By Phoebe Roe

Tonight at 7:30 in Rosse Hall, seven Kenyon alums with graduation years spanning five decades will return to their alma mater to participate in “Queer Life After Kenyon,” a discussion panel sponsored by Unity House.

Members of Unity House came up with the idea for the panel last spring and decided to meet with Scott Baker, Kenyon’s alumni coordinator, to begin recruiting alumni.

“It took us a little while to get it on a calendar, but we’re thrilled it’s finally happening,” Baker said.

The alumni who will be on the panel all identify as members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) community. They will be discussing their experiences at Kenyon and advising students about life after Kenyon.

“I’m hoping that current Kenyon students who are queer can see what there is after Kenyon in terms of jobs, and what experiences Kenyon alum have taken from the Hill and then used in their professional and adult lives,” said Annette Covrigaru ’14, co-leader of Unity House.

The panel is open to all of campus, and Unity House hopes that a diverse group of students and professors will attend the event.
“I’d like to think that people who don’t identify within the LGBTQ community will come because they’re going to be interacting and working with queer people wherever they go, and understanding how those people experience situations will help them in the future,” said Aaron Dripps ’14, co-leader of Unity House.

While planning for the panel, Baker worked with members of the Career Development Office, and he feels that panels like this one are necessary to prepare Kenyon students for their futures. “In some ways, life after Kenyon is ‘the great unknown,’ so it’s great when alums can come back and say, you know, ‘I wish somebody had told me this,’” Baker said.

Along with the panel, this Saturday in the Gund Gallery Community Foundation Theater, alumna Becca Roth ’10 will be screening her documentary, One: A Story of Love and Equality, which follows the voting process of Amendment One, a law in North Carolina that would restrict legally recognized unions to only marriage between a man and a woman.

Following the screening of the documentary, there will be a question and answer session with Roth in Gund Gallery.