Alumni LGBT group launched by Sir Stephen Wall and Alan Hollinghurst

This blog is written by Don Levett

UCL’s new Alumni LGBT group launched with its first event last Wednesday. The drinks reception attracted over 120 former students, whose times at UCL spanned five decades.

The group was particularly fortunate to welcome both UCL Chair of Council Sir Stephen Wall – who gave a speech on diversity that also covered his personal journey as a diplomat, a career where homosexuality was long forbidden – and Booker Prize-winning author Alan Hollinghurst, who taught at UCL back in the 1980s.

Set up to help friends get back in contact as well as make new connections, the group aims to run several socials every year. It also plans to raise a scholarship fund to help LGBT students from vulnerable contexts to attend UCL, particularly those from countries where homosexuality or alternative approaches to gender are discriminated against. This initiative is supported by the university.

Much of the inaugural event’s awareness was spread by word of mouth, and the organisers are particularly keen to increase the network’s diversity. Over coming events they would like reach alumni who were not necessarily open about their sexuality during their time at university, or who perhaps did not know many others who shared it.

If you’d like to attend future events or get involved, or have any friends from your time at UCL who’d you think might be interested, please drop the group a line on lgbt.alumni@uclmail.net, or join the UCL LGBT Alumni Facebook Group.