NEW Read an article about celebrating 25 years of pride at Penn

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PennGALA began in 1984 as an informal organization for lesbian, gay, and bisexual alumni of the University of Pennsylvania. We became an official part of PennAlumni, the University's general alumni society, in 1999. Recognizing the full scope of our mission, our official name is the University of Pennsylvania Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Alumni Association.

PennGALA is the officially recognized representative of all of Penn's LGBT alumni and works hard to represent the interests and concerns of our members, both as alumni and as a constituency with a continuing role in University life. We are one of the founding organizations of the Penn Alumni Diversity Alliance, which also includes the Black Alumni Society, the Association of Latino Alumni, the Asian Alumni Network, the Association of Native Alumni, and the James Brister Society. We regularly plan events with our sister organizations and work together with the other Diversity Alliance members on issues that affect our communities. Together with the other Diversity Alliance organizations, we seek to continue building Penn as an ever more diverse and affirming institution.

PennGALA takes a special interest in supporting current Penn students, both undergraduate and graduate. In 2003, we inaugurated a highly successful mentoring program, in conjunction with the Penn Career Network, that provides career and related advice to tomorrow's LGBT alumni. Our holistic approach to programming also includes regular educational seminars and panel discussions, presented most often at Homecoming in November and Alumni Weekend in May. Recent subjects have included wills and estate planning for LGBT people, same-sex marriage, parenting, the current state of women's sports on U.S. college campuses, and the history of our community at Penn. Our social programming has also been hugely successful. Recent major events have included our gala 20th anniversary dinner in 2005, at which keynote speakers included Dr. Amy Gutmann, the president of the University, and Freedom to Marry Executive Director Evan Wolfson. Along with our sister groups, we also help organize the semi-annual Taste of Penn celebrations.

Our members played a proud role in establishing The Carriage House, a historic building on the West Philadelphia campus, as a permanent home for Penn's LGBT Center. Believed to be the first freestanding center of its kind on any American university campus, this outstanding facility opened in September 2002. The lead gift toward the $2.5 million renovation came from two PennGALA members, and our members continue to support the Center and its endowment. The Carriage House serves as a locus for all LGBT organizations and activities at Penn, and provides an invaluable and unprecedented resource for all members of our community, including alumni.

PennGALA communicates with its more than 1500 active members through this website, the print and electronic newsletter Up & Out (which is published several times a year and is linked from this page), and a listserv that provides occasional bulletins on events and news. We are actively trying to reach more of our membership, which is thought to number more than 10,000. We invite alumni to contact us by email or telephone. In the future, we intend to build a national network of PennGALA chapters. We also regularly coordinate events with our peer GALA organizations from other universities, including the other seven Ivy League institutions.

PennGALA is governed by a Steering Committee whose nine members serve two-year terms. To join PennGALA and learn more about our activities, please join our mailing list. If you have other questions about PennGALA, its activities and events, please visit our Contact PennGALA page.