According to Gilliam, QUAC's stand is "to provide support and social activities to the queer community of Amherst and also to bring about an awareness of queer social needs to the campus." By welcoming allies and by joining other affinity groups like the Queer Straight Alliance and the Amherst Feminist Alliance, Gilliam and Salcido hope to accomplish this goal.
Gilliam recognizes the challenges that he and Salcido face with their new group. "As a first-year student, it's hard to say exactly what I want from the group," he said. "Knowing this, Jenn and I have had the freedom to really create a group and its goals from scratch." The acronym "QUAC," which was changed from LBGTA to provide a more encompassing and "user-friendly" term for the group, has been recently proliferated by a large publicity campaign which included table tents and weekly meeting flyers featuring its mascot, a duck.
QUAC is currently planning several events for the near future. The first will be the annual Alumni-Student Mentoring Weekend, which will "allow queer students to meet alumni and listen to stories about life after Amherst from a perspective not often shown," said Gilliam. Other potential events include parties, movie nights, tabling in Valentine and "generally providing a comfortable setting for gays, lesbians, and allies to hang out."
Gilliam says that one of QUAC's major concerns is to create more unity among the school's somewhat polarized gay and lesbian populations. "This is one of our major concerns that, with active membership and more events, we hope to correct in the future," he said.