University College of Ripon And York St John

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Awol Magazine | Pride 1997 | Gods Gift | Drag Night | York Uni LGB

AWOL MAGAZINE

Awol's semesterly Magazine is proving very successful with, so far, all but 13 copies presold. The magazines are entertaining and informative with a universal appeal to gA and Str8 people alike.

The new issue four semester two copy, which is released after the Easter break on the 12th May, is a special Pride style issue. It contains what is happening to the Pride festival this year and a mixture of politics, interviews, music, movies and feature articles. There are also lots of news articles concerning what's happening in the University itself.

Str8 Up is a magazine designed by the members of Awol and is purely funded with money raised on society nights. The magazine is priced at £2.50 and the profits made from it goes to a charity.  

Unfortunately copies of the magazine are not available to buy outside the University College of Ripon and York St John :- Ripon Campus.

However in the future the magazine may be published as web pages but until then check out the web links.

 Pride 1997

Pride 97, once again, proved to be a success for attendance. Unfortunately the organizers are left in a some what sticky situation with debts of thousands of pounds. The demo 'parade' started approximately 40 minutes late but once it got going then there was no stopping us. The weather was hot and there was 300,000 people all celebrating the biggest gay outing.

Not all of the Awol members attended this year. This was mainly due to Pride falling during the summer holidays.

Down near the front of the 'parade' was the NUS LGB group all with their banners which one of then was made by a member of the Awol society. We all had intentions of marching with them but unfortunately by the time we had found them, in the mass of people, we had near on ended the one and a half hour march.

At Clappham common there was a huge festival with stalls, food, drinks, fair ground rides and a concert with many famous stars including, Texas, Heaven 17, Kavana, Peter Andre, Danni Minogue Pet Shop Boys, Gina G, Kym Mazelle and many more.

It was certainly a day to remember. Channel 4 even graced Pride with their presence, filming a documentary for Channel 4's Queer Street, a weekend of programmes aimed at gays and lesbians. The documentary was presented by Graham Norton, the fabulous camp, gay celebrity who writes for the Attitude magazine and is the host of Channel 5's television show 'Bring me the head of light entertainment'

Once again Stonewall, the group fighting for equality, were their in force recruiting people and gathering signatures for the fight for Equality 2000, lowing the age of consent for homosexuals to 16.

Probably the most emotional part of the day was towards the end of the festival when 100's of red balloons were released, each one representing a gay person who has AIDS. There was a short silence for us to think about all those who have died of this terrible disease.

All in all Awol had a great day out helping fight for gay right, the only draw back of the day was the traveling from London to Clappham.

Hopefully soon we will have a page with pictures of the stars from Pride so you can download them tasty pictures of your favourite people.

Drag Night

Drag night was the night on campus this year with a massive turn out and large takings on the door. This night was a part of the LGB Awareness week which we held from Wednesday 11th February to Wednesday 18th February.

The Drag Queen, Leeds very own Vicky Graham, was obtained through a friend of Keyth Rickards (Vice LGB, Entertainment's and Public Relation Officer '97 - '98), Gay Times Scene guide and photographer Stuart Linden Rhodes. One of Stuart's most famous articles being on the lovely Roy Fairhurst (Mr Gay UK '97) when he was suffering from Testicular Cancer.

Vicky was amazing, with acts that included singing, stripping and flame throwing!!! He was very popular with the audience and was certainly worth the money.

Nik and John who own local merchandise stalls 'Itz 4 U' were kind enough to hold their stalls, free of charge, selling items such as Videos, magazines, badges, postcards, condoms and lubricants, Aromors etc.

Special cocktails were introduced with a section of the club having dining tables that each came with a waiter / waitress, each table coming with a free bucket of popcorn.

 For £1.50 with NUS people were entertained by Lady Victoria Rose, the compare for the evening, Drag Spice Girls, Vicky Graham and Ripons very own very exclusive Drag ABBA performing Dancing Queen, Does Your Mother Know and Waterloo.

   Seen to the right of the page is Lady Victoria Rose, an American exchange student (Although Lady Vic isn't his real name.) Mike Freeman performed extremely well as Lady Vic singing 'Never Been To Me' and hosting the evening. The picture below is from as small part of the drag competition where a panel of judges had to select the best female or male impersonator by dancing to the Weather Girls 'It's Raining Men' and to Steps '5, 6, 7, 8'

The evening lasted right through until 1:30 finishing off with a Dance Zone disco playing Dance, Chart and Handbag music.

Awol members that presented their membership cards on the door were given free entry to the night .

Not alot more can be said about the night except that by the end of the night everyone was so wasted people couldn't tell who was male or female, and that was those who weren't cross dressing.

This was the second society night out of the three major ones by Awol. An amount of the society night profits are donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust Fund.

  One more picture from the evening is below . . . Drag ABBA.