A PETITION IN SUPPORT OF FOUNDING A LGBTQ HISTORY ARCHIVE & LIBRARY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FREE STATE IN BLOEMFONTEIN CITY IN CENTRAL SOUTH AFRICA'S FREE STATE PROVINCE

"To live without a past is worse than to live without a future" - ELIE WIESEL

* AT PRESENT IT IS REPORTED THAT LGBTQ PUPILS ARE MORE LIKELY TO LEAVE SCOOL EARLY THAN OTHER SCOOL LEARNERS. THEREFORE LGBTQ STUDENTS STILL AT SCHOOL NEED TO KNOW SUCH A LGBTQ  ARCHIVE & LIBRARY WILL BE WAITING FOR THEM AT UFS AND IT WILL HELP THEM TO STAY IN & TO FINISH SCHOOL SO THAT THEY CAN COME TO STUDY AT OUR UNIVERSITY.

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BENEATH YOU WILL FIND INFORMATION ABOUT * OUR MOTIVATIONS FOR PROPOSING & REQUESTING THE FOUNDING OF THE LGBTQI HISTORY ARCHIVE & LIBRARY AT UFS AS WELL AS ON * WHO WILL BENEFIT, ON * HOW TO HELP PROMOTE THIS PETITION & OTHER RELATED INFORMATION

EVERYONE UNDER THE RAINBOW FLAG!

Untold numbers of non-LGBTQ people have joined hands with LGBTQ people under the rainbow flag in the past to support LGBTQ causes. We seek non-LGBTQ students & people from the Free State, elsewhere in South Africa & from elsewhere in the world's support for this project too. Let your heart point in the right direction by giving us your help. Become our ally. Give our young people a library & and a history archive, help to give us our history! 

WE CAN ASSURE YOU OF THE BENEFITS OF OUR OBJECTIVE:

Not just LGBTQ people are going to benefit from a LGBTQ history archive & library at UFS - the entire body of students & staff at the university, its academic community, the South African public at large and the field of study of South African history & its community of researchers & scholars all stand to benefit. So we ask both non-LGBTQ peopse as well as LGBTQ people to support us and to please sign this petition.

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Doctor Ronni Sanlo is a well known veteran American LGBTQ activist & academic & she is the one person who has the experience of founding a LGBTQ library at a university. She is a specialist on LGBTQ people & issues in higher education, former assistant dean of students at UCLA where she also became Professor Emiritus & headed UCLA's LGBTQ Center where she founded the LGBTQ library. She is also a keynote speaker & a presenter of workshops and she is a LGBTQ historian and the author of the four volume "This Day in Queer History."  Doctor Ronni Sanlo has signed the petition and supports founding of a LGBTQ history archive & library at the University of the Free State. We also asked her to look at the proposal for founding of the archive & library to the UFS and she has agreed to. She is the one person with the experience, understanding & skills who we will ask for advice & inputs in presenting our proposal. We are students, alumni & LGBTQ organizations in a coalition or a front & we have never done this before, we are new to requesting & petitioning a large institution like our university to make such  an investment in its LGBTQ campus community as well as in a facility for all its students, in the Free State's as well as in the South African LGBTQ community, in its academic community but also in the larger academic community studying South African history & in the public at large - all by founding a LGBTQ history archive & library at UFS... We are proud & heartened to have Doctor Sanlo's support.  The images included here are of the backpages of her books on LGBTQ history "On This Day in LGBTQ History" where she speaks a little on LGBTQ history and its importance. (Her books are aivailable from the Ronni Sanlo website. You can also find and watch the documentary film about her life "Letter to Anita" online)

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Below: Some Images of Being LGBTQI in South Africa -

We are a community which deserves also having our lives & contributions recorderd & passsed on to our young. The University of the Free State is located right in the heart of South Africa, the right place to give us recognition of our history, it is also an institution which has completely transformed itself - it has been engaged  in  a process of inclusion & of increased representation, it has a progressive administration & a very vibrant & dedicated LGBTQI community. We are ready for founding this LGBTQI history archive & library - something the world will sit up & take notice of - we will forever change perceptions of the Free State Province, of Bloemfontein city & the UFS as associated with staid unchanging conservatism & prove it as a dynamic new center & vestige of progressive social transformation & make it an inspiration for our fellow South Africans. The young people you will help discover their history are going to give our country some of its future leaders, you can sense it about them, which makes your signature an investment in our people & future. Ours is a great cause for anyone to support!

