As has occurred in other threads, there are people who find certain rankings/identifications useful and others who do not. There is an oft-mentioned school on the forum that does well on Campus Pride (university policies) but does not do well with respect to how friendly the institution is for the LGBTQ community. This thread would be an excellent opportunity to mention why people do or do not find Campus Pride helpful in identifying LGBTQ-friendly schools, or why it is one tool that people may use but not the only one.
A school’s inclusion (or exclusion) on the Campus Pride Index does not mean that it is friendly or un-friendly to the LGBTQ community. It’s a matter of whether a school has submitted its info. Campus Pride (and Princeton Review) were just two common sources to develop some kind of a framework of schools to include. We used the sources with different methodologies so that there might be some kind of a discussion (or discovery) of which list(s) may be helpful, and in which circumstances.
If there are additional sources/frameworks that you would like to suggest, please do so. We want resources for those seeking an LGBTQ-friendly school to be as robust as possible, and perhaps we can try and develop a list of resources for families and students on this topic. But the resources will only be as strong as the community provides.
We do hope that people continue to list schools or share their experiences that can help shed light on this topic for the community.
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A reminder to posters to please stay on topic with this thread and follow the administrator’s instructions.
And to stress AustenNut’s post:
"If there are additional sources/frameworks that you would like to suggest, please do so. We want resources for those seeking an LGBTQ-friendly school to be as robust as possible, and perhaps we can try and develop a list of resources for families and students on this topic. But the resources will only be as strong as the community provides.
We do hope that people continue to list schools or share their experiences that can help shed light on this topic for the community."
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Campus Pride Index rates administrative policies. Princeton Review surveys aggregate opinions that may be based more on social environment and such. Hence, there may be a college with favorable administrative policies, but an unfriendly social environment.
I wrote in post #6 about the difference between these and other aspects that someone may consider.
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Yes, that is quite true. Those were originally questions for this poll (#1 & 8), but they were added to the other poll about LGBQT information once this one was shifted over to get feedback from peoples’ experiences.
I found scrolling through Niche comments to be revealing. Also just doing Google searches using a school’s name plus LGBT, or even just asking Google “Is school ___ LGBT friendly?” This would often bring up Reddit or Quora threads that gave a lot of detail. I think it can also be helpful to be more specific, for example searching both under “LGBT” and “lesbian” if you are lesbian.
I think that the Fiske Guide to colleges also can give a pretty good idea, but Fiske only has a few hundred schools.
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Clark (Worcester MA) is LGBTQ friendly including the T
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