Gender, Love, and Sexuality Alliance (GLASA) Collection

The Gender, Love, and Sexuality Alliance (GLASA) has operated on-campus since at least the mid-1980s (exact start date uncertain). It is unclear if GLASA is related to/ an evolution of the Gay Student Association, which served a similar role of community building in the 1970s.

Over the years, the organization has worked in a myriad of capacities under the broad umbrella of improving campus life for queer students. The earliest journal in the collection begins in February 1987, and is the first such journal used by the club (then calling itself GLU, the Gay and Lesbian Union.) At the time, a wave of activist energy was about to break forth in relation to queer New Yorkers and the AIDS crisis. Less than a month after the club's first entry, the direct-action group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) formed at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in Manhattan. ACT UP, alongside other organizing and service groups during the period, would have tremendous impact on queer communities in New York by presenting a powerful coalition of activists fighting to secure improved care and access to medications for people with AIDS (PWAs). As many PWAs were gay men, bisexual and transgender people, and lesbians, the enthusiasm generated by the AIDS justice movement was a catalyst for a younger generation of queer organizers, including several GLASA members. 1987, thus, was a year of enormous consequence for GLASA and the queer community at large.

During the early years that the journals cover, the club adopted several functions on campus. The club maintained a room in the student union where members could regularly meet and develop relationships with other queer and allied students. Additionally, the group planned actions on-campus akin to those of ACT UP, Queer Nation, Women's Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM!), and other contemporary organizations that ranged from tabling to disruptions to challenge homophobia on-campus.

The club room was vandalized on several occasions by antigay actors, and posters for GLASA events were frequently torn down during this period. By the mid-1990s, club members were also regularly traveling together for organizing meetings and actions such as the 1993 March on Washington, as well as less formal group trips to Fire Island and other locales outside the city. SEEK professor and Lesbian Herstory Archives co-founder Joan Nestle regularly spoke with and informally advised the group. At some point during this time, the group's name was altered to the Lesbian and Gay Union (LGU) before reverting back to GLU.

The club was well embedded in local Queens queer life. A contingent marched every year in the Queens Pride Parade, and club meetings were posted in the Long Island Gay Community Center's monthly calendar. It is unclear if non-students ever attended meetings as a result of this public promotion.

By 2002, the club changed its name to GLASA (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Alliance). The group became less involved in direct action or overtly political events, while still advocating for greater safety and acceptance on-campus. Adam Rockman, then the Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs, served as the group's advisor. He was succeeded in this capacity by JC Carlson, then-Manager of Events Services.

Sometime before the 2013 school year, the group changed its name once more to PRISM: The Sexuality and Gender Alliance. In 2017, the group changed its name back to GLASA, now standing for the Gender, Love, and Sexuality Alliance.

In an interview with the Knight News, 2017 GLASA President Jordan Mendoza said of their activities: "It’s a club where people will grow and the more people learn about the issues that arise in the LGBT+ community, the better their understanding will be on how to solve these problems."

As of November 2022, GLASA is temporarily unchartered on campus, with plans to resume the club in the future.

For more information on GLASA, see club Instagram, Facebook, and 2017 article in the Knight News linked above.