Gay students demanding equality on
THE NATIONAL COLLEGE
NEWSPAPER
SPECIAL REPORT
This is the last in a series of
U. special reports This
package examines campus
issues important to an emerging
minority group and how administrators
are responding to their concerns
Report by
Hector Vargas
U. Editor
Southwest Missouri State l' student
Brad Evans drove home last fall after a
candlelight vigil supporting the presen
tation of a play about homosexuals and
found his home engulfed in flames. Fire
department officials concluded the blaze
was an arson and linked it to Evans’ sup
port of the play Springfield. Mo., commu
nity members had vehemently opposed
the play, which was fully supported by
university administrators.
Only six days earlier, more than 1.000
miles away. Rutgers U. officials released
what gay rights leaders have heralded as
the nation’s most comprehensive study of
gay and lesbian needs on campus. Tin*
107-page report took 18 months to com
pile and provides 130 detailed recommen
dations on how to improve the quality of
life for all Rutgers gays and lesbians
students, faculty, staff and alumni.
These unrelated events represent polar
extemes m the treatment of gay and les
bian students nationwide. There are few
reported incidents of physical violence,
but most university communities are far
from the open atmosphere that spurred
Rutgers officials to initiate such a pro
gressive project.
But national gay rights leaders predict
the 1990s wall be a transition period for
the movement. “1 think there's a growing
sense of empowerment,” said Kevin
Bo mil of the National Gay and G-shian
Task Force in Washington, DC Bcrrill
heads the NGLTF's Anti-Violence Project
and Campus Project, which helps orga
nize gay students to combat homophobia,
an irrational fear of homosexuals,
“Rutgers is a classic case," Berrill con
tinued "The students persuaded the
president to initiate a task force on gay
and lesbian concerns. The report looks at
every aspect of gay and lesbian life on
campus. The fact that such a needs
assessment took place is amazing ’
A handful of schools — including L of
California, Santa Cruz; U. of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign; Vassur College; and
U. of Massachusetts, Amherst — have
conducted or are conducting similar “cli
mate assessments " But none have
matched the Rutgers study.
“Most of the efforts have focused just on
academics or just on services, but what
we’ve done is look at everything from
employee benefits to alumni support,"
said Ron Nieberding, a Rutgers graduate
student who served on the committee and
edited its report
The late Rutgers President Edward .1
Bloustein formed the President's Select
Committee for Gay and Lesbian
(’oncems after gav students criticized the
administration for being more attentive
to racism than homophobia.
“We cannot comprehend . your total
lack of positive action in the realm of sup
port of the gay and lesbian community,”
a letter to Bloustein from the Rutgers U
Lesbian/Gay Alliance reads.
An administration official agreed that
homosexual concerns inadvertently were
given less attention. “The implication to
gay and lesbian students was that the
university was not taking issues of homo
phobia as seriously as issues of racism.
It's safe to say they were correct in assum
ing that,” said David Burns, assistant
vice president for Student Life Policy and
Services.
"We responded very quickly to their
concerns because we had an intellectual
obligation to do so, and because we had
just talked about our desire to improve
conditions for people who are viewed as
different in some way," he said.
Formed in February 1988, the commit
tee was made up of 28 Rutgers students,
faculty, staff, administrators and alumni.
The committee met 71 times in the course
of a year and a half, and established five
fundamental objectives for Rutgers.
The report calls for the creation of an
office for gay and lesbian concerns, sensi
tivity programs to combat homophobia, a
safe space free of racist, sexist, anti
Semetic or homophobic bigotry, assur
ance of equity in access to employee ben
efits and services, and integration of
diverse disciplines such as women’s,
Afro-American and gay/lesbian studies
— into already required courses.
Senior Suzy Bibona. RULGA secretary,
said the progress at Rutgers has been
substantial. “Rutgers has come pretty far
in a short period of time Now, people are
at least listening attitudes don't
change overnight — but they’ve started
to listen and started to name a thing
called homophobia where they didn’t
liberty
iWl HEMjNjJ-OVE. ..
j
DON BiBB hit UNIVIRS'- V SUP. SOUTHWEST IF OS STATE u
An unidentified U. of Texas student protests at
a gay rights march in Austin, Texas, last year.
know what that was before,” she said
Hut Evans knows all too well what
homophobia is For him, it resulted in an
arson that robbed him of his home and
possessions, and killed Ins two cats
Last fall, SMSLT’s theater and dance
department scheduled a production of the
play “The Normal Heart ” The Advocate,
a national gay magazine, described the
play as an examination of “the lives of gay
men in New York City during the early
1980s, at the onset of the AIDS crisis. The
play includes profanity, and in several
instances, gay men show affection for
each other and kiss."
Although Evans, a senior theater and
performance major, was not involved in
the production of the play, he helped
form People Acting with Compassion
and Tolerance a group that supported
production of the play in response to
Citizens Demanding Standards, a com
munity group opposed to the play
“The main thing that they found offen
sive was that the play dealt openly with
homosexuality and homosexual
lifestyles,” Evans said. “They didn’t feel
like tax dollars should be spent to produce
the play. They called it pornography.”
Led bv state Rep. -Jean Dixon, CDS met
with university officials asking that the
production be cancelled.
Dixon did not return four phone mes
sages left at her Jefferson City, Mo., office.
University officials remained steadfast
in their decision to support the play. On
opening night. Evans attended a PACT
sponsored candlelight vigil in support of
the play Afterward, he drove home to set
his VCR to tape news coverage of the vigil
only to find 12 fire trucks in front of his
house. "At first, 1 couldn’t drive close
enough to see it was my house.”
Within 15 minutes after the blaze was
doused, fire department officials knew
that it was an arson and linked it to
Evans pro-play stance. Rut to this day
there are no leads in the case.
.After the shock, Evans said he felt
angry. “Rut I feel more sorry for the people
who did it. That someone can let fear force
them into doing something like that is
very sad, he said.
Although his case may be one of the
most violent, Evans is not alone in the
harassment he received from being asso
ciated with gays or gav issues. Last year,
a U. of Pennsylvania freshman who
devoted his bi-weekly student newspaper
column to gay issues, received threats on
his answering machine At Columbia U.,
members of the campus gay and lesbian
organization received death-threat let
ters with actual bullets attached. Most
gay and lesbian student organizations
report receiving harassing phone calls.
According to the 1988 NGLTF Report
on anti-gay violence, 34 gay and lesbian
student groups in the United States
reported 1,124 cases of verbal harass
ment, 177 cases of vandalism, 97 violent
threats, nine physical assaults and four
bombs threats m 1988. The report
acknowledges, however, that these fig
ures represent only the tip of the iceberg
since many colleges do not have organiza
tions to document harassment.
"Most administrators will say there
isn't any anti-gay harassment on their
campus but that is because the environ
ment is so oppressive that gav students
are afraid to come out," Bemll said.
Those students who do choose to be
openly gay and become involved in gay
and lesbian campus organizations must
learn to deal with the threat of violence
Jeff Nickel, co-president of Boston U.'s
Lesbian/Gay Alliance and a senior psy
chology major, gets harassing phone calls
almost daily. But he keeps his number
listed so he can be accessible to people.
academics
Gay studies movement...The City College of San
Francisco is the nation's first college to have a
department devoted to gay and lesbian studies,
offering 11 courses in literature, psychology, history’
and other subjects The need for such courses is the
same as that for other minorities, said Walter
Williams, a U. of Southern California professor.
“Perhaps it's even more important for gay students
because at least with every- other minority group in
America people have their family background and
have been raised with their heritage whereas gay
students have not," he said. Mark Von Destinon of
the American College Personnel Association said the
gay studies movement is “where black studies and
women’s programs were at the end of the 1960s."
Among the schools with classes devoted to gay studies
are: U. of California, Berkeley; City U. of New York;
lYinceton L'; and Yale U. HY
Housing
Married housing for gay couples... Stanford IJ. is one of
the few universities offering gay and lesbian stu
dents equal access to married and family student
housing. To be eligible for this housing, a couple must
be legally married under California law, but Stanford
recognizes that not everyone - for whatever reason
- can be legally married, Stanford allows these cou
ples to petition for special housing consideration.
Student Housing Director Rodger Whitney said a
handful of gay and lesbian students have applied for
and received housing under the special considera
tion. “We simply have seen a problem and students
had raised the issue, and we were responsive to that,"
Whitney said. “I think it’s a policy that many are
starting to pay attention to.” Other colleges with sim
ilar housing policies include: U. of Massachusetts,
Amherst; U. of North Dakota; U. of Pennsylvania;
and Yale U, — HV
Publications
Gay community newspaper...U. of California, Los
Angeles, is the only university in the nation that has
a student newspaper devoted to gay and lesbian con
cerns, said TenPercent Editor Adam Ross. The news
paper, which receives all its funds from advertising
revenues, serves to inform the gay and straight com
munities of gay issues and events. “It's got an advo
cacy bent that a regular newspaper wouldn’t have,"
Ross said. But that doesn’t mean the newspaper and
the UCLA gay and lesbian student organization
always agree. “There’s always been a tension there
because the newspaper tends to scrutinize the group
and the groups are always afraid of scrutiny," he said.
A recent representative survey of the UCLA commu
nity revealed TenPercent has the third highest read
ership of the campus' special interest publications.
Established in the late 1970s, TenPercent is pub
lished six times a year. HV