Will Hughes

Will Hughes is a Columbia alumnus, graduating from Columbia College with the class of 2013. While at Columbia, Will was Vice President of Policy for the Columbia College Student Council, and President of the Columbia University Performing Arts League.

He also acted as the lead for the Advocates for the Arts Initiative, a student advisory committee formed in 2009 to safeguard and preserve the Columbia University Arts Initiative, created by University President Lee Bollinger in 2004. The Arts Initiative was created to make the arts part of the experience of every Columbia student's education and to promote a life-long involvement in the arts. After Bollinger announced that management of the Arts Initiative would move from the President's Office to the Columbia School of the Arts, students became worried that the move was a sign that the program would be dissolved and formed the Advocates for the Arts Initiative committee. Under Will's leadership, the Initiative was approved for full funding due in large part to a successful petition campaign Will had overseen.

Will was also very active in organizations for the LGBTQ+ community, including the Columbia Queer Alliance, Gender Revolution both of which he worked alongside to push for a Queer Studies curriculum, as well as GHAP within which he was an advocate, providing peer counseling to students worried about HIV or who had been diagnosed with the virus.

During his undergraduate tenure at Columbia, Will was inspired by the stories that he heard from Laura Pinsky, Daniel Chiarilli and others, and created the first GHAP Archive. Much of the historical summaries, collected documents, and interviews on this site are the result of Will's hard work and dedication to GHAP's history and ongoing mission.