Today's festivities are part of National Coming Out Week, which is designed to support gays and lesbians and to educate people about misconceptions and prejudices aimed at the minority groups.
At UNC, the Queer Network for Change will march through campus beginning in the Pit at noon to raise awareness about gay and lesbian issues.
Members of the University's gay and lesbian communities also have several other events planned for today, including a dinner at the Artist's Escape at 8 p.m. and a rerelease of Lambda, the campus gay and lesbian publication.
But UNC is not the only campus where gay and lesbian students are uniting for a common purpose.
University of Connecticut senior Kristin Hudkins said the school's Allies and Queers Undergraduate Association is having a chalking - writing on pavement - to put forth a positive message about queer themes. "The chalking is symbolic," Hudkins said. "When the climate is hostile, it is easy to hide."
She said she hopes the visual representation will contribute to a more tolerant environment on the UConn campus.
"There is a need for discussion and awareness," Hudkins said.
She added that last year there was a string of antigay incidents at the university, including the theft of the group's rainbow flag. "The problem with weeks like this is that it is only for the moment," Hudkins said. "We need to ask ourselves how we can keep the momentum."
Ben Davidson, director of the Stanford University Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Center, said National Coming Out Week will prompt many events on campus -including distribution of a newspaper explaining what "coming out" means, a performance by singer/songwriter Steve Schalchin focusing on his experiences of living with AIDS and a film titled "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit."
