Love Evolution celebrated the LGBTQ+ community through their annual Rainbow Prom. About 180 students and community members attended the ‘Starry Night’ themed event, this past Friday, and danced the night away with special performances by local drag queens.

Rainbow Prom was created with the hopes to give people an opportunity celebrate who they are with whomever they want.

Athena Wood (freshman, English), Vice President of Love Evolution, said, “The significance of Rainbow Prom is that it gives people who didn’t get a chance to go to prom with the person they wanted a chance to go. It’s also to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community as a whole and who people are.”

Roger Lobe (junior, Psychology), President of Love Evolution, said that not only did Rainbow Prom celebrate the queer community, it was also to show the attendees “more aspects of the queer community.”

These aspects were the drag queens. The queens performed an array of songs and were the highlight of the night for multiple event goers.

Selena Spiegel (senior, Child Development), was mainly looking forward for the queens’ performances due to the accessibility as it is something “you usually have to go to Modesto or the Bay Area” for.   

Many attendees were just happy to have an event like this on campus and in the Central Valley.

“Being in a very conservative place like the Central Valley, it is really hard because we get a lot of hate for who we are as a community and just being able to have a place that accepts you for who you are and a place [where] you can have fun and be yourself is really important, and I’m glad that as a club we are able to provide that for people,” said Wood.

Angelica Ruiz (freshman, Psychology, Art) is happy to not only have a welcoming group on campus, but also community members.

“It makes me very happy that we have a very welcoming group here, especially now with everything that’s going on, and it’s just very heartwarming for the community to be here,” said Ruiz.

Love Evolution and all the attendees ended the night with dancing under the stars.

“I hope that everyone had a really fun time and they had a good experience. I hope memories were made and people consider coming to our other events that we have in the future. Also that Rainbow Prom as a whole continues to grow and become bigger and better each year,” said Wood.