Poke Pride Center for Pride Month 2023

Show your Poke Pride and help students in the diverse UW community by supporting the Poke Pride Center! 

Happy Pride Month 2023! Pride is more than rainbows—it’s about supporting and making a difference for LGBTQ+ members in our community.  

Pride Month is an annual month-long celebration in June of the many contributions made by the LGBTQ+ community to history, society, and cultures worldwide. Pride Month began with the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and continues to this day. Wyoming holds a unique Pride history—the first Pride Rendezvous was held in the Snowy Range near Laramie in 1987. Wyoming LGBTQ+ folks circled their trucks near a campsite and flashed their lights to let each other know that they were not alone. Today, Pride Month is celebrated all across the state. 

The Poke Pride Center (formerly the Rainbow Resource Center) in the Wyoming Union is a historical LGBTQ+ space established in 2000. The center is a critical resource for two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex, asexual, pan, and queer UW community members, and the services offered are vital to student success, safety, and belonging.  

The center and its community are supported by two funds: the Poke Pride Center Scholarship and Poke Pride Center Discretionary Fund, the latter of which is nearing the amount necessary to become an endowed fund. This year, we would like to close that gap so that the fund can become an endowment and support the center and community in perpetuity. 

Here are some of the programs and projects that the center supports: 

• Resources include informational LGBTQ+ brochures, stickers, pronoun buttons, pride identity flags, queer and trans-focused books, and more  
• Meeting space for LGBTQ+ student organizations 
• A computer lab, printing, and study area 
• LGBTQ+ Student Circle, which provided an affirming space, support for well-being, a sense of belonging, and development for LGBTQ+ students in our rural college setting, and each week, students meet for a meal and community-building  
• Throughout the year, there are special awareness days dedicated to identities within the LGBTQ+ community, which the center celebrates by providing both baked goods decorated in the identity pride colors and informational resources  
• Safe Zone Training Program 
• Little Free Queer Library 

Koraline Wolfgang is the queer program advisor in Multicultural Affairs and oversees the Poke Pride Center and queer programming at UW. They can be reached at twolfgan@uwyo.edu. 

Thank you for your past support, and please consider joining or continuing to support our community!