Pride Month provides opportunities for voices to be heard

By Mark Muckenfuss

June is Pride Month, and Chelle Tran says it is not only an opportunity to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community, but also to engage in dialogue, heighten visibility and address challenges facing that community. 

Tran is a faculty member and psychologist at Cal State Monterey Bay’s Personal Growth and Counseling Center and has been the faculty coordinator for the campus’ Rainbow Raft Pride Center for the past year.

“When I think about Pride Month, there is that idea that now more than ever we need to not just stand together but show that we are standing together,” Tran said. “People need to know that others are standing by them not just when it's safe.”

She said that is particularly true of transgender people, who she described as being “in the crosshairs” of current political discourse. 

Providing such support is part of what the Rainbow Raft Pride Center offers. Tran said the center has been more popular than she anticipated, with attendance at its sponsored events nearly doubling from fall to spring semester in the last academic year.

The center, she said, is “essential” for CSUMB students and an affirmation by the university that not only is the community present, but it warrants a place of its own.

“It's another space to celebrate a unique history,” Tran said, “a space that can highlight experiences that add to those the university provides. It's a space for people to exhale and exist between classes. It's a space that promotes community and connection within and across different identities.” 

The center opened in April of 2024 and was a passion project for now-retired business professor David Reichard and Steven “Quazar” Goings of the PGCC. Tran and Tyler St Pierre-Young, an accommodations coordinator for the Student Disability and Accessibility Center, were also involved with getting the center off the ground. When Reichard retired, Tran said she stepped into the coordinator role. 

“This has always been a specialty area for me, as a clinician, and I am a part of the community,” she said. 

She helped establish a similar space when she was an undergrad at Santa Clara University. Before that affinity center was opened, she said, the school’s LGBTQ+ community had to meet in an out-of-the-way classroom, where it felt as if its members were hiding. 

“It does hurt to feel like you’re pushed into a closet in the dark,” Tran said. “Being able to have a center and be seen, I think it's healing past parts of me.”

She hopes it is healing for others as well and that they will take advantage of Pride Month to engage others in that process.   

“I always find it interesting when folks think that celebrating any community detracts from any other celebration that's happening,” Tran said. Events such as Pride Month “bring intentionality to conversations, greater visibility and advocacy that should be happening all year round. There’s more opportunity to talk about things.”

Her hope is that the larger community will also take part.

“Part of allyship is amplifying voices for those who are marginalized,” she said. “There are a lot of folks that have been doing this for a long time, but at some point, our allies need to stand up and amplify those voices as well.”

Locally, the awareness month culminates in the annual Monterey Peninsula Pride parade at 11 a.m. June 28, in Monterey. Details of the event can be found on the Monterey Peninsula Pride webpage. A sign-up form is available for those who wish to participate with the CSUMB contingent.