Harvard Students Hold ‘Funeral’ For Closing LGBTQ Office: ‘Rainbow Flag At Half-Mast’

Student groups at Harvard University on Friday hosted a funeral for the campus LGBT center marking its closure amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and gender ideology initiatives.

Harvard announced it would close its Office of BGLTQ Student Life as well as two other DEI offices in July but did not cite a clear reason, saying only that it will continue to “embody our commitment to supporting our entire student body.” About 75 students from the Harvard Undergraduate Queer Advocates (HUQAD) and the Queer Students Association mourned the loss of the office by dressing in black and writing notes on rainbow-colored origami and placing them in a coffin, according to The Harvard Crimson.

“The death of the QuOffice is so much more than the loss of a physical space to be in community together,” Amber Simons, co-director of HUQAD, said in a speech at the event, the Crimson reported. “It represents the silencing and erasure of queer voices.”

“I met some of my dearest friends through the QuOffice, and I was so fortunate to have found a place that encouraged me to embrace my queer identity loudly,” Hannah Niederriter, treasurer of HUQAD, said in a speech, according to the Crimson.

Caroline Light, Harvard lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the Women, Gender and Sexuality department, delivered a final eulogy. She was dressed in all black and wore a “Southern widow hat,” according to the Crimson.

“Our QuOffice, as we’ve heard, was far from perfect, but it was beloved by many,” Light said, according to the Crimson. “It stood for something powerful: the radical idea that LGBTQ+ students deserve not just to survive at Harvard, but to find community — to find care and joy.”

“Now, as we lower the rainbow flag at half-mast, we breathe a gaping hole in our campus community,” Light continued. “While the QuOffice may be gone, queer students remain as loud, fabulous, and stubbornly visible as ever. May the memory of the QuOffice be a blessing and an inspiration to us, and may its ghost continue to haunt those who would mistake cowardice for neutrality.”