The CGA was established in 1974 mostly as a social organization for gay men, but also as a place to educate about queer issues.

CGA organized it's first Southeastern Gay Conference in the spring of 1976. As historian Hooper Schultz describes it, "the Southeastern Gay Conferences (SEGCs) would prove to be one of the most powerful organizing spaces for the gay liberation movement in the Southeast in the 1970s, and their capacity to create synergistic new cultural and political formations represent a unique moment in pre-AIDS gay rights activism" (David Hooper Schultz, The Carolina Gay Association, The Southeastern Gay Conferences, and Gay Liberation in the 1970s South," 2019).

Lambda was first published in 1976 under the Carolina Gay Association (now, SAGA) as a result of the CGA's first Southeastern conference. It’s UNC’s oldest queer magazine and has played a crucial role in building a local queer community while spreading valuable educational materials accessible to all.

In 1985, the CGA changed its name to be inclusive and welcoming to gay women in the group.  They continued their efforts to provide social gatherings for queer folk and to educate the general campus.

In 1992, CGLA changed its name once again, this time to B-GLAD in an effort to be inclusive of bisexual people. Straight allies also gained a larger role than they had in the past.

Wanting to show openness to transgender folks, B-Glad changed to the Queer Network for Change in 1998.  Under this name, the organization found very little success in organizing and suffered from extremely low membership.  Straight allies felt unwelcome, and many folks were put off by the word queer.

In 2002, the GLBT-SA was formed from the remnants of QNC.  Under this name, the group became a space for LGBTQ+ folks and straight allies to socialize together and promote various forms of social justice across campus.  The group reached its peak membership of 620+ folks during this period.

This annual gathering was founded in 2003 by UNC Student and GLBT-SA organizer Trevor Hoppe, who wanted to bring something to the Southeast that was akin to the annual National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Creating Change conference.  Originally, this UNC conference was called the NC Unity Conference, but by 2005, phenomenal growth in attendance and reach called for the name to be changed to the Southeast Regional Unity Conference. For some time, it was the largest LGBTQ+ conference in the southeastern United States. Organizers described the occasion as “an annual gathering of progressive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer-identified people and their allies in the Southeast. It was founded to create dialogues about the intersections of gender and sexuality with ability, age, class, faith, health, and race/ethnicity, to explore strategies for effective grassroots organizing, and to share work that we and other LGBTIQ activists are doing in the Southeast. In generating these conversations, the Unity Conference served to foster a progressive Southeastern LGBTIQ movement that affirms and reflects all aspects of the identities of LGBTIQ people.” The last conference was held in 2015.

The group made its most recent name change in 2012, wanting to provide a safe and welcoming group for folks of all genders and sexualities that fall under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Today the group focuses on planning social events and engaging in social justice work to help protect and promote the LGBTQ+ community on campus.