i’d say that people at the uofc are extremely respectful and supportive of differing sexuality. For the most part, people here really don’t care if you’re gay, straight, bi, transgender, questioning, black, white, green, a cat, whatever- you can be as open as you like about yourself, and people will respect that. We have a lot of recognized student organizations and societies catering to glbtq students- queers and associates, our version of a gay-straight alliance, is popular among both gay and straight students, as is queereligious, a group for glbtq students interested in any sort of religious life to get together and discuss the difficulties many have with their existing religious groups. The 5710 center, a center on campus dedicated to promoting the various ways in which our campus is diverse, has a lot of programs and support networks for students belonging to sexual minorities, and offers many “coming out” support groups and networks for students. </p>
<p>Overall, the campus community is very supportive of glbtq students; my favorite example is from about two weeks ago, when the westboro baptist church (famous, unfortunately, for hating everything, most especially gay people) came to campus to protest various things, they set up shop between the quads and one of the stereotypically ‘manliest’ fraternities on campus, whose brothers made a large sign to hang out of their window that said “straight huggin’: No tolerance for intolerance”, and danced in their underpants on their party porch to songs like “it’s rainin’ men” and “tiny dancer” in support of the mostly-gsa organized counter protest activity.</p>
<p>Most of my gay friends were not comfortable being out at home, but feel completely comfortable doing