Rainbow room opens on the Pōneke campus

Rainbow rep Fox Miles hopes queer students will feel at home in the new rainbow room that opened two weeks ago in the Wellington Co-Lab space.  

The first rainbow room at Massey University was opened on the Manawatū campus in July last year. The second one was opened on the Albany campus at the start of this year. 

Miles missed having something consistent like UniQ, a club dedicated to queer students that started to fall into neglect due to the pandemic. 

While the club is starting to find its feet again, Miles felt a rainbow room would provide consistency.  

“I keep encountering friends and classmates who are in the rainbow community and just don’t have any ways of reliably reaching each other.” 

Miles said people often ask them questions about where to access gender affirming care, where to buy a binder, where are the gay bars, or where free testing can be found.  

Miles felt resources are scattered around but wanted to centralise them into one easily accessible place. Pamphlets have been put on display in the space to provide resources like this. 

Queer students were encouraged to put up their own art and posters on the walls, “Use the space, be respectful, it's yours.” 

Some of Miles’ own collection of queer books and comics can be found in the space. “I brought in a bunch of my own books thinking ‘I hope these don’t get stolen’, and instead I came back today and there's been three more left there.” 

Feedback so far had been positive, with the room being soft launched at a rainbow lunch on July 19th. The official opening will take place soon, after consultation with tangata whenua.  

It seems a rainbow room in Wellington is here to stay, “As long as I’m the rainbow rep I’m not gonna let them take it away.”