From: OUTspoken Date: January 28, 2022 Subject: End of an Era
...but first, events!
Thank you so much to everyone who has submitted answers to our DYUTR form we mentioned in last week's email! You can submit more than once, so if you have a new idea that you got while you were sitting around or looking online, we want to hear those too! Keep the ideas comin', we love to hear from you.
So when I was scrolling through the events for this I found out that Hillel is doing a Q & A event with Chella Man???? Hello??? That's so cool. In case you don't know who he is, he's a deaf trans actor who has done some really cool stuff. I'm glad I caught this because this is awesome!
Everyone is invited to come watch Hillel students Leah Goldschmidt (York University '22) and Nat Waldman (University of Oregon '22) lead a Q&A session with Deaf, Jewish, Chinese-American, transmasculine, genderqueer artist and activist Chella Man. The event will be ASL interpreted and captioned. To-go snacks celebrating Lunar New Year will be offered.
We always talk about "abolishing gender," but what does that mean? What could it look like? Let's talk about it, because that's what the next Grey Matter discussion is all about!
This email ending won't be as whimsical and brief as the ones in the past, as I have some unfortunate news to share.
This will be my last newsletter. I will no longer be working as Director of Marketing for OUTspoken.
This wasn't my choice, but the powers that be have determined that I am not eligible to serve in this position. I just missed the GPA threshold (less than 0.1 points!) required to retain this job. I know that I don't have to explain why, but I wanted to because I wanted to show that there is no shame in not effortlessly breezing through classes. Or, if there is, I don't have it. This doesn't mean that I can never work for OUTspoken again, this is just for this semester. However, there are no guarantees about the future. This was very sudden, so please be patient with OUTspoken and the other members of the eboard as they have to take on some of my responsibilities and projects while working on their own. With that out of the way, the necessary information part of this email is over, so you can back out and not worry about missing anything. However, at risk of sounding too sentimental and misusing this platform, I had some personal thoughts I wanted to share.
This job has given me more than I ever thought I would have. Not just in the scope of college, but in my personal and social life in general. I didn't think much of these newsletters when I first started two and a half years ago. I just wanted to let people know about relevant events happening on campus, and keep people informed. But it became more. After my first newsletter, people told me they were laughing out loud. It was the best newsletter they've read. I got multiple responses saying that they loved it and couldn't wait for the next one. People said that it made their day. There have been times where people have heard my name and recognized me as the person who wrote the OUTspoken emails, even once when I was buying a pastry from Beanz. I'm not saying all of those things to be like "wow, look at how great I was! Aren't I amazing?" I wanted to show that I still remember all of those moments, and that what may have been a five second interaction or comment from you has stayed with me, and will continue to do so. What I'm trying to say is thank you. Each and everyone of you who read these emails. Who followed us on social media. Who shared our posts, who watched our video antics, who supported me and this organization. I truly cannot adequately express how much working for OUTspoken these past few years has meant to me, and it's because of you, the constituents. Thank you. For everything.
Elizabeth Sherrock (she/her)
Former Director of Marketing
