<p>I’m happy that this generation of gay high schoolers can do research to find accepting campuses:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/fashion/14guide.html?ex=1158465600&en=cd5bad2d3e922aea&ei=5070[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/14/fashion/14guide.html?ex=1158465600&en=cd5bad2d3e922aea&ei=5070</a></p>
<p>Definitely!</p>
<p>High school can be a brutal environment for gay or lesbian young people. College doesn’t have to be – if the student makes a good college choice. The more information that kids have to help them make these choices, the better.</p>
<p>When D (straight) went to Interlochen for her last two years of high school, it was gratifying to see how comfortable the gay/lesbian kids felt there. A majority of the boys at Interlochen were gay, and Interlochen was heaven for them. Being a ballet dancer or vocalist was respected and everyone’s talents were nurtured. My daughter joked that there was more drama in the guys’ dorms than in the girls’ dorms. I was glad there was such a place for these talented kids who felt out of place at their home high schools.</p>
<p>It’s a great idea, even though I’d have quite a different top 20. It tells you something that gay leaders at Duke and Dartmouth expressed surprise at their inclusion on the list. I doubt that that would be the case at Yale, Sarah Lawrence, Vassar, Brown, Bryn Mawr, etc. etc.</p>
<p>When my wife and I moved our daughter into her dorm room freshman year at Brown, we hadn’t been there any longer than about a half an hour before a young woman poked her head into the room and announced that she was one of the advisors on the floor. Introductions were made and then she announced that amongst other things she would be a good person to talk to if there were any questions about LGBT issues. As she was saying this, I could see this funny look on my wife’s face. I immediately knew that an interesting excahnge was about to take place. So my wife asks, “what is LG…”? The young woman had this startled look on her face and then blurted out all of the words. I was ready to roll on the floor laughing because both my wife and the young woman were startled by the Q & A. No one was offended, just surprised. It was all very innocent. That being said, it would have been a very funny skit for SNL.</p>
<p>Speaking of organizations—I was recently scanning the list of clubs/organizations at my son’s school to see what was available. There was one listed as GSSA. When I clicked on it to see what it was it was: Gay-Straight Student Alliance. I had never heard of this. By the name it sounds like it is for all sexual orientations?</p>
<p>Yeah, GSSA, Gay Straight Student Alliance is a club for all sexual orientations. Our HS had it. My younger D went a few times. She is straight but cares about issues of this sort and knows a lot of gay males. </p>
<p>The book being discussed had a certain methodology as such that schools like Smith which have a significant gay population didn’t make it into the book.</p>
<p>[out and about](<a href=“http://www.alyson.com/html/00_files/00_intros/0300/0300outnabout_intro.html”>http://www.alyson.com/html/00_files/00_intros/0300/0300outnabout_intro.html</a>)</p>
<p>This isn’t about choosing colleges, but different experiences glbt students have had. Some are quite poignant. I bought it for my d ( and myself) to read when she went off to school.</p>
<p>You have to remember that, in the general population, there are more than twice as many gay men as lesbians. If even those percentages hold for liberal prestige colleges, the percentage of gay men at “liberal” schools with well-known gay studies programs (Yale comes to mind) would likely be more than twice the 11% of lesbian students that exist at Smtih. So the methodology, in terms of numbers, might make quite a bit of sense, though it would hardly be a test of “friendliness”.</p>
<p>I think it is absolutely wonderful that things are now that much more open. When I went to college (all men at the time), there was a significant gay population, but it was untalked about, virtually everyone was in the closet, and there were 2-3 suicides of gay students each year (though at least half of them took place off campus or during the summer.) I’d hate to see a return to the “bad old days”.</p>
<p>Berkeley is the nation’s most gay-friendly campus. Here people take pride in the double minority (gay and Asian), and the organizations are known as LGBTIQQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transexual Intersex Queer Questioning).</p>
<p>its the “Year of the Queer” at connecticut college
<a href=“http://aspen.conncoll.edu/camelweb/index.cfm?fuseaction=ccnews&id=2718[/url]”>http://aspen.conncoll.edu/camelweb/index.cfm?fuseaction=ccnews&id=2718</a></p>
<p>GSSA is pretty cool…I go to their meetings once in a while (yes, you can be straight and go to meetings; in fact, I think that the majority of us, me included, are straight). It’s nice, especially on a campus that I wouldn’t consider to be that gay-friendly, to have an accepting and friendly organization for those that care about gay rights. We also have a cool lounge to study in and we put on a couple of big events annually - for instance, last year, we invited some drag queens to come perform to raise money for AIDS research.</p>
<p>Vassar is very gay friendly and has lots of gay men.</p>
