Creating a Queer Haven

grassroots. gay ASF. For Us, By Us.

SHADES is Boston University’s first-and-only organization for queer students of color.

As the founder and org Mother (CO’23), I strove to create community for people like me: BIPOC, unapologetically queer and fed up with my PWI!

I also strove to make multi-media marketing that felt familiar, effective, and frankly, cool as hell.

As an off-campus collective that was refused institutional support, we didn’t have any of the access, resources and finances as other university groups.

So we got scrappy.

We flyered the campus in the middle of the night. We tabled outside of university events. We called in community and called out our college’s exclusionary practices online.

We met folks where they were, intimately and in-person. We strove to be irresistible in the eyes of our people.

And from this, we created more than community, but a collective to call home.