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AN APPEAL FOR YOU TO HELP AND TO SIGN THE PETITION PROPOSING & ASKING FOR THE FOUNDING OF THE LGBTQ HISTORY ARCHIVE & LIBRARY AT UFS:

HELP END THE HISTORICAL INVISIBILITY OF LGBTQ PEOPLE IN THE FREE STATE & SOUTH AFRICA! BY GIVING OUR LGBTQI YOUNG PEOPLE AND STUDENTS AS WELL AS OUR RESOURCES-POOR PROVINCIAL LGBTQ COMMUNITY IN THE FREE STATE PROVINCE OF SOUTH AFRICA A LIBRARY AND AN ARCHIVE... PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION REQUESTING THE UNIVERSITY OF THE FREE STATE TO FOUND A LGBTQ HISTORY ARCHIVE & LIBRARY ON ITS CAMPUS OR TO AT LEAST GRANT US PREMISES AND PERMISSION TO FOUND SUCH AN ARCHIVE & LIBRARY OURSELVES! (Find the petition at https://chng.it/xWk9KQLpZF YOU CAN ALSO PRESENT THIS TRULY WORTHY ASPIRATION & QUEST TO FAMILY & FRIENDS & REQUEST THAT THEY ALSO SIGN & HELP THEM SIGN THE PETITION TOO - AFTERALL, GIVING & CREATING A LIBRARY IS SUCH A WORTHY THING TO ASK THEM A LITTLE OF THEIR TIME FOR! LET LGBTQ & NON-LGBTQ PEOPLE COME TOGETHER TO SUPPORT TO REALIZE THIS OBJECTIVE OF FOUNDING SUCH AN ARCHIVE & LIBRARY AT UFS!  

SOME REASONS MOTIVATING WHY WE PROPOSING & ASKING OUR UNIVERSITY FOR A LGBTQ HISTORY ARCHIVE AND A LGBTQ LIBRARY - AND WHY WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT & YOU TO SIGN OUR PETITION: 

WHY DO WE ASK THE UFS TO FOUND SUCH AN ARCHIVE & LIBRARY? In the absence of institutions gathering, recording & preserving our history, we LGBTQ people are "invisible." Without a recorded history, we are also invisible. And since we are often excluded from the mainstream narrative of South African history, we are invisible in this regard too. Living with his invisibility has definite social & psychological as well as other consequences. It detracts from integration & equality of our people, it undermines their sense of self & identity, it leaves a gap in everybody's understanding of history and of South African history. WE THEREFORE HAVE TO END THE HISTORIC INVISIBILITY OF LGBTQ PEOPLE IN SOUTH AFRICA & THE FREE STATE! We desperately need another LGBTQ history archive since there currently is but one in the land dedicated to collecting, recording & preserving the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer & transgender people in South Africa, namely the GALA Archive at Wits university. Though it has done a fantastic job, our history as LGBTQ people often still is going lost, or is just ignored & sometimes traces of our existence are even destroyed. We admire the GALA Queer Archive and want to have just such an institution at the University at the Free State which would also be dedicated to recording & preserving the university's LGBTQ history & we believe founding of such an archive would also address dark events & episodes from that past such as the shameful appointment of mass human rights abuser Doctor Aubrey Levine as head of psychiatry at UFS in 1975. Levine tortured & abused more than 900 gay men in the military & was appointed by UFS right after he had done so. It may not be reason for the university to give us our library & archive per se, but it sure is reason why the UFS is the best suited place & the most appropriate institution & university to found a second South African LGBTQI history archive & library at a local university. It will be the first former Afrikaans-medium & exclusively white university to do so it will enormously improve the university's national standing & international prestige plus give us the first institution at the UFS to have the terms "transgender, bisexual, intersex, lesbian, queer & gay" in its name. It will also help dispell the perpetual association of the UFS with conservatism & intractibility when it comes to being socially progressive. We who ask for the archive & library are proud of our university & very much have its interest, benefit & reputation in mind as well.

   Another LGBTQ archive would help tremendously to raise the profile & academic importance of LGBTQ history, it will advocate but also go such a long way towards doing something for LGBTQ history in the Free State & South Africa & Africa  in a concrete manner: It would namely collect historical documents, official reports & published material referring to LGBTQ people, but it would also gather diaries & journals, letters and even love letters, photographs & video as well as audio recordings of people's testimony about how they had lived as LGBTQ people. So, the proposed archive will be just as concerned with official accounts & documents, traditional archive material, as it would be with more personal & private material from LGBTQ people themselves which testify of their lives both socially & in private. And these collections, their material & the LGBTQ history it contains will be presented to the public, to LGBTQ people themselves as an important source & inspiration for LGBTQ identity as well as being available to scholars, researchers & the academic community at UFS as well as in South Africa at large & to all students & all those who visit the archive & library or its media looking to find out more about the history of LGBTQ people in South Africa & the Free State & Africa. And finally, we hope the archive could serve the student & wider provincial LGBTQ community by hosting a telephonic information a referral service for LGBTQ people to health, legal & educational services & help available to them in the Free State. 

   We believe the UFS is the most appropriate university and place in the country for such an archive: It is not only located in central South Africa, it has a growing community of LGBTQ students, graduates & alumni. It's human rights & LGBTQ history calls for something like the archive & library be done for LGBTQI people and for such people associated with the university: to create & support founding of such an institution as the archive & library so as to finally have the first institution on campus with the words "transgender, intersex, lesbian, queer, bisexual and gay" in its title and name.

