Getting Connected, Staying in Touch

In addition to meeting and event attendance, Rainbow Alliance connects with its members and supporters in a variety of other ways, including email discussion lists, organization contact email addresses, Zimbra shared calendars, and Facebook.  You're encouraged to take advantage of as many of these communication methods as apply to you!

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Rainbow Alliance Email Lists

Much of our group event planning and publicity takes place on mailing lists.  The easiest way to begin your involvement in Rainbow Alliance is to join these lists, read the emails, and participate in discussions if you'd like!

Main Discussion List - "rainbow"

The majority of Rainbow Alliance email interaction takes place on this list, for students, faculty, staff, and community supporters.  All events and meetings are announced on this list, and meeting minutes and other materials are distributed through this list.  It is a discussion list: participants are welcome to share ideas and news with the group whether or not they can make it to meetings.  It is considered "medium-traffic" and is a discussion list.

Join Rainbow Alliance Discussion List - unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of each email from the list.

Faculty/Staff Discussion List  - "rainbow-faculty"

This list is for St. Norbert College faculty and staff members.  While it has not seen much traffic recently, interested staff and faculty are welcome to start discussions here!  They are also welcome to join the main discussion list.  Please note:  While this "rainbow-faculty" list is intended for a narrowed audience, the subscriber list is not regularly reviewed.

Join Rainbow Alliance Faculty/Staff Discussion List - unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of each email from the list.

To email either of these lists, you must be subscribed to them, and email the list name (rainbow or rainbow-faculty) @lists.snc.edu

Private Distribution List for Certified Allies

The LGBTQ Ally Program maintains a list of those who have completed a training session and have signed the LGBTQ Ally Pledge to distribute information to help out our trained Allies.  If you have been trained and signed the pledge, and would like us to update the information we have on you, please email lgbtqally@snc.edu ( send using Zimbra)and include as much information as possible that might help us locate your pledge registration - your name when pledge was signed, the year, month, or day of training, the group affiliated with your training session, etc.

Organization Contact Emails

The organization president and the staff advisor (see officers) share responsibility for rainbow@snc.edu ( send using Zimbra) - the official organization contact email.  Please email or share this address instead of the email of a particular president or officer, so that you can stay in touch with Rainbow Alliance even as the students involved move on.

Similarly, the LGBTQ Ally Mentors share responsibility for the lgbtqally@snc.edu ( send using Zimbra) email box - anyone can send messages to the mentors at this address and one of our trained mentors will reply.  More details are available on contacting the LGBTQ Ally Mentors through this and other methods, as well as the resources offered by the LGBTQ Ally Program.

Shared Calendars on Zimbra

For general information on using the Calendar features of Zimbra, go to the Zimbra section at the Technology Support Services site. The information here should be enough to help a non-SNC user access our events calendar, as well as an SNC user aware of the Calendar feature to access our events calendars and show them on their personal calendar.

Student Organizations calendar

Special events put on by Rainbow Alliance are posted on the official Student Organizations calendar on SNC's Zimbra system.  People with a St. Norbert College account can just expand the SNC Calendars folder on the Calendar tab in Zimbra and check the box to display Student Organization events.  As of right now, LGBTQ Ally Mentor office hours are not listed on this calendar - if you think this should change, send us an email with that suggestion.

• Enable this calendar in your Zimbra account now by following these instructions!

To display this calendar, click the Calendar tab in Zimbra:

 Then, on the left-hand list of calendars, click the triangle (circled on image) to show SNC Calendars, then check the box (circled) next to Student Organizations. Optionally, you can right-click the calendar to change the color it uses in your calendar.

Note that you won't be notified of events on this calendar with alarms, etc: if you plan on attending an event, you'll want to create a new appointment in your personal calendar at the appropriate time.  We're working with IT to create a way to automate this process.

Rainbow Alliance calendar - public web view

Rainbow Alliance meetings, special events, and LGBTQ Ally Program office hours and events are posted on our own shared calendar which can be viewed on the web, without an SNC account needed. Click on an event for more details.  Note that a few events (such as some training sessions) are closed to the public - read the details to be sure before planning to attend one.

• See our upcoming events: visit Rainbow Alliance Events Calendar, publicly accessible. 

Rainbow Alliance calendar - Zimbra share for campus community members

If you have an SNC account, we can directly share this calendar with you so that you can view it alongside your own calendars, just like the student organization calendar above. Email us with your SNC email address and ask for a "read only share of the Rainbow Alliance calendar" and we'll send you a share invite - note that you need to accept the invite when you receive it.  This process will be automated in the future as the College's implementation of Zimbra progresses - we are working with IT on this process.

• Request a read-only share by email and accept the invitation

If you are sent a share invite, you'll see a message like this in your email box:

Click on that email, and you'll see the invite.  Look closely, and you'll see the "Accept" button (circled) that you have to click to proceed to the next step. Click "Accept Share."

A dialog will appear, asking you to name the calendar and optionally set a color and other options.  We recommend changing the provided name to something like "Rainbow Alliance Events" so that it's easier to recognize on the calendar list.  Once you click "Yes," the calendar will appear at the bottom of the list on the calendars tab.  You'll notice that calendars added by a share invitation are in a separate section, set off by a small amount of white space in the list.

Facebook Social Networking

If you have an account on Facebook and are a member of the St. Norbert network, you're encouraged to join our group!  You'll receive invitations to all our events and occasional other reminder.  While this doesn't replace our use of the email discussion lists, it does provide a convenient way to ensure that you hear about events as they are scheduled - join both our email list and the Facebook group to make sure you don't miss a thing!

• Join Rainbow Alliance on Facebook now!

We will soon have a separate group for alumni and other supporters who are not on campus, so that you can opt out of receive notification of events that don't apply to you.  For now, join the main group, and a message will be sent when the new group is established.

Where can I go from here?