Mount Allison is celebrating Pride all month this year after COVID-19 repeatedly interrupted their plans.<\/p>\n
Pride Committee Chair Venna Penney is relieved to be celebrating this March.<\/p>\n
She and her team planned Pride multiple times, but between unpredictable outbreaks and COVID-19 restrictions, they kept going back to the drawing board.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe usually would host pride in September,\u201d Penney explains. \u201cBut as we got closer [to September], and restrictions started to change, it didn\u2019t look like that was going to be feasible. So we decided to wait until we would be in a better place with COVID-19 restrictions so that we would have the opportunity to do things in person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now that Pride has the go-ahead, the next obstacle is to integrate online and in-person programming.<\/p>\n
Penney is concerned that digital celebration might not be popular, as she\u2019s seen \u201clow retention with online events\u201d in the past. It also doesn\u2019t help that most students are staring at their laptops every day for their online classes, and likely won\u2019t be keen to sign up for an online workshop during their free time.<\/p>\n
\u201cParts that are not as much entertainment-based and are more education-based can be really hard to get a turnout, because all of our learning is online,\u201d says Penney, who empathizes as someone in online classes herself. \u201cI get that. So we\u2019re just trying to promote, promote, promote.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s crossing her fingers that COVID-19 cases will remain low enough for a few in-person events, including a film screening and a drag show.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have one full in-person event, a movie that at the Vogue, which will be showing \u201cMoonlight\u201d a Barry Jenkins film. We\u2019re hoping that our drag show, which is being shown live on Zoom, [will be] live at The Pond.\u201d Live events are still tentative, since COVID-19 restrictions can change overnight.<\/p>\n
Penney says the constant rescheduling was stressful, and she is grateful to have a dedicated team putting the celebrations together.<\/p>\n
A full list of Pride events is available on\u00a0MASU\u2019s social media pages<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hear this story as reported:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n