LGBT history can be traced back to ancient times, but it is only within the past 100 years that gay and lesbian awareness has been present on college campuses. Through the years, gay and lesbian students have progressed, been judged, and worked together to make a difference in college. Not all of the moments in LGBT college history have been pretty, but we believe that all of these were significant. Read on to learn about turning points, scandals, and important days in LGBT history on college campuses.
-
The handsome girl at Cornell
A former Cornell student, Ellen Coit Brown, wrote about her experiences at the university between the years of 1879 and 1882, an experience that included a female cross dressing scandal. According to Brown, during a concert in town, a young girl appeared to be out on a date with a woman dressed up in a man’s suit. The story spread all over town, resulting in the "handsome girl" becoming expelled, and her cross dressing date fading into anonymity, never appearing at the college again. Brown speculated, "I suppose the university felt that this was too utterly utter and they must take note of it." But the students didn’t agree, and the incident brought on a feeling of tragedy and gloom on campus. Fortunately, Brown’s story reports a happy ending for the handsome girl, who "beat on the closed doors of the university so persistently that they let her in again," going on to graduate and live a "long and exemplary life."
-
Harvard University’s Secret Court
Although Harvard made news by creating the first endowed chair in LGBT studies, the university’s LGBT support policy wasn’t always such a sparkling example. In 1920, following the suicide of a homosexual student, a disciplinary tribunal known as the Secret Court formed to investigate homosexual activity on campus. For two weeks, the court held over 30 interviews, expelling and severing university ties with eight students, a recent graduate, and an assistant professor. This action resulted in more suicides, with one student committing suicide after persecution, and several others doing so later in life, perhaps due to the life changing impact of the judgment, which included letters to their parents, as well as letters to other colleges that resulted in the students’ rejection upon application. Several of the parents reacted, defending their childrens’ actions, and four of the students were invited to reapply to Harvard after some time had passed. Harvard went to great lengths to keep the affair from going public, with only one Boston American article questioning, but not fully understanding, the strange suicides that happened on campus. As a result, the incident was not revealed until 2002, when a researcher from The Harvard Crimson discovered the "Secret Court" files in the university archives, releasing the documents much to the horror of the Harvard community, with The Crimson later running an editorial calling for the university to grant "posthumous honorary degrees" to those who were not able to return. Harvard University President Summers made a statement expressing regret, underlining the belief that "persecuting individuals on the basis of sexual orientation is abhorrent and an affront to the values of our university."
-
The Oscar Wilde Study Circle
In 1937, future gay rights pioneer Morris Kight organized the Oscar Wilde Study Circle at Texas Christian University to examine the life and works of notable gay author Oscar Wilde. Although little information exists about the study circle itself, its creation was just one of many great actions taken by Morris Kight, who went on to become one of the founders of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement in the US.
-
The Kinsey Institute
Although Alfred Kinsey’s work on human sexuality is not limited to LGBTQ sexual behavior, his 1948 publication Sexual Behavior in the Human Male offered a revealing look at male homosexuality. His findings included the fact that 37% of the men studied had at least one homosexual experience but that only 10% of males self-indentified as homosexual. Kinsey’s work was met with shock and outrage by the general public at the time, but it is still referenced today. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, located at Indiana University, still investigates issues in LGBTQ (and straight) sexual health and knowledge to this day.
-
Indiana University Bathroom Entrapment scandal
During the 1950s on the Indiana University campus, an elite student council, the Board of Aeons, fought homosexuality. This was on the same campus as the Kinsey Institute, about a decade after Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was published. In the fall of 1958, the Aeons discussed suspected homosexual activity on campus and planned to catch men in the act through a stake out of a bathroom. They used cameras, taking pictures of men in the toilet stalls who they believed were having sex, with a plan to refer the men to psychiatric treatment. This obvious invasion of privacy was not tolerated by the university. The dean of students immediately fired all staff involved in the bathroom camera scandal, and dealt with students on an individual basis, several of whom left the campus. The bathroom was also locked, available only to staff members with keys. Although this incident sounds shocking, they were not the only ones to engage in similar behavior during the era. The federal government and even other college campuses were taking part in what historians recognize as the Cold War "Pink Scare" or "Lavender Scare."
-
The Student Homophile League at Columbia University
Now known as the Columbia Queer Alliance, the Student Homophile League was established at Columbia University in 1967. The group started out with twelve members, and had to fight with school administrators for a year before the group would be officially recognized. The New York Times reported on its charter, granted in April 1967, and the group sparked a wave of LGBT student activism, growing into Cornell and NYU LGBT groups.
-
Queer studies courses
At the University of California, Berkeley, the first undergraduate LGBTQ studies course was taught in the spring of 1970. In addition to Berkeley, University of Nebraska and Southern Illinois University followed with their own courses in the fall. At the University of Nebraska, the LGBTQ study was challenged by a bill banning the discussion of homosexuality in state university and colleges, but the bill was defeated.
-
University of Minnesota Gender Clinic
In 1970, the University of Minnesota made news by performing a sex change operation, turning a former pair of brothers into sisters. In a news column published when the hospital made plans to begin gender reassignment surgery in 1967, the medical school seemed to be quite informed about what they were doing, noting that they would "turn the trans-sexuals into women for all purposes but child bearing" and recognizing that a "trans-sexual is not a homosexual but a woman in man’s body." Once performed in 1970, the news of the brothers’ successful surgery spread from Minnesota all the way to St. Petersburg, Florida, and even Ann Landers had something to say about it. Not all of the reception was positive, but the new sisters did proudly sit for a press photo. Their story is just one of many success stories that have come out of the University of Minnesota’s gender reassignment clinic since 1970.
-
University of Michigan’s Gay Advocate’s Office
The University of Michigan established the first LGBT college programs office in 1971, which was then known as the "Gay Advocate’s Office." It is now known as the Spectrum Center. The office was established in response to the school’s chapter of the Gay Liberation Front, which pushed for more representation on campus. The Gay Advocate’s Office started out with a one room office and two quarter time positions, each for a lesbian and gay male, titled human sexuality advocates, and eventually grew to full time positions.
-
Lesbianism 101
In 1972, students at the University of Buffalo were able to participate in lesbian studies with the course Lesbianism 101. Madeline Davis and Margaret Small were the instructors for this first course on lesbianism in the US. Davis is a noted gay rights activist, as a founding member of the Mattachine Society and HAG Theater. The course came back in 1978 as "Woman + Woman," and focused on lesbian history, documenting the lives of older lesbians. Interview tapes from this course were used in the 1978 Buffalo Women’s Oral History Project, and Davis and Small won an Astria Foundation grant in 1981 for their work.
-
National Lesbian Conference
In 1973, the National Lesbian Conference came together on the campus of UCLA. This event gathered 2,000 lesbians, attracting important historic figures including Jeanne Cordova, Kate Millett, Ivy Bottini, and Sally Gearhart. It was the "largest single gathering of lesbians known in history" up to that point, with women from twenty six states and even other countries in attendance. From this gathering came political coalitions, including a Lesbian Mothers Union.
-
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies
Located in the Graduate Center of CUNY, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies was founded in 1991 by professor Martin Duberman. It was the first university research center for LGBT, with public programs, conferences, and scholarship based on the social and political issues for LGBT people. The center is still alive and well today, studying homophobia, sexism, racism, and classism. CLAGS is also affiliated with OutHistory.org, a website dedicated to LGBTQ history.
-
Health benefits for domestic partners at the University of Iowa
In 1992, the University of Iowa started a program for expanding health benefits to include same sex domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees. It was argued that by not providing benefits, the gay and lesbian employees were not being given equal pay for equal work. The University of Chicago adopted their own same sex benefit policy shortly thereafter.
-
Yale-Kramer controversy
In 1997, gay and lesbian studies were still relatively new, so when writer and AIDS activist Larry Kramer offered Yale a $4 million endowment for gay studies and the possibility of a gay and lesbian student center, Yale’s reaction was not entirely positive. Yale seemed to accept the gift, but suggested compromises that Kramer took to be homophobic resistance, and instead of sharing his endowment with Yale, Kramer slammed them in a front page New York Times story. Since then, Yale has accepted a grant from Larry Kramer’s older brother for the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
-
Oberlin College’s gay athletic director
In 1998, Michael Muska, a gay male, was hired as the athletic director for Oberlin College. His homosexual status was not intended to be widespread knowledge, although it was not kept under wraps either: Muska himself "dropped the bomb" during an interview with the college search committee. But the Chronicle of Higher Education broke the story, reporting that "Oberlin is so liberal, they just hired a gay male athletic director." The news was met with mixed reviews, with gay publications running the story, and influential alumni sharing their concerns over hiring a gay athletic director.
-
Matthew Shepard’s death
In October 1998, Matthew Shepard, a gay male student at the University of Wyoming, was tortured and left to die on a fence. This harrowing incident was a hate crime against Matthew’s sexual orientation, and brought national attention to the problem of gay hate crimes. In response, the US Congress passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which expanded an existing federal hate crime law to include crimes based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
-
NCAA nondiscrimination
In January 2000, the NCAA added sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination policy, offering protection to gay and lesbian student athletes and coaches. However, it’s not clear how well the measure is enforced, as incidents continue to pop up, including Penn State’s Rene Portland with her no-lesbians policy, and Lisa Howe, Belmont University’s former soccer coach, who was fired after she discussed having a child with her same-sex partner.
-
Touro University’s Gay-Straight Alliance charter revoked, restored
Founded and recognized in 2002, the charter of the Touro University Gay-Straight Alliance was revoked for 4 days in 2006. Touro University is a Jewish-sponsored university, and the school decided to revoke the charter based on "inconsistencies between the group’s mission and Jewish law." However, in response to protests by the student community at Touro, along with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the Vallejo City Council, the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, as well as the American Medical Student Association, the charter and group funding was restored, along with an apology from the university provost.
-
Penn State basketball coach fired for discrimination
It’s hard to believe that as late as 2007, discrimination against gay and lesbian college athletes is so brash, but Rene Portland’s case makes it obvious that problems still exist. She resigned as the women’s basketball coach of 27 years at Penn State after a lawsuit by a former player alleging for the coach’s no-lesbians policy. It’s surprising that it took a full 27 years as the basketball coach for this to become a problem, as she was not shy about her rule. In fact, she bragged to the Chicago Sun-Times in 1986: "I will not have it in my program. I bring it up, and the kids are so relieved, and the parents are so relieved." Despite Portland’s actions, Penn State does have a nondiscrimination policy including lesbian students, as does the NCAA.
-
Harvard’s endowed chair in LGBT studies
In 2009, Harvard University created the first endowed chair in LGBT studies. The position was created out of a $1.5 million gift from the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus. This visiting professorship allows the university to invite LGBT scholars to teach at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for one semester, sharing their ideas in sexuality and sexual minorities. The move was hailed as an "important milestone" for LGBT studies at Harvard and around the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment