Notice Board

The University of Lethbridge is proud to celebrate Pride Month under the theme of Embrace Empathy: Foster Understanding. This year’s theme is focused on building understanding through empathy by creating accountable spaces for conversation. Our commitment as a university will be to continue to build safe and inclusive spaces where we can celebrate and honour the many voices of our 2SLGBTQ+ students, staff and faculty.

Pride Month is a celebration of the diversity of the 2SLGBTQ+ communities, an acknowledgement of 2SLGBTQ+ history, and a continued recognition of the achievements of queer and trans individuals and groups. Take some time to check out the Pride Month web page and the many activities taking place this month, including our Progress Pride Flag raising event on Tuesday, June 18. It’s a time to re-examine our personal and collective commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging while also acknowledging the vital work that remains in the fight for the rights of all queer and trans individuals. We can only achieve this work together as a community.

ULethbridge cannot negate the deep responsibility it holds to challenge and change attitudes and shift the culture of exclusion. We educate, we broaden perspectives, and we inspire generations of students to speak out against social injustice towards marginalized groups — their actions and their message growing organically throughout society as the changemakers of tomorrow.

What can we do as a collective and what can you do personally to make our campus inclusive and better for all? It starts by creating spaces for accountable conversations — even conversations across differences — to discuss and address the systemic inequities that impact the lives of the ULethbridge 2SLGBTQ+ campus community.

It continues in our everyday actions, or with physical signs and symbols showing 2SLGBTQ+ communities that they are in a safe place. It is using pride flags, buttons or posters and utilizing language and behaviours that affirm a person’s identity and autonomy. It is learning and using a person’s preferred name and recognizing some individuals utilize different pronouns and respecting that choice. It is calling out behaviours and becoming an active ally.

Doing the work by taking time to listen, educating ourselves and those around us, and speaking out against the discrimination and exclusion of queer and trans folks engages everyone in meaningful and active allyship.

Our work towards creating a truly safe campus space for everyone is ongoing and with each day, each student, each graduating class, each staff and faculty member, we are helping to create the culture shift we all seek. This is why this year we are pleased to celebrate our first recipient of the VandenHoek Schlachter Pride Award, which provides support for 2SLGBTQ+ students and those who advance equity and inclusion. This award was made possible through a generous donation from two ULethbridge alumni — Kurt Schlachter (BSc ’00) and Jason VandenHoek (BMgt ’05) — establishing a first-of-its-kind endowment fund in 2023. This fund will allow us, yet again, to continue to remove barriers for all students.

As we recognize Pride Month, and celebrate the strides that have been made, it is important to remember how much farther we must go to achieve a society that is truly just and accepting of all. Together, stronger in empathy and understanding, we work towards a better today and tomorrow.

Martha Mathurin-Moe
Vice-Provost, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Dr. Digvir Jayas
President & Vice-Chancellor