Members of the UC Santa Barbara Drag Club put on their tallest wigs and most sequined gowns before heading out to perform at the Graduate Student Association Lounge — after completing their assignments and research for the day, of course.
While the club began this year, it’s far from the founding members’ first time doing drag. Courtesy of UCSB Drag Club
Drag Club formally began this past fall when its club heads — fifth-year doctoral candidate in quantitative biosciences Sam Rosen, known as Linda, fourth-year doctoral candidate in chemical engineering Jon Bingaman, known as Aria Cummingtonite, and third-year doctoral candidate in linguistics Cooper Bedin, known as Miss Gender — made the club a Registered Campus Organization. According to its leaders, the club aims to provide a safe space for all queer students on campus and highlight self-expression.
“The point of this club is to foster better connections between our queer graduate population and our queer undergraduate population and to encourage more queer expression overall,” Rosen said.
The idea came about in spring 2022 when Bingaman began hosting Grad Drag Dinner alongside three new drag queens — one of whom was Rosen — as a way to give a platform to the local drag community. As the event grew each year, Rosen proposed formalizing it into a club.
“Because of all the previous work Jon had done in doing these grad dinners, I just thought those were so fun, and I just wanted to do more,” Rosen said.
Along with weekly meetings in the Resource Center for Sexual & Gender Diversity Lounge, the club has hosted several larger events including drag shows in the Graduate Student Association (GSA) Lounge, a drag makeup workshop and Drag Slam, which is an opportunity for students to present on a topic of their choosing dressed in their snazziest business casual.
Fourth-year theater major Jake Marshall, known as Cherry Von Illa, hosted the Amplified Drag Festival last February, which Rosen said was the only undergraduate drag show in the last decade at UCSB.
While the club began this year, it’s far from the founding members’ first time doing drag. The club heads cited “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and the COVID-19 pandemic as reasons why they started doing drag.
“I got into drag kind of during slash almost because of COVID. I think because I was at my parents’ house, and I didn’t have a lot to do, I finally had the time to start watching drag race,” Bedin said. “I’ve always liked making things. I’m always knitting and sewing and [crocheting]. I love makeup and arts and crafts. And it’s kind of a way to do that and share with people that I think is really kind of cool and exciting.”
Bedin’s academic research lies in queer and trans language, and they said that drag allows them to actively engage with the communities they study.
“I spend so much time using my brain to do such abstract thinking about how queer and trans people express themselves and use language to navigate the world,” Bedin said. “I think it’s really cool to also actually do that, and actually participate in queer organizations.”
Rosen said that drag serves as a “fantastic outlet” for their queerness outside of lab environments. He hopes to one day combine his scientific knowledge with drag.
“It’s always kind of been a dream of mine to be the Bill Nye the Science Guy in heels. I find that science education is really important in getting people excited. And, I mean, what’s more exciting than wearing a wicked dress and doing some really cool biology?” Rosen said.
Drag culture has a small yet passionate history at UCSB, with notable instances including the Disposable Boy Toys drag king troupe on campus in the early 2000s and the longstanding winter and spring drag shows hosted by the Associated Students Trans & Queer Commission.
Club leaders said that focusing on their local community helps them navigate current political and institutional challenges to drag. Federally, President Donald Trump became the chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — the country’s cultural center — in February. He publicly opposed drag shows at the Kennedy Center in his posts on Truth Social.
In late February, Texas A&M University System Board of Regents passed a resolution to ban drag shows on its 11 campuses. Bedin said that thinking about these issues at the federal level can feel like a “losing battle.” However, they said trans and queer people have always and will continue to “think creatively and make things with [their] hands and do things that are weird and experiment and try things that might not work.”
“When I think about how I’m going to get through the next four years, I think focusing on my local community and the people around me is really what gets me through it,” Bedin said.
Bingaman said the club hopes to continue mentoring students on campus who are interested in drag.
“My main focus with doing this is always just to help unite queer people who want to express themselves in whatever makes them feel comfortable, whether it’s drag or not,” Bingaman said. “We’ve experienced a lot of stuff. It’s pretty unique to, you know, our own lives, and just letting other people know that they’re not alone in that experience and that they can do what they want and still be happy is what my priority is.”
A version of this article appeared on p. 6 of the Mar. 6, 2025 edition of the Daily Nexus.
