identity-based club at DigiPen. The plan for this semester was to have my VP involved with all events so that she may be prepared to redo them the next year. I had been cultivating a google drive of all necessary materials. Flyers for meetings and events, contact information for guest speakers, previous winners of our fundraiser, and tips for tracking down professors. The fall semester is typically lax for PRISM. We do the semesterly LAN party with a movie marathon, we participate in the career fair and new student orientation, but these are simple events, sitting and talking to people about why we do what we do. Spring semester was supposed to be when a majority of teaching occurred. Pride Week was the main event. She was to shadow me and learn what went into pulling off the huge event. We made it about half-way through when we had to cancel the rest. The week of Pride was when COVID-19 became a threat to Seattle. That week, it became apparent that the school had to take precautions for the health and safety of the students, and so did we as a service to the students. We canceled the rest of the events with the intention to reschedule them when we came back. We never got the chance to. My time as PRISM President came to a silent close. It is without a doubt disappointing the experiences I had lost. We were hoping to raise more money this year for the Lambert House, $1800 dollars; we were going to have huge events for the student to enjoy; we were going to provide a place for them to experiment and discover more about themselves. But it was taken away from us this year. I have spent the rest of the semester documenting what I would have taught in-person so that at least next year the students can still have a place of community at the DigiPen Institute of Technology.