Dartmouth, Gay friendly?

bclintonk
Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:09:55 +0000

Campus Pride’s Campus Climate Index gives Dartmouth its highest LGBT-friendly rating, 5 stars (out of 5). Others in that group: American, Amherst, Carleton, Emory, Humboldt State, Indiana U, Ithaca College, Michigan, MIT, Oberlin, Ohio State, Oregon, Oregon State, Penn, Penn State, Princeton, San Diego State, Southern Oregon, Stanford, Syracuse, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-Riverside, UC-Santa Barbara, UC-Santa Cruz, University of Maine-Farmington, UMass-Amherst, USC, U Vermont, U Washington, Whitman, WUSTL. Fourteen of these are on the West Coast, 12 in the Northeast, 6 in the Midwest, and only 1 (Emory) in the South.

Most of these are either large (the public universities and a few of the privates), or small but in close proximity to other and/or larger schools (e.g. Amherst, Ithaca College), or in major gay-friendly population centers. Only a few are as small and isolated as Dartmouth; Whitman also fits that category, I suppose, and is even smaller. Carleton is small and a bit isolated but it shares the town of Northfield with the somewhat larger St. Olaf and is about a 40-minute drive south of Minneapolis which The Advocate recently named the most gay-friendly city in the U.S. Oberlin is small and a bit isolated but about a 40-minute drive from Cleveland which The Advocate somewhat surprising named the 12th-most gay-friendly city in the nation, one spot behind San Francisco.

From this I’d gather that Dartmouth is LGBT-friendly but as others have suggested, the LGBT dating pool might be rather smaller than at other, comparably gay-friendly colleges and universities.