Guests chatted while they sipped tea and munched on macarons and pasta at tables featuring tea spreads and floral arrangements at the third annual Black QTea Party. The event, hosted on May 9 at the Mosher Alumni House Miller Sky Terrace, aimed to promote community among UC Santa Barbara’s Black queer and trans students.
Event attendees chatted while they sipped tea and munched on macarons and pasta at tables featuring tea spreads and floral arrangements. Iris Guo / Daily Nexus
The event had 35 students in attendance and was organized in collaboration by the Office of Black Student Development (OBSD), Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity (RCSGD), Associated Students Black Women’s Health Collaborative (BWHC) and Associated Students Trans and Queer Commission (TQC).
Attendees dined on chicken piccata, cream pasta, spinach salad and a variety of baked goods. They also had the opportunity to take home a complimentary “blind date with a book,” or books that were wrapped to conceal their contents but had a genre written on them.
“This is a space for our Black, queer and trans community members — where their voices are heard, their experiences to be uplifted, to join together in community and experience joy, rest, healing during times that are incredibly trying,” RCSGD Assistant Director for Programs and Leadership and event organizer Marco Muñoz said.
Muñoz said the event was open to anyone who wanted to uplift UCSB’s Black queer and trans community. He said that recent times have been difficult for historically marginalized communities and hoped the event could relieve community members’ anxieties.
“It’s a time when our communities have been historically targeted and now I think the community feels a lot more of that anxiety,” Muñoz said. “We’re putting on the event not to be an exclusive space. This is a space for anyone in support of the Black queer and trans community to come in and express that visible show of support.”
According to Muñoz, planning for the event began in fall quarter due to having to figure out various logistical components. Organizers worked on securing funding, recruiting volunteers, finding catering, designing the space and marketing the event on social media.
Fourth-year computer science major Towela Phiri said that there aren’t many spaces on campus that cater to Black queer students.
“A lot of the queer spaces cater to more white queer identities. They’re not always inclusive of all identities, so I just wanted to come and be in the community,” Phiri said.
Fourth-year Black studies major Zoe McCullough appreciated the event’s “blind date with a book.”
“The blind date with a book is a really unique feature,” McCullough said. “Not only does it foster conversations about the media that we’re consuming, but it’s also just a good way to get exposed to things that we wouldn’t normally pick up.”
Fourth-year film and media studies major Taelen Cobb found the aesthetics of the event appealing and said the decorations and effort in planning added to the overall experience.
“All the bright colors, beautiful centerpieces and floral arrangements are so beautiful,” Cobb said. “I think it’s very welcoming for the community here, to let them know that they’re welcome and they have the space and there’s people putting the energy, time and effort into helping create a space for them.”
Ashlee Priestley, the OBSD’s academic achievement counselor, originally came up with the idea of the Black QTea Party in 2023 and has helped to organize the event every year.
“I was just thinking about types of spaces that don’t require a lot of labor or mental work for guests,” Priestley said. “I was like, ‘What gives that vibe?’ And a tea party just seemed pretty fitting for the occasion.”
Priestley said consistently hosting events for Black queer students has resulted in the rejuvenation of inactive student organization Black Quare. According to TQC’s website, Black Quare “provides a safe space” for community members who identify with being “black (of the African diaspora) and of the LGBT community.”
“Over the past few years, we’ve been working really diligently to bring back Black Quare,” Priestley said. “Great news is next year, that organization will be restarting — I think the years of outreach have definitely paid off.”
Priestley said she hopes the event will serve as a reminder of the unity that community members can find in each other.
“Despite efforts to silence certain communities globally, not just in our country but globally, we still do this work because we know the importance of it,” Priestley said. “Even though this is a tea party, it’s more than that because it’s a demonstration that we are here and we care about each other in community. We’re going to keep going, as Beyoncé said, ‘You won’t break my soul.’”
A version of this article appeared on p. 5 of the May 15, 2025 print edition of the Daily Nexus.
