🚀 go-pugleaf

	THE DILEMMA OF GAYS AND LESBIANS ON CAMPUS
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by Keith Clark (The Alternative)

San Francisco - "Why would a 20-year old college student use his university's 
computer to send a message offering a rationale for 'killing homosexuals,' as 
a Penn State student did in 1989?  Why would a coach have a rule that allowed 
only heterosexuals on a Penn State intercollegiate team?  Why would a Penn 
State faculty member tell his counseling class that he would kill his son were 
the son to 'come-out' to him?"

These were questions Anthony D'Augelli of the Department of Human Development 
and Family Studies at Pennsylvania State University asked at a symposium on 
"Lesbian and Gay Youth and the Schools" during the 99th annual convention of 
the American Psychological Association here August 16-20.

They were not just rhetorical questions, however, said D'Augelli.  They are 
precursors of worse things to come during the 1990s unless the whole climate 
on campus is radically changed.  "As polls indicate that increasing percentages 
of Americans favor lesbian and gay rights-including the right to legalization 
of couplehoods-why does it seem that more and more campus animosity is 
directed toward lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, and anyone presumed to fit 
into one of these categories?"

D'Augelli conceded that there were "no empirical data to address the 
hypothesis that heterosexism on campus is significantly more intense than 
non-campus heterosexism."  But he urged that "heterosexism on campus (whether 
or not it shadows heterosexism elsewhere) will escalate in the 1990s unless 
some action is taken now" to curb it.

Even though the majority of lesbian/gay college students are still closeted, 
D'Augelli noted a 1986 anonymous survey that reported 11 percent of the 
students identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Most young lesbians and gay men have acknowledged their sexual orientation to 
themselves by the time they reach college.  As a result, D'Augelli said, 
"denial becomes increasingly improbable, and conflict intensifies."

Increased student activism, the "freer context" that campus life offers young 
people away from the scrutiny of their family, the recent resurgence in 
high-visibility off-campus groups like Queer Nation, and even the growing 
inclusion of sexual orientation "as one of the 'politically correct' causes on 
campus" increases this growing openness at colleges and universities.

D'Augelli also noted that students are coming-out at an even earlier age than 
in the past.  In the past, he said, students involved in campus lesbian/gay 
groups were more likely to be juniors or seniors "preparing for lesbian/gay 
life after college."  Now, he said, newly-arrived freshman (freshpeople?) are 
increasingly becoming involved in campus groups-and they're coming out with 
greater family support than before.

D'Augelli noted that a 20-year-old student today might well have parents who 
are 45 years of age, people whose own young adult lives took place during the 
"liberation movements" of the mid-1960s and early 1970s.

"Current undergraduates," he said, "were born about the same time as the 
modern lesbian/gay rights movement-1969.  This is the first post-Stonewall 
generation, and their parents were having children as homosexuality was being 
deleted as a mental illness from the [American Psychiatric Association] 
nomenclature in 1973...The new generations of university and college lesbians 
and gay men expect a place on campus-they see no reason for shame."

Yet D'Augelli said, "The assertiveness of this generation is a double-edged 
sword: it seems very hard for these young people to look back on the hurts of 
the past since they are too busy hoping to move ahead.  Seeking help is not 
acceptable [to them], yet most young lesbians and gay men I know are in need 
of more support and nurturance than they receive.  Young lesbians and gay men 
are probably the most poorly served group on campus as far as health and 
mental health services are concerned [and] fearing the consequences of 
allowing themselves to be vulnerable again, they do not make their needs 
known."

Coupled with this increased pressure-external and internal-to come-out on 
campus, D'Augelli said anti-lesbian/gay violence on campus was likely to 
increase because lesbians and gays remain the only "acceptable targets" of 
hatred among younger males increasingly insecure about "the assertion of 
masculine adulthood," and because colleges and universities, if they do 
anything at all about sexual orientation, tend only to "offer a service" 
rather than "produce a change in the actual culture of the [campus] 
community."

To counter this trend, D'Augelli said "comprehensive" steps need to be taken 
on campuses rather than being "limited to the development of specific 
services."

Institutional protection and institutional inclusion, according to D'Augelli, 
are critical components of the comprehensive change that is needed on campus.  
"All policies must explicitly include sexual orientation as a basis upon which 
all kinds of discrimination are prohibited," he said.

Such steps, D'Augelli said, "will make computer hate messages, discriminatory 
practices, and faculty insensitivities less socially acceptable.  Inclusion of 
lesbians and gay men in the social and academic lives of colleges and 
universities must be the over-arching goal, the achievement of which will 
allow subsequent young people to step 'out' on campus with much less to risk 
and with much to gain."


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  G A Y   &   L E S B I A N   A S S O C I A T I O N   O F   D A L H O U S I E
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Phone:	Francis (429-0571)	Neil (429-4170)		Carolyn (496-0467)

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  G A Y   &   L E S B I A N   A S S O C I A T I O N   O F   D A L H O U S I E