Conference to be held on queer issues at Great Lakes Schools

The Great Lakes College Association disciplinary meeting on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered issues will be held this weekend in Oberlin, marking the first time member colleges have come together to discuss these issues. The goal of the meeting is to create networks and start dialogues between LGBT faculty, administrators, staff and students associated with the colleges.

Representatives from each institution will arrive in Oberlin on Friday afternoon to begin discussions. According to the GLCA, the first session will establish a sense of the present climate for LGBTs in the consortium and at member colleges. The ideas that come out of the initial meeting will be the content of the second session, focusing on curricular, administrative and organizational issues in particular.

The participants are particularly concerned with topics concerning the faculty, staff, and administration at each school, such as whether they accept LGBT students and support activities and curriculum for and about LGBT students. Participants are also interested in whether faculty, staff and administration who themselves happen to be LGBT are hired on an equal basis and allowed to participate in leadership roles on campus.

The first and second session will also deal with institutional issues. Their goal is to discover whether each college has administrative policies in place that prevent discrimination against LGBTs at all levels.

The third session will begin Saturday afternoon and will give students a chance to speak about their experiences on campuses as LGBTs. The participants are likely to address whether LGBT students are accepted at each college, and if they are not, they will try to identify problem areas and create solutions. The existence and effectiveness of safe spaces, residence halls and on-campus organizations will also be discussed.

According to the GLCA, one important issue is student harassment of LGBTs. This problem does not often rear its ugly head at Oberlin, but instances of violence have occurred on the campuses of other member colleges. William Norris, Oberlin professor of sociology, who is active in dealing with LGBT issues on campus, describes the scene at other colleges as "mixed." He said, "I was asked to give a talk on LGB history and change to a student group at DePauw University....The students were very interested, except for a group of frat boys who seemed, at first, to be intent on disrupting things, but soon left. After the talk, I heard that the students, especially male, were being beat up by the frat boys, because they were perceived to be gay." Discussions on how to avoid situations like this will be included in the third session.

The fourth session will give participants a chance to personally reflect on the topics previously mentioned, and discuss the general campus climate for LGBT staff, administrators, faculty and students.

Norris conceived the idea for the meeting after his experience at DePauw. He said, "I found this all very interesting, since it seemed so different from the scene at Oberlin, and I wondered how one goes about making change in that kind of setting." Oberlin representatives and the GLCA put together most of the work for the conference, which will include the colleges of Kenyon, Wooster, Antioch, DePauw, Hope, Albion, Kalamazoo, Wabash, Denison, Ohio Wesleyan, and Earlham.

Norris said, "it's very significant that this is happening, being that this is the first time ever that the GLCA as an institution has addressed the issues of LGBTs." When asked what he hoped to see as an outcome of the meeting, Norris said "Given that the situation is very difficult on some campuses for students, faculty, and staff, I hope that this will at the very least result in provision of good support for those of us in that situation."