<p>Here at Cornell, you can get ‘JA’ed’, sent before the Judicial Administration, if your R.A. hears you say something like, “that show was gay” as in it was bad.</p>
<p>UT Austin is very gay-friendly (actually friendly to just about anything) but I would avoid A&M.</p>
<p>I’m gay and I call things I dislike “gay”. It’s probably not very smart, because if you think about it, it’s pretty terrible to use the word like that and just propogates homophobia.</p>
<p>But. Eh. What can I say; I do what I do.</p>
<p>lealdragon, to you go to UT-Austin? I’m wavering back and forth on applying there vs. a more gay-friendly place. People from Texas say it’s a liberal haven, but then people who have come from OOS say it’s honestly not all Texans crack it up to be, i.e. it is still in Texas.</p>
<p>hi groovin!</p>
<p>No I am a mom, but my son plans to go to UT Austin next year. </p>
<p>(He’s not gay, btw, but has some gay friends. One of his best friends, a lesbian, uses the word ‘gay’ all the time. Funny. I guess it’s like when black people call each other the very word that they get offended by when others use it. I don’t know what the logic is in that, but it’s common.)</p>
<p>We live in San Antonio but LOVE Austin for its diversity. It is true that not ALL people in Austin are gay-friendly, unfortunately. I had a gay friend who got beaten up in Austin - I’m not sure where it was but it was downtown someplace. He was out walking alone at night and might have been in a bad part of town. Like every large city (and Austin is not huge but it’s large enough to have some ‘city’ problems) Austin does have some ‘bad’ parts of town. The students are usually fine though, as far as I know - the campus seems pretty safe and there are shuttles to the social hot spots. I guess it’s like any city - you just have to be careful and know what areas to avoid, and use the normal cautions. I read in a college book that Rice, in Houston, has an official caution for students to never venture outside the campus after dark because the crime in Houston is so bad. So there’s stuff like that to deal with in any college in a large city, I guess. But I definitely don’t think you’d have to worry about people giving you a hard time on campus. People are so used to different types of people that I doubt bigotry is tolerated at UT (like it is at A&M).</p>
<p>What I do know is that ‘weird’ is the norm in Austin, especially on campus! When you walk near the campus it is quite normal to see LOTS (and I do mean LOTS) of people who are way ‘out there’ - green or purple hair, tons of tattoos, piercings, Earth-mother hippie types, people who are obviously gay, etc. In fact, there is a popular bumper sticker in Austin that says ‘Keep Austin Weird.’</p>
<p>I don’t know how UT compares with other colleges on the gay issue, but since it is SO huge it’s easy to find plenty of like-minded people, whatever you are into. </p>
<p>I would venture to say it’s probably the most gay-friendly campus in Texas anyway. Austin is a liberal mecca in the heart of conservative Texas. We’ve wanted to live in Austin for many years, but somehow it just never worked out.</p>
<p>I’m curious to hear what your friends meant by ‘not what it’s cracked up to be’ - what specifically did they mean? did they get harassed, or what? was it on campus, or in other parts of the city (or state)? </p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>leal - Rice is in a very nice part of Houston…bordered by West University Place, Museum District, Medical Center and Hermann Park. I think it is okay to venture outside the campus after dark if you stick to certain areas. I wouldn’t wander down to the South Loop, but definitely you do not have to stay within the ivy covered walls of Rice campus.</p>
<p>With respect to tolerance, I think the kind of tolerance you will find at Rice and ‘inside the loop’ Houston is the ‘couldn’t care less/so what’ kind of tolerance. Meaning, that if you are gay, no one will consider that the most interesting thing about you. You will just be another Rice student, gay, straight, whatever…no biggie, nonissue. OUTSIDE the loop, in the 'burbs it’s a little different depending on location.</p>
<p>Having spent the last few days down in the Medical Center, I’m always newly amazed at a few things about ‘my’ city. First, Houston metro area is HUGE! ‘Inside the Loop’ is just so cool; diversity and sophistication to rival any East or West Coast city. And wow…our Medical Center rocks, like a city within a city. (And finally, I’m never going to get used to the turn lane being on top of the metro train tracks.)</p>
<p>Btw…totally concur with lealdragon. I wouldn’t consider A&M a gay-friendly university.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info on Rice. Just to clarify, my post only mentioned Rice as an example of wonderful colleges can be in cities where caution is advised when venturing outside the campus, and not anything about how gays are viewed at Rice since I don’t know anything about that.</p>
<p>Is Vassar the kind of place where you can simply go to the coffeeshop (or anywhere else really) and find that half of the men there are gay? </p>
<p>I ask because it’s really hard to spot the gay guys at my college. I know that they’re out there, but they’re spread out (not to mention closeted). After a while, I get sick of the guessing game.</p>