The Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) student organization hosted a pride event Tuesday night featuring a drag show and lip-sync battle. 

Charlize Griffin, GSA president and a sophomore graphic design major from Cabot, Arkansas, said GSA hosted the event to unite the community and celebrate pride.

“We really wanted to host this event because we aren’t here in June during pride month,” Griffin said. “So we knew we wanted to bump it earlier in the year to still have pride on campus and what’s pride without a drag show?”

Griffin participated in the event under the drag name Lilith Mourningstar.

Student and professional drag performers danced and sang during the event, which was held at Centennial Hall in the student union.

Student performers were Griffin, Kai Lawless who performed under the name Jackson Spade and Nev Winfield, who performed under the name Afro-dite. The professional performers included Iroh Silver, Rusted Electra and Stevie Quinn LaRain. 

Juno Beauchamp, a first-year political science major from Jonesboro, said he loved the event. He said he attended a drag show at Arkansas State University before and is looking forward to attending more in the future. 

“It gives the people here an opportunity to shine,” Beauchamp said.

Lawless, GSA treasurer and first-year biology major from Westfork, Arkansas said he hopes the event helped to introduce drag at A-State.

Lawless said this is the first drag show he has been involved in the production of.

Winfield, a sophomore psychology major from Jonesboro, said they are newer to drag and attended to get more experience and get to know the A-State community better.

“My drag-sona, Afro-dite, she’s very sassy and theatrical,” Winfield said. “I want my audience to be hyped up, feel really good after I leave the stage and want to get up there and dance too.”

Halfway through the event a lip-sync battle was held.

Griffin asked for two volunteers for the battle. Abigail Mason, a senior psychology major from Caruthersville, Missouri and Trin Reppenhagen, a sophomore graphic design major from Searcy, Arkansas, volunteered. Reppenhagen won the first round.

Chris Smith, a junior history and communications double major from Cabot, Arkansas and Cidney Davis, a junior creative media production major from North Little Rock volunteered for round two of the lip-sync battle. Davis won the second round. 

For the final round, Davis and Reppenhagen went head-to-head as they lip-synced to “How Far I’ll Go” by Auli’i Cravalho from the movie “Moana.” Davis won the final round and was awarded a 3 Musketeers bar. However, she injured her knee during the battle.

“I decided at the end I needed to do something to balance out me not knowing the words, so I did the fall-down knee slide and hurt my knee,” Davis said. “But it won, I got a Musketeer! It was worth it, maybe.”

Davis said she loved seeing local and Arkansas performers get together to spread positivity and highlight queer art.

“Events like this will open more doors for queer youth and spread education on queer culture and bring representation to the main stage,” Davis said.

Griffin said the process for planning the pride event was lengthy and the event didn’t go exactly as planned.

“I reached out to my drag family and friends and originally we had a different cast and last minute we had to change that,” Griffin said. “However, the performers came out and showed out, it was great.”

Griffin said GSA worked with the Women and Gender Studies program to organize the event. She said the program provided funding for the $500 food expenses and promoted the event via flyers and social media.

“It helps build a sense of pride and community with other students because they see things like this,” Griffin said. “They see people openly expressing themselves and it gives them the confidence to do that as well.”

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