Pride March held at Laurentian University

Laurentian University held its first ever Pride March across the Sudbury campus on Monday.

The post-secondary school has been holding Pride Week for a number of years, but some fourth year social work students, including Ken Lander, wanted to organize a march.

He says they want to help support the LGBT community and bring awareness to issues it faces, like visibility on campus and helping students feel comfortable coming out.

"There's been a lot of progress and there is a report being done and drafted right now that shows that we have made progress, but a lot of our students still have a lot of challenges," he said.

"As long as there is fear of coming out inside of an educational setting then we have a lot of work to do."

More supports needed

Lander says he wants to see the university offer more supports to LGBT students.

"We need the sufficient support to maybe support the students that might be in crisis, due to stigma, there might be harassment, there might be discrimination," he said.

"We have a long way to go in order to make the students feel comfortable."

Neill Martin is the chair of Laurentian Pride, a group that supports LGBT students. He says they want a full time staff member assigned to their safe space to provide support.

"We're just a group of students," he said.

"We don't have the authoritative power to or the punitive power of the school for these things. That's kind of the tone that's been happening here."

A school representative says they've conducted training workshops for staff, faculty and even students, and adds Laurentian is working to hire a social worker for the safe space.