‘Orange Is the New Black’ star Laverne Cox to conclude Coming Out Month at SU

The LGBT Resource Center is bringing a special guest from your laptop screen to Schine Student Center next week.

The center will host “Orange Is the New Black” star Laverne Cox on Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in Goldstein Auditorium. The event, titled “Ain’t I A Woman?,” will conclude the center’s events for Coming Out Month in October.

The event will be free to all, and tickets will be available starting Oct. 20 at the Schine Box Office. The box office will open at its normal time of 11 a.m. and will limit sales to two tickets per person.

Cox shares her story as a transgender person across the nation. She recently made history by becoming the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Emmy in 2014. At SU, the actress and LGBTQ advocate will address topics such as race, class and gender and how they affect the lives of trans individuals.

Every year the LGBT center brings a prominent keynote speaker for national Coming Out Month in October.  This year they decided to touch on a different topic of conversation with trans identities.

Michael Riley, interim associate director at the LGBT Resource Center, said this year they wanted to bring a figure who would attract crowds that would not normally attend an event such as this. The LGBT Resource Center saw Cox as a great opportunity to bring a famous figure as well as someone who could educate the Syracuse community on this topic.

“When you look at the LGBT community, we don’t do a great job at acknowledging the long history that trans individuals have had in our progress,” Riley said. “There’s a lot more conversation that need to happen with trans identities and Cox is the perfect person to help educate our community on this.”