Strands of Pride flags, buckets of beads, rolls of yarn and other crafting materials acted as invitations to find a community at the Colorado State University Pride Resource Center’s crafting event.
Hosted Jan. 28, the center held “We Craft it” Wednesday, an event part of a tradition called Rainbow Ram Welcome. Since its start in 2020, Rainbow Ram Welcome takes place at the start of every fall and spring semester and serves as an avenue to promote the center’s services and mentoring programs.
“We know it can be intimidating sometimes to, like, come in the center because you don’t know who’s in there or if you’ll meet people or (if) people will make assumptions about how you identify,” said Maggie Hendrickson, director of the Pride Resource Center.
“We Craft It” Wednesday aims to combat that intimidation by creating a low-stakes environment for people to visit the center. Though the event is a part of Rainbow Ram Welcome, “We Craft It” Wednesday will be a regular installment on the last Wednesday of every month this semester.
“We’re hoping to make this a regular event … and just bring people together in creative ways.” – Katie Brown, CSU Pride Resource Center staff member
Sitting at a circular table in a corner of the center, new faces like Hayden Macias, a junior at CSU, painted a wooden coaster. The first-time attendee, who described the Pride Center’s event as “colorful,” heard about the afternoon dedicated to community building from a promotional Instagram post.
Zoe Ermias, a first-year student majoring in business administration, learned about the event via the center’s newsletter, which she is subscribed to. Ermias previously attended Pancakes with Pride, a community breakfast event the center holds to welcome students during the fall semester.
Ermias, Macias and two other students shared conversations while working on their respective wooden coasters that featured designs like waves, cacti, palm trees and more.
“I want to become more in touch with my community,” Macias said. “That’s why I came here today.”
New attendees like Macias contributed to the center’s environment, which was described as livelier than usual by Alasdair Detschman, a junior majoring in animal science.
“I always like when they have these events because then you see so many new students and a lot of them keep coming back afterwards, which is lovely to see and (helps) build the community,” Detschman said.
With a yellow-orange thread, Detschman used a Japanese technique called Sashiko mending to stitch a design on his hoodie.
Detschman is also a member of the center’s Pride Leadership Collective. The PLC is a group of students who act as representatives of the center, as well as work on events and projects inspired by the community’s needs and their personal passions.
Alongside providing free craft materials to attendees, staff members of the center offered free pizza halfway through the event.
Other staff members like Katie Brown sparked conversation with attendees like Emily, a first-year student who did not provide a last name. The two worked together on friendship bracelets. Emily made her bracelet the colors of the lesbian flag.
Brown, who is in her first year working at the center, emphasized the center’s goal of building a stronger community.
“We’re hoping to make this a regular event … and just bring people together in creative ways,” Brown said. “We’ve done things like queer connections in the past, which is also craft- and art-based, but this one is more free, like a free-for-all, which I think is fun.”
Reach Chloe Rios at life@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.
