Pride Center to Celebrate 10 Years at Mt. SAC
September 29, 2026 - 11:18 AM
The Mt. SAC Pride Center will celebrate its 10th anniversary on Thursday, Oct. 1 in Building 6-160, highlighting one of the flagship centers at a community college in the United States.
“The Mt. SAC Pride Center is among the first LGBTQIA2S+ Pride Centers established in California community colleges,” says Rony Castellanos Raymundo, the Mt. SAC Pride Center Director. “As I began to learn about the history of advocacy for the Mt. SAC Pride Center, one specific aspect came clear: there was a taskforce of folks who not only wanted to be seen but wanted our students to feel seen, validated, supported, and heard.”
The timing of the celebration is also validated by the alignment of the calendar.
“I selected Oct. 1 as a guiding date since in October is LGBTQIA2S+ History Month and National Coming Out Day is celebrated on Oct. 11,” Castellanos Raymundo says. “I found out that the Mt. SAC Pride Center was started in Fall 2016, so it all seemed to align.”
While this event will be a fun-filled day for the LGBTQIA2S+ community, the Pride
Center has provided showcases, entertainment, support, and acknowledgement for its
students, most notably with these annual events:
- Rainbow Rack
- Mentorship with Pride
- Drag Queen Bingo
- Finding Familia
- Transgender Day of Remembrance
- National Coming Out Week Open Mic
- Lavender Graduation
- Pride Parade
- Pride by the Beach
To date, the Pride Center has supported nearly 1,700 unique students in its first decade at Mt. SAC, Castellanos Raymundo says. But it’s just getting started.
“The vision I have for the Pride Center is that we will continue to be that place of resistance for our LGBTQIA2S+ students and community members,” Castellanos Raymundo says. “In particular, I am hopeful that we can provide more awareness about Trans, Gender Non-Conforming, Intersex and Nonbinary communities.
“I am hopeful that we can also continue to support our students with completing their academic aspirations as well as supporting their well-being. I am hopeful we can continue to receive the support from the Mt. SAC community to not only make Mt. SAC an LGBTQIA2S+ friendly campus, but that we can truly serve our students. I want to continue to envision Queer and Trans Life as something to celebrate in every day. I am hopeful we will continue to resist all the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and violence. We deserve to be alive and see our wildest dreams come to life.”
The festivities of 10 years of the Pride Center, entitled “We're Trans, We're Queer, We've Been Here”, will come to life at noon and run to 3 p.m. on Thursday. The complete schedule of activities for the event are:
Open House at the Pride Center, Building 6-160: Noon-3 p.m.
Noon-12:30 p.m.:
- Opening Remarks - Land Acknowledgement by Seqouia Salas (she/her) and Welcome
12:30-1:30 p.m.:
- Drag Queen Bingo with Roxy Wood - Building 6 - South Entrance
12:30-2 p.m.:
- Printmaking Workshop - Library, facilitated by Jennifer Chen (she/her)
- Read & Resist! - Celebrate the Pride Center’s 10 Years of Pride event by browsing and reading banned or challenged LGBTQ+ books from the Library’s collection at the southside of Building 6 (on shaded lawn), facilitated by Cynthia Orr (she/her) and Jared Burton (he/him)
1-2 p.m.:
- Zine Workshop - CBCSS Audre Lorde Lounge, facilitated by Eva Ríos-Alvarado (she/her)
2:15-2:30 p.m.:
- Prepare for the Pride March*, Sign Making - Building 6 at the south entrance
2:30-3 p.m.:
- Pride March around campus and return to the Pride Center
Castellanos Raymundo invites the entire campus community to join the Pride Center for this event, “as we pay homage to our Mt. SAC LGBTQIA2S+ communities that have been here despite the anti- LGBTQIA2S+ hatred but more importantly to honor that LGBTQIA2S+ communities have existed at Mt. SAC and will continue to exist for years to come.”
To learn more about the Pride Center, visit www.mtsac.edu/pridecenter/, call (909) 274-6550, email pridecenter@mtsac.edu, or drop by Building 6-160.
