LGBTQ+ Community Members Attend Big Queer Photo Event at McKeldin Mall

Written by: Jose Gonzalez

Attendees posing for a photo of the third annual Big Queer Photo Event on Friday, May 1st. (Jose Gonzalez)

Over 400 community members and 30 volunteers attended the LGBTQ+ Equity Center’s third annual Big Queer Photo event at McKeldin Mall on Friday. 

The event’s purpose had two goals: gather data from the LGBTQ+ community at the University of Maryland and have an annual end of the year celebration. 

“This is a space where LGBTQ+ people belong,” LGBTQ+ Equity Center program manager Adam Krager said. “It is just really a kind of a community get together and then also getting the survey.” 

According to Krager, who received their master’s degree in student affairs from the University of Maryland, the survey asked community members how they feel about LGBTQ+ representation on campus and what they would like to see from the Equity Center.

The event began with a check-in at 11 a.m., where community members could participate in the survey, sign a banner which appears in the photo, and grab free T-shirts and pins. 

Whitman-Walker Health and the University Health Center also offered free HIV testing at a van parked near McKeldin Library. 

The T-shirt colors were blue, white and pink to show support for transgender community members. 

“It's been a hard past year or two for trans people with all of the attacks from the federal government,” Krager said. “That was the choice behind the T-shirt colors for this year.”

Since starting his second term, President Donald Trump has signed multiple executive orders restricting rights for transgender citizens. This includes a ban of transgender women from competing in sports and a ban of transgender people from serving in the military. 

Trump also signed Executive Order 14168, which prohibits gender identification and defines sex as assigned at birth; and Executive Order 14187, which restricts access to gender-affirming care to anyone under 19 and categorizes it as “chemical and surgical mutilation.” 

At noon, community members gathered in front of McKeldin Library to take the photo, where Krager and other members of the equity center gave speeches. Afterward, a picnic was held with catering from the UMD Dining Services. 

“So it was barbecue, and then there were veggie burgers,” Krager said, “There were vegan cupcakes, then the gluten free dessert was fruit salad, and they were gluten free buns for the burgers as well.” 

The event had a larger turnout than the previous year, where 313 members registered for the photo. Krager said the event was “pretty good.”

“Hopefully we can just keep bringing out more people every year. My hope is, with the more years we have this event, then the more we’ll be able to kind of analyze trends in the survey data as well,” Krager said. “Right now we have two years of data, pretty soon we’ll have three, and then we'll be able to get a longitudinal approach to the data.” 

The next Big Queer photo will take place around the end of the spring semester in 2027.