October First Friday

September is a bit of a crazy time for all of us, so (as is evident by the lack of gathering yesterday!) the Steering Committee decided not to skip directly to October. We will meet on October 7 at 6pm, at The Wolf and Hound. We’ll also organize to have a group leave campus together, to help grad students who have just arrived at UBC (but not just them!) find the Wolf and Hound and join us.

We held a booth on Thursday at the grad student fair during the GSS orientation, and it went fantastically – I hope we will see many people check out this website as a result! If this is your first time here, don’t forget that you can follow us on facebook and/or join our mailing list (see column on the right). 🙂

Finally, the start of the year seems like a good time to do a shout-out to Pride UBC, the UBC Resource Groups for LGBTQ students and their allies. They have lots of good events coming up already, as well as regular weekly discussion groups and other things that can be of interest to grad students.

August 1st Friday

August First Friday Social

Friday, August 5, 2011
6:00-8:00
The Electric Owl
928 Main St. at Prior St.

RSVP: queergrads.ubc@gmail.com, or just show up!

This month’s First Friday will be held at The Electric Owl, a cool place straddling the East-West divide. Come out for some drinks, food, and socializing! If this is your first First Friday, this is an excellent opportunity to get to know some people before the new crowd comes in September. We will have a rainbow flag on the table to help you recognize us.

See you there!

BBQ at Kits Beach

July’s First Friday event: Queer BBQ on the Beach!

Friday, July 1, 2011
3:00-6:00
Kitsilano Beach

RSVP: queergrads.ubc@gmail.com (email for phone information if you need it)

You asked for it, so we’re doing it! The Network will be hosting a Queer BBQ at Kits beach in the afternoon on Canada Day. There will be a fired-up BBQ, lawn games, music, and great company. Bring your own drinks (or “drinks”) and food for the BBQ, or we will have some burgers available for purchase (veggie option available). The fun starts at 3:00, and we will head to a local pub afterwards. Feel free to bring your friends, loved ones, and pets. Please let us know if you plan on coming.

DIRECTIONS
We will be set up on the grassy area with picnic tables at the North end of the beach. The closest intersection is McNicoll Ave. and Maple St, close to the Maritime Museum. We will have a pride flag set out.
You can get there by bus (22, 2, 4, 84, 44, 7), car, or even by that cute little blue ferry from downtown (False Creek Ferries).

See you there!

June First Friday + admin meeting

Our location for the June First Friday has been up on the right for a couple of days, but let’s make this an official announcement!

– The upcoming First Friday (June 3) will take place at The Speakeasy (Davie and Bute) at 6pm. As usual, we will be there from 6 to 8, and everyone is welcome to attend! Look out for a rainbow flag and/or a bunch of grad students.

– Our next admin meeting will be on Monday, June 6 at 4pm at Calhoun’s (Broadway and Carnarvon). We will discuss survey results, summer plans, appointments for steering committee, and any other issues that people bring to the table! Again, everyone is welcome to attend, the more the merrier.

Survey!

Please fill out this survey to let us know about how you feel about activities over the summer, to share suggestions about future plans, and to tell us more about what you’d like to see The Network do.

We would love to get your input so that we can continue to grow and be better.

We’ve also just sent out emails to grad secretaries across campus, so hopefully this will get the word out for this group. Friendly reminder: if you want to receive our (very occasional!) emails and stay in touch with us, you can sign up for our mailing list by entering your email in the box on the right column. As usual, you can email us with any question.

Global Queer Research Group starting up

A queer research group (which will include a queer reading group) is being started up at the Lui Institute. I thought this may be of interest to some of you, so here are details about the first planning meeting, if you’re interested in getting involved. The pdf for this event can be downloaded here.

Global Queer Research Group
Planning Meeting
May 30th, 1-3pm
3rd Floor Board Room
The Liu Institute for Global Issues

The Global Queer Research Group (GQRG) is a new research group initiative based at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, UBC. The purpose of the GQRG is to connect scholars, activists, and community members around research and policy issues concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities, both locally and globally. The GQRG is open to all graduate and undergraduate students.

Goals for this planning meeting:

1. Settle on topics and readings for a monthly reading group focusing on critical studies of sexuality.
2. Propose and organize events for the upcoming year (i.e. film screening, art shows, lectures, workshops, panels).
3. Organize a website and online network service.

For more information please contact GQRG: global-lgbtq@interchange.ubc.ca

Admin meeting this Monday

Summer is coming up and we’re not sure what The Network is going to look like now that Winter Term is over! But we’re planning on talking about it very soon, aka next Monday, at our next admin meeting. How organized of us. 🙂

So if you’re interested in getting involved in The Network, if you have ideas that you’d like to share, or if you just want to learn more about how we work, what we do, etc., please join us! Everyone is very much welcome.

WHEN: Monday, May 16 at 4pm
WHERE: Room 315 in IK Barber Library.

(The room is a little complicated to find, make sure to arrive a little early!)

April First Friday

I’ve had the date, time and location for our next First Friday up for a while (see the column to the right!) so this is just a quick, friendly reminder that our April First Friday is coming up. We will be meeting at 6 as usual, but this time we’re heading to east Van and having drinks at Toby’s on Commercial Drive!

Upcoming Global LGBTQ event (Mar 7)

Thank you for making this month’s First Friday (and the admin meeting before that) another successful evening for The Network!

In the next few days, you will start to notice some changes on the website – our admin meeting on Friday was very productive and we’re going to be working to make some changes in the next little while. I will let you know all about it once a few key changes have been made; for now, I would like to at direct you to our new Feedback page.

First, I wanted to let you know about a queer-related event happening on Monday. Please read the message below and consider attending if you are interested.

~~~~~

This is just an email reminder for the next Global LGBTQ meeting next month. We hope to cover and expand upon the ideas brought out of the “Does it get better?” forum last January and start planning activities and research initiatives in and around the UBC campus. Here are just some of the few topics we covered last meeting and hope to talk about in our next meeting:

1) Connecting global and local contexts and responses to homophobic and transphobic violence.
2) Connecting LGBTQ scholars and those who are interested in queer and lgbtq research and issues at UBC.
3) Planning future events on homonationalism, homophobic violence, discrimination within lgbtq communities and queer acts of resistance and healing.
4) Creating a research network at the Liu Institute for queer scholars and research.

The next meeting will be:

Monday, March 7th
10:00-13:00

Liu Institute, 3rd Floor Board room

Please share this to your friends and colleagues. The more the merrier!

https://blogs.ubc.ca/queergrads/feedback/

Location / time for March’s First Friday

For the upcoming First Friday (March 4), we will be meeting at The Fountainhead on Davie. (We’re having trouble thinking of other queer-friendly places that welcome big groups on Friday evenings, so if you have any ideas, please share them with us!)

Be there at 4:30pm for an ‘admin meeting’ if you’re interested in being part of helping out with this group, deciding what to do next, where we’re going, etc.

If you’d just like to get a drink and chat, the social portion of the evening will start at 6. Show up anytime between 6 and 8 and we’ll be there. This time we will even have a rainbow flag to help everyone find the group!