<p>Sure. </p>
<p>My name’s Jason, and I sit on the board of QuEST, which stands for Questioning Established Sexual Taboos, here at Lafayette College.</p>
<p>Almost every gay who’s out of the closet at Lafayette College will tell you life here isn’t bundles of fun, and I actually know a couple people who waited until after they graduated to come out of the closet. This isn’t to say the college administration isn’t supportive. Almost every dean and professor I have relationships with are supportive, and would be supportive if I had any problems.</p>
<p>However, as most people know, college life doesn’t fully revolve around the classroom, and socialization and affinity with your fellow college students is just as important. It’s only been a couple years since Lafayette was removed from the Princeton Review’s list of most homophobic colleges.</p>
<p>The students here at Lafayette are, by the most part, hold similar mindsets. Rich, politically liberal, but with conservative mindsets who hail from the tri-state area. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, and I’ve made my share of friends here.</p>
<p>So, candyman92486, my motive would be for prospective kids to get the best college experience possible. I hold no loyalty to Lafayette College. By all means it’s an exceptional school with an amazing engineering program and incredibly supportive faculty/administration. But the students here are closed minded beyond any comparison, and there’s no going around that.</p>
<p>I was actually bored trying to set up my independent study when I googled “gay” + “Lafayette College” to see if QuEST’s website would pop up, but this little number popped up instead.</p>
<p>If anyone has any other questions, feel free to email me: <a href=“mailto:pangj@lafayette.edu”>pangj@lafayette.edu</a>. I can also forward you to other out gays here on campus that might have different point of views.</p>
<p>I suppose I was hasty in making my first post. I just read candyman92486’s post that, “Although Lafayette students are often classified as conservative, that in no way means gay students must face intolerance. In general, college is a very welcoming and open-minded place, where students can feel free to be themselves without feeling ostracized,” and that just screamed BULLS*IT. </p>
<p>Some people are quite adept in working and living in a place where you can thrive under strong adversity. One of my friends who’s a lesbian here loves the amount of intolerance on this campus because she knows that she won’t become complacent, and will keep pushing for equal rights here. </p>
<p>However, there are others who also work to reverse homophobia, but just don’t want to drop 50K every year to do so. </p>
<p>I’ll take back my statement about making an opinion of whether a gay student should apply to Lafayette. However, I do want to make sure gay kids who are struggling with the issue, like I was in high school, aren’t told that Lafayette is all flowers and candy with open arms for kids like them, because it’s not.</p>
<p>So unless you happen to be gay yourself, candyman92486, I don’t think you can make a decision about how “supportive” or “open-minded” the student body is towards GLBTQ issues.</p>