Student Stories: Past Award Recipients

Erica C. Bowman
Fond du Lac High School
2004 Community Activist
In 2005, I moved to Boston for school where I began studying photography and graphic design at Simmons College. Simmons offered me a surprise scholarship for community leadership and activism, mostly due to my involvement with GSAFE! There I continued to be involved in special projects like the marriage amendment and women's rights, but in general I needed a break from activist work.

Through my job at a music production studio, I was given the opportunity to start a lesbian music night in Boston (an alternative to the club scene). It became a hit and continues to run even in my absence, which is a great feeling. Shortly after my first year, I got accepted to a summer program in Paris with Columbia University. I traveled solo all over Western Europe during this summer. Last semester I studied for four months in Mali, West Africa. There, I got to photograph trance dance ceremonies, in which much of the homosexual population is involved, though it is never spoken about.

Now I am in my final months of travel in Dunedin, New Zealand where I am taking classes in Maori, anthropology, and religion. I will return to Wisconsin in July before heading back to Boston to finish school. I hold my memories of GSAFE close to my heart.