Old Main rainbow lit in solidarity with LGBTQ students at BYU

Students and faculty at Utah State University braved 30 mph wind Tuesday evening to light Old Main in rainbow colors in solidarity with LGBTQ students at Brigham Young University. 

A crowd of over 150 participants gathered at Old Main for this event coordinated by the Queer Student Alliance. Each person in attendance was given a piece of colored paper to tape over the flashlights on their phones and shine toward Old Main. 

As Old Main was lit with rainbow lights, the crowd chanted, “We stand with you!” 

USU’s Queer Student Alliance invites students to light Old Main rainbow colors in support of BYU’s LGBTQ+ students.

Macy Keith, the gender and sexuality program coordinator for the USU Inclusion Center, said that she only expected maybe 25 people to show up. 

“I am super excited to see this many people,” Keith said. “Honestly, the minute I saw everybody walking over it brought tears to my eyes.” 

Keith said QSA wanted to make a public statement of support for LGBTQ students on USU’s campus and show that they are aware of the other students across the state. 

“Just kind of showing support, saying we see you, we love you for who you are, I think that makes a really big impact on students,” Keith said. “Even if they’re not here on this campus, just knowing people across the state see that, I can have a space there, is really awesome.”

Emilee Harmon, the campus diversity vice president at USU, said that it was great to see the Aggies come together to support the LGBTQ community. 

USU students at the rainbow lighting of Old Main.

“This event was specifically aimed at showing support to the students at BYU after the events that happened last month,” Harmon said. “It’s just kind of our way of saying we see you, we hear you, we support you all the way up north.” 

This event was also targeted toward LGBTQ students and staff at Brigham Young University. BYU’s Honor Code does not allow gay dating and is unaccepting of transgender individuals. 

BYU senior Bradley Talbot started the kindness campaign Color the Campus in 2019, created with the mission to “support, protect, befriend and love members of the LGBTQ+ community” at all Church Education System schools. 

“One of the main reasons why I started Color the Campus was because I felt like there were plenty of people that were homophobic and queerphobic and discriminatory that were surprisingly very comfortable expressing their views at these schools, and they had no problem saying things that were really harmful,” Talbot said. “I was really frustrated with that. I was like, we need to create a space for people to feel comfortable showing support, you know, and kind of overwhelm them because they tend to be the loud ones, even though I think we’ve been able to see that they are the minority.” 

Color the Campus has Rainbow Days every semester, where students at BYU will wear rainbow in solidarity with LGBTQ students. On the Rainbow Day on March 4, Talbot and a group of anonymous students from BYU lit the Y with pride colors. 

BYU was quick to tweet that they did not authorize the lighting of the Y, but Talbot wants to make it known that BYU knew Rainbow Day was coming and actually supported the event “quite a bit.” 

“There are a lot of people at BYU that did support it, and they’re not being talked about,” Talbot said. “They’re kind of just like, being minimized and not getting the attention that I think they deserve.”

USU posted a photo of Old Main lit with the rainbow Tuesday evening with the caption, “The empathy and thoughtfulness of Aggies never ceases to amaze us.” 

darcy.ritchie@usu.edu

@darcyrrose