BC and the LGBT Community

swimchris
Wed, 15 Jun 2016 21:11:17 +0000

I think some of you are being a little unfair to the original poster. Boston College does have a somewhat murky history about treatment of their LGBT population. Here is an article from Boston Magazine as recently as last year:

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/04/30/boston-college-lgbtq/

Two powerful quotes:

“Without the support of institutional policies, there will continue to be students on this campus who think it is acceptable to use derogatory and homophobic slurs; student groups will continue to be unfairly limited because of their affiliation with the LGBTQ community; alumni will continue to reflect on Boston College as a university that caused pain and does not practice what it preaches; students will continue to fear reactions from their roommates, classmates, professors and peers; students will continue to be afraid to be who they are.”

or this one:

“At the beginning of my freshman year, I went on a retreat, the purpose of which was to help adjust to college life, where I talked about being gay,” Chamberlain says. “In the weeks after coming back I constantly overheard other students discussing and mocking my sexuality, brazenly pointing at me, or staring in open-mouthed confusion. It culminated in a hall mate staring me in the eye while he told my neighbor that he ‘lived next to a ■■■■■■.’ I felt incredibly isolated and did not know of any resources or administrators to turn to for guidance.”

BC is pretty often listed on Princeton Review’s Least LGBT friendly schools ranking, have op-eds written somewhat regularly by students suggesting they do not have the right support (http://bcgavel.com/2015/05/03/opinion-boston-college-does-not-care-enough-about-the-glbtq-community/), and had an issue where people graffitied homophobic slurs and trashed the LGBT groups office at the law school (http://www.businessinsider.com/boston-college-anti-gay-graffiti-2013-1).

I do think that a LGBT student could have a perfectly awesome time at BC with supportive friends and professors, but it is definitely not leading the way in terms of colleges and universities in terms of creating a supporting and inclusive place.