As Morehouse College anticipates another year without a lavender graduation to celebrate LGBTQ students, a campus organization stepped up with the Circus Maximus Kiki Ball at Archer Hall on Friday.
Envisioned in part as a stand-in for the missing ceremony honoring LGBTQ graduates and to celebrate the end of the spring semester, the event hosted by the campus group Adodi drew roughly two dozen students for a ball featuring expression and visibility on their own terms.
'It's an art form,' said Brighton Chipley, a junior biology major. 'You're watching someone just feel and express, surrounded by other queer people. It's electrifying. That's why we host balls.'
Ballroom culture at the esteemed men's college has become one of the ways students carve out space. For some Morehouse students, Adodi events serve as a safe space and an introduction to Atlanta's ballroom scene.