   We thank you for reading this message & statement & we thank you for signing the petition & for supporting our quest, helping us on this long and winding road ahead to arrive at a LGBTQ history archive & library. Please, we have to ask, would you also kindly spread word about the campaign (the End the Invisibility Campaign) to found a LGBTQ history archive & library at the University of the Free State? We are a collective of students, graduates, organizations & stakeholders aspiring to have the UFS found the archive or we will by ourselves even if our university approves & gives us premises & even limted support. If you can assure your family & friends also sign the petition, you would have made a concrete contribution towards realizing our noble & worthy aspiration & dream. Thank you again, so much from all of us. (*Note: The University of the Free State is located in the city of Bloemfontein, the 8th largest city in South Africa & the country's judicial capital which is located in the Free State province of central South Africa).

ABOUT PETITIONS: THEY ARE NOT JUST ABOUT HOW MANY SIGNATURES A PETITION GETS, MANY PETITIONS HAVE TO RATHER DEMONSTRATE JUST A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF PEOPLE HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT, HAD APPROVED OF ITS OBJECTIVE & SUPPORT IT & CALL FOR IT TO BE REALIZED - ENOUGH PEOPLE & SIGNITURES TO INDICATE, IN THIS CASE, THAT THE LGBTQI LIBRARY & HISTORY ARCHIVE WILL NOT BE A WHITE ELEPHANT, BUT A FUNCTIONAL RESOURCE WHICH WILL ATTRACT ENOUGH STUDENTS & PEOPLE WHO WILL USE IT & THAT AS AN INCORPORATED INSTITUTION OF THE UNIVERSITY, THAT IT WILL BE ABLE TO ANSWER THE NEEDS & OFFER THE SERVICES & FUNCTIONS WE WHO HAD PROPOSED IT HAD ALSO SUGGESTED THAT IT SHOULD. THE MAJORITY OF OUR SUPPORTERS WHO HAVE SIGNED THE PETITION SO FAR, ARE LGBTQI STUDENTS AT THE UFS. THESE STUDENTS HAVE EXPRESSED GREAT INTEREST & ENTHUSIASM FOR ACTUALLY SOME DAY BEING ABLE TO VISIT THE ARCHIVE & USING ITS RESOURCES, FOR HAVING SUCH A PLACE WHERE THEY WILL BOTH BE HELPED & BE AT HOME. A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF THE VERY PEOPLE AT WHO THE LIBRARY & ARCHIVE WILL BE AIMED, HAVE SIGNED! WE HAVE REACHED A MAJOR MILESTONE ALREADY BUT A WEEK AFTER THIS PETITION WAS STARTED. WE WILL NOT REST OUR LAURELS... WE WILL KEEP ASKING PEOPLE TO SIGN, BUT WE ALREADY HAVE A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF SUPPORTERS SHOWING & PROVING OURS IS A JUSTIFIABLE & WORTHY QUEST & WHAT WE ASK OF OUR UNIVERSITY IS WELL-MOTIVATED, COMPELLING & SOMETHING OF CONSEQUENCE & BENEFIT TO ALL STAKEHOLDERS! OF COURSE THE UFS MAY TURN US DOWN & WE MIGHT FAIL SOMEHOW, BUT BEING LGBTQI PEOPLE HAS COME TO MEAN STRIVING AGAINST NEAR OVERWHELMING ODDS, TO KEEP TRYING EVEN AFTER CRUSHING DEFEATS, TO HAVE PRIDE IN AN EFFORT WHICH SAW US JOINING HANDS & CONDUCT OURSELVES IN AN ADMIRABLE & HONORABLE MANNER AS WE PURSUED OUR QUEST & OBJECTIVE, ALWAYS REPRESENTING THAT RADIANT RAINBOW EVEN AMIDST THE THE DARKEST CLOUDS OF PESSIMISM, BIASES, PREJUDICE & DISCRIMINATION & EVEN DESPITE THE DESIRE  & DETERMINATION OF SOME TO SEE US FAIL. WE MAY FAIL, BUT COMING GENERATIONS OF LGBTQI STUDENTS WOULD HEAR OF US & WE MIGHT INSPIRE THEM TO PURSUE THE SAME DREAM. SHOULD WE WIN THOUGH, EVEN THOSE WHO HAD WISHED US TO FAIL WILL BENEFIT FROM OUR SUCCESS.

THANK YOU! to all our supporters who have signed our petition, who have stated their support & who have spread word about our campaign, about the petition & who have helped others to get involved alit won't end here! Even if we don't get to found our archive & library, future LGBTQI students & young people & their allies will know we tried & will try again themselves to create resources like these for our people - and the people who had signed our petition will be remembered as the selfless & benevolent folk who had realized our need & who had thrown their weight behind our cause without personal gain & benefit for themselves - all will be remembered!