In a room lined with pride flags and rainbow spotlights, students, faculty, staff and community members who identify within the LGBTQIA+ community met to celebrate their identities Tuesday in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.

As attendees walked through the doors of the Great Hall they were greeted with a Lady Gaga song and smiling greeters who handed out name tags and blank pronoun pins for the visitors to fill out.

Close to 300 individuals attended the LGBTQIA+ Community Welcome, coming from many diverse backgrounds as well as different areas of the Ames community.

“I think this event went tremendously well; I heard from a lot of students tonight who had never been connected to the LGBTQIA+ community and met other people and started building those connections,” said Brad Freihoefer, director of the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success. “That is the goal of the whole event and I am excited about it.”

One of the main attractions for the welcome was the “largest pride flag at Iowa State,” according to Freihoefer, which was made out of multiple banners of singular color and colored spotlights and a place where many attendees were taking selfies.

Freihoefer announced they would dye their hair a permanent rainbow if attendance was over 500, but it seems that will not be happening due to the total attendance being close to 200 individuals short.

“I am feeling great, feeling pretty gay at the moment, just having an amazing time,” said Nyamal Toang, sophomore in linguistics. “Just seeing everyone here and seeing this many people being part of the LGBTQIA+ community is a lot, it’s amazing.”

Other activities included a coloring station with coloring books, a community mural where anyone could write or draw what they wanted, a Mix and Mingle and many board games including Jenga, Connect Four and Apples to Apples.

“This event is important because everyone is just trying to figure out these things on their own and it’s nice to have other people around you who are going through the same thing and just help each other out,” said Marilyn Gonzalez, junior in Kinesiology.

The two other main activities were a Gallery Walk and Human Bingo. The Gallery Walk had attendees answer or react to questions that were on a wall in a word bubble fashion. The Human Bingo had attendees interact with complete strangers while trying to fill out a bingo card in order to win a prize. The prizes included various candies, a rainbow backpack and a rainbow hat.

“I really like introducey sort of things so I really liked the Human Bingo,” said Madison Mason, freshman in women’s and gender studies and journalism. “I have been walking around to different people and groups introducing myself.”

Freihoefer said this event has been done for many years in different ways like ice cream socials, but this will be the third year that the welcome has been done in this way. Freihoefer said that attendance has ranged from 20 individuals in its early years to over 300 individuals in more recent years.

“I am really touched by some of the stories I heard tonight,” Freihoefer said. “I heard some stories about students who went to this welcome event in years past and got connected and now they are roommates or partners or they’re best friends, there are so many stories and they are very moving.”