DSAGA hosts carnival to celebrate LGBTQ pride

The Diverse Sexuality and Gender Alliance (DSAGA) held its annual carnival as part of April Awareness Days in support of all sexual orientations and gender identities on the Freshman Quad on Friday.

“Since normally pride [month] is in June – we’re all off of campus obviously – so it’s the tradition to have it in April and it’s called April Awareness Days. So it’s essentially our pride month during the school year,” sophomore Rebecca Rivera, co-president and director of operations for DSAGA, said.

According to sophomore Daniel Villalobos, co-president and director of administration for DSAGA, the organization began holding April Awareness Days in 1992.

According to sophomore Amanda Spohrer, Events Coordinator for DSAGA, the carnival has been an annual event. She said this year’s carnival attracted more people than last year’s.

“We definitely [had] a bigger turnout this year. It’s definitely a lot more visible than it was last year. I think it’s really great that people came and got food and then stayed and did other stuff. There are people here for an hour or two. I’m really happy with how the event turned out. I’m hoping it can stay this big in the future,” Spohrer said.

In addition to students, many families with small children attended the carnival.  However, according to Rivera, DSAGA did not actually plan for the event to fall on Alumni Weekend. The event featured free food and many carnival-oriented activities, including cornhole, a bouncy house, a photobooth, henna tattoos and balloon animals.  Attendees could also design their own buttons to pin on clothing or bags.

The DSAGA board designed the activities based on what they thought would be enjoyable for attendees.

“We’re all children at heart, and so we just thought about what would we like to see at a carnival, what are things that we like to do. And so we thought of corn hole [and] of course, food. I love bouncy houses, so I picked out the biggest one I could find. Everyone’s into balloon artists and henna, so we just brainstormed,” Rivera said.

Spohrer said she wanted the activities to stand out.

“I was thinking about things that would grab people’s attention. So, for example, the bouncy house and the food are very big things that people see are like, ‘Oh, what’s that? I should go check it out,’” Spohrer said.

The henna artists and balloon animal artist were brought back this year because of their popularity last year, according to Spohrer.

The carnival’s purpose was to fortify DSAGA’s presence at Hopkins.

“It’s to put DSAGA’s name out there and to show the Hopkins community that we are here,” Rivera said. “We’re here. We’re queer. And we’re here to have fun… April Awareness Days is about celebrating our community.”

Spohrer agreed that the carnival was designed to raise awareness of DSAGA.

“We, every April Awareness Days, want to do something really big that gets DSAGA’s name out there but also gets rainbows on campus and gets some visibility, so people can see that there’s a presence here. And maybe, if somebody is looking for that, they can start coming to our meetings,” Spohrer said.

Sophomore Christian Reotutar, who attended the event, thought it was successful in generating interest in DSAGA and starting a conversation about tolerance on campus.

“They had the flags around [the perimeter of the quad], and a lot of people are going to start questioning why there are different colors on the flags,” Reotutar said. “I’m gay. And it was a nice day. It was on the freshman quad, so I was like, ‘Why not?’ I went to the photobooth, got free food. Then, I went everywhere, so I really liked that everything was dispersed, but there was everything that I wanted,” Reotutar said.

Freshman Amber Chen-Goodspeed attended the carnival after seeing the event page on Facebook.

“I thought it would be fun, plus free food,” Chen-Goodspeed said. “It’s really nice that they [had] all these little activities put together.”

Chen-Goodspeed said she would attend a DSAGA carnival again in the future. Freshman Nevena Marinkovic, a member of DSAGA, said she was surprised by the number of people who attended the event.

“It was fun. There were way more people than I expected, so that was nice. And the events ran well,” Markovic said. “It turned out really well. I’m glad so many people showed up.”