Letter from the Associate Director

February 21, 2013  |  By Will Sherry

As we bundle up and live into our Michigan winter, we are excited to share with you some projects that are keeping us busy here in the Spectrum Center! We recently discovered that there was a technical problem with our newsletter sign-up button on our website - it was not signing people up! The problem has now been fixed, and those who signed up using our website between September 2012 and January 2013 have now been added to our mailing list. Welcome to your first newsletter! At the beginning of the semester, we also encountered some problems with the domain name where our blog Queer @Umich is hosted. Our site was never down, but had to be accessed through a different portal. This problem has now been solved - thanks to our wonderful website management staff! You may once again access our blog by going to queerumich.com

As we mentioned in our January newsletter, we are proud recipients of a new Cyber Center from the David Bohnett Foundation and we are currently working to get our space ready for its arrival. We thank everyone who has been patient in this process and promise that the end result will be worth the temporary challenges. We are looking forward to celebrating the rest of the semester as we work alongside many student organizations in the planning of our Spring Pride celebration and work towards our 18th annual Lavender Graduation. Along with these exciting programs, we highly encourage everyone engage in the  Color of Change Community Summit--April 12-14--organized by the Coalition for Queer People of Color and many co-sponsoring organizations. This Summit is being held to build community and cultivate power around the lived experiences of queer and trans* people of color in the state of Michigan. This is an incredibly important effort that we are excited to be a part of here in the Spectrum Center. We hope to see you throughout the rest of the semester as we celebrate and learn from one another!

-Will