OR.COLL. HO 75 . J96 v. 18 no. 9 March 2, 2001 V olume 18 ♦ N umber 9 ♦ M arch 2, 2001 Portland, Oregon FREE CREATING ON EARTH Gardens as places of healing, magic and spiritual inspiration by O riana G reen Page 22 Ceramic fertility goddess by Anna Carpentieri graces her garden Higher learning Portland woman struggles to rid campus of shame by J onathan R K ipp ebecca Kenney wants people to know that Mount Hood Community College, where she serves as director of continuing education and Rebecca Kenney adviser of the Pride Students’ Alliance, is becoming a better place for sexual minorities to teach, work and, most importantly, learn. “It really is a time of change here,” she says. The metamorphosis from a staunchly conservative college to one A quiet comer of the Keeston Lowery Memorial Garden at City Hall that just is starting to recognize and deal with its own institutional homophobia has been slow. But Kenney’s tenacity, patience and political astuteness—and even her sense of humor—are begin ning to pay off. No one appointed her to help spearhead the effort, but as the college’s only out sexual minority faculty or staff member, she didn’t have much choice. “Someone needed to come forward,” she says. The struggle to help co-workers and administrators understand that the college wasn’t doing all it could do to make everyone wel come on campus was a tiring one for Kenney. For two years she found herself surrounded by homophobic statements at meetings, policies that didn’t include gay families and institutional denial that ran deep. And while she stepped forward and did what she thought she could do to help make things better, she grew increasingly frus trated by only cursory change. Continued on Page 12 Moving On J.urne B.ilho.i steps dow ii .is Basic Rights Oregon exeeutiv e director