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On Wednesday, February 14, 2007, Interim President Eddie J. Davis approved the recognition of Brazos Valley QueSt as an official Texas A&M University faculty/staff network.

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See the GAYla advertised on facebook.com

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Hey all you guys & dolls, mobsters & molls!
It’s time for the
2007 Spring GAYla:
…a BV QueSt event

Mobsters & Molls
will be the bee’s knees!
We’ll be puttin’ on the ritz
March 3rd
7pm
Halo Bar

Tickets! Tickets! Get your GAYla tickets!
Tickets are on sale at Rudder fountain this week from 11am-1pm.

Advance tickets to this dazzling good time are
$20; $10 for students 18+
(+$5 at the door)

2007 Spring GAYla
Mobsters & Molls: the original gangsters’ GAYla
March 3rd
7pm
Halo Bar

For more information, visit
http://www.BVQueSt.com
or call 979.314.4532.

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Spring GAYla

…a BV QueSt event

March 3, 2007
7:00-10:30pm
Halo Bar
121 N. Main Street, dowtown Bryan

hors d’oeuvres | drink specials | entertainers & a show
door prizes | silent auction

benefiting Aggie ALLIES and the OUTreach grant

• Halo opens to the public at 9:30 (upstairs at 10:30). All ticket sales and donations collected at the door before 9:30 will be donated to this event/cause.
• As always, this BV QueSt fundraiser is a smoke-free event.
• Can’t make it this time? Save the date for our Fall Homcoming: October 13, 2007.
  To be held annually on the Saturday after National Coming Out Day.
• Can’t make it but still want to support the cause? Online donations (via PayPal) are accepted on our site

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Hey all you guys & dolls!
It’s time for the 2007 Spring GAYla.
This “Mobsters & Molls” event will be the bee’s knees!
We’ll be puttin’ on the Ritz on March 3 rd at 7pm
So, wiggle on down to the juice joint known as Halo Bar
(it’s at one twenty-one north main street in historic downtown Bryan,
but shhhhh; on’t tell the coppers!)
Advance tickets to this dazzling good time are just $20 - or $10 for
students 18 and older.
All ticket prices will be $5 more on the day of the event, so be sure
to get your’s early.
Mobsters, leave those choppers at home;
Instead, bring an appetite for some tasty hors d’ oeuvres.
Come prepared to wet your whistle.
This speakeasy only serves the good stuff.
You won’t find any coffin varnish at the GAYla.
Some special blends of giggle water will be available at a cash bar.
Fellas, we know you’ll want to wear a tight get-up.
Molls, flappers we can’t wait to see you all dolled up, too.
You floorflushers will love the old ragtime music and drag show.
Our silent auction will feature donations from several generous local
businesses including:
Design & Sign, Square One, Brian Blake photography, Parker Astin
Hardware & Housewares, MSC OPAS, Old Bryan Market Place, The Frame
Gallery, The Sacandaga (sack-an-daw’-ga) Herbalist, and Doc Green’s
Give some clams for a good cause.
Sponsorships start at just $50!
Join these businesses in supporting the community:
Halo Bar, Sibility, Caffe Capri, As You Wish, Eccentricities, Housepaintings
Studio, Revolution Cafe & Bar, Stearns Construction, McAlister’s Deli, and the George
Bush Presidential Library & Museum
Mobsters & Molls is hosted by Brazos Valley QueSt. Our mission is to
celebrate and advocate for the queer community of the Brazos Valley
by providing social functions designed to raise funds for local
supportive organizations.
We are on a QueSt to Unite our Queer/Straight Community.
The Spring GAYla benefits
• Aggie ALLIES–a safe-zone program at Texas A&M University that is
almost 600 members strong;
• and the local OUTreach grant–which provides funds for local queer
and queer-supportive programming.
Mobsters & Molls: the original gangsters’ GAYla; it’s the berries!
For more information, visit the Brazos Valley QueSt website at
www dot BV QueSt dot com or call Lori at 979 314 4532.
Once again, that’s BV QueSt dot com or 979 314 4532.
On Touchstone Radio for Brazos Valley QueSt, this is Lori Luza.

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We occasionally get asked why we use the word queer in our organization name and tagline. Some of our supporters are afraid that others may find it offensive. Frankly, some do.

We struggled–for a while–with a name for our group that is descriptive of us and our mission, that was inclusive, and that didn’t repeat or mimic a name already in use by other groups.

Programming to the queer and queer-supportive community includes a lot of “alphabet soup”. To be complete and accurate, we’d need to include all of these words to describe the whole community:

• Gay
• Lesbian
• Bisexual
• Transgender
• Queer
• Questioning
• Intersex
• Asexual
• Pansexual

GLBTQQIAP (or, GLBTQQIAPA if you tack ally onto the end.) Whew! This makes our name, website, and marketing quite difficult to explain. And what’s worse, is that every few years, another letter is added as another sub-culture is defined. And with those additions, our name would change frequently, thereby killing annual marketing efforts for events like the GAYla–never mind causing us to have to change our website name on a regular basis.

Additionally, in this community, we have a large population who are only at the first/initial stage of understanding queer culture. They might be able to get their brain around gay and lesbian. At this early stage of learning, bisexual can be a confusing term. And then they are lost on the rest of the words. (Remember, not all of our supporters have been through Aggie ALLIES training.) It’s just too much all at once…and certainly can’t be explained in a 30-second Public Service Announcement advertising our fundraiser.

Mainstream and pop culture gave us the answer. We noticed several flavors of “Queer Eye…” makeover shows, “Queer As Folk”, and other programming that used the word queer. In high schools and on college campuses across the country, most student organizations are named “Queer Straight Alliance” or something very similar. We also found dominant use of the word on the Internet.

Of course, we realized that our area can be a little behind the times of mainstream culture, so we asked around. We took an informal survey of ~15 people we knew to be active in the community. The vast majority preferred the word queer (as opposed to GLBT…). Those who didn’t care for the word queer also didn’t have other suggestions beyond GLBT…

The most all-encompassing word is queer. While used as a derogatory term in the 70s and 80s, the GLBTQQIAPA community has “taken back” this word in the same way that many women have taken vagina.

So, while we wait for the English language to catch up to our social cultures, we are

Brazos Valley QueSt
On a QueSt to Unite Our Queer/Straight Community

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SCHOLARSHIP MONEY AVAILABLE—SHORT DEADLINE

The Brazos Valley QueSt organization has raised enough money to offer $1000 in scholarships funds. The mission and purpose of Brazos Valley QueSt is to celebrate the queer and queer-supportive community of the Brazos Valley by providing events designed to raise funds for local queer and queer-supportive organizations. Our motto is: On a QueSt to Unite Our Queer/Straight Community. Over the past several years Brazos Valley QueSt has held a wide range of fund raisers benefiting Aggie Allies, GLBT Aggies, the Brazos GLBT Oral History Project, the GLBT Professional Network at Texas A&M University and AIDS Services of the Brazos Valley. The scholarship is a new portion of our philanthropy.

BV QueSt $1000 scholarship application is open to any Brazos Valley resident who will be attending an accredited college or university for the 2007-2008 academic year and who identifies as GLBT or an ally. BV QueSt will annually award a minimum of $1000 in scholarship funds. The number of scholarships and amounts will be determined by the selection committee. Selection of the recipient will be determined by quality of application, past, current and potential future participation in the local queer and queer-supportive community.

The application can be found at http://www.BVQueSt.com/scholarship.
The deadline for scholarship submissions is February 5, 2007.

All applications must be submitted via email to:

Scholarship Coordinator,
Kate Kiernat,
scholarship@BVQueSt.com

The winner will be announced at the 2007 Spring GAYla held on March 3, 2007 at Halo in downtown Bryan, TX.

If you have questions about the Brazos Valley QueSt Scholarship, please do not hesitate to contact me at scholarship@BVQueSt.com or 979.314.4532.

Scholarship Application as a Word .doc file

Scholarship Application as an Adobe .pdf file

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