Christ Church and Regent’s Park are the latest Oxford colleges to fly the LGBTQ flag for LGBTQ History Month.
The LGBTQ flag will be flown in Christ Church’s Peckwater Quad for the whole month for the first time. The proposal was agreed to by the college’s Governing Body. Luke Cave, Christ Church JCR President, commented, “As a JCR, we’ve been pushing towards flying the flag for a number of years now and there has always been a backing of support from the JCR, GCR and SCR. We have only secured the LGBT flag to be flown for February 2016 on a trial basis, but are looking to expanding this to other flags and for more years to come.”
Christ Church LGBTQ+ Welfare Officer Molly Moore was also proud of the achievement, saying, “The past week has been a turbulent one for LGBTQ+ people in Christ Church, with certain individuals exhibiting quite discriminatory attitudes towards queer people, and especially queer women. However, that we have been given permission to fly the rainbow flag for the entirety of February is an overwhelming victory at such a traditional college, and is testament to the efforts of the LGBTQ+ community over the past few years to create significant change in the way our college deals with LGBTQ+ issues. This public display of support is of great importance to the LGBTQ+ community and is just one step towards making Christ Church a more accepting, comfortable and welcoming place – something so many of us would like to see!”.
At Regent’s Park, a referendum was held by the JCR to be presented to the College as a case for flying the flag. Previously, the flag policy at Regent’s held that only the college or UK flag could be flown from the flagpole. This year, however, the JCR achieved a compromise whereby the flag would be flown for the last week of February if a referendum was passed in favour of doing so. Such a referendum would need to be yearly.
Ed Hackett, Regent’s Gender and Sexuality Officer, said, “Like many of us in the JCR, I am delighted that College has taken the almost unanimous result of our referendum into account, and has shown that it is willing to represent the wishes of its student body. The very high turn out (72 per cent – an impressive figure for any student referendum) is also very encouraging, and just goes to show that Regent’s is not only a very tolerant and accepting place, but is also a college where the students truly care about the community they are a part of.”
Catz JCR recently passed a motion pledging to fly the flag for the whole of February from this year onwards. JCR President Sarah White said, “I’m chuffed with the decision made by Catz college members to fly the rainbow flag for the entire duration of LGBTQ history month. It was a united decision, with a joint proposal from the JCR and MCR agreed to by the SCR and college staff. It’s brilliant that absolutely everyone is on board with making a visual statement of support for the LGBTQ+ community.’’
Christ Church and Regents’ follow many other colleges in Oxford who fly the flag in February, including Wadham, Oriel, Magdalen and Balliol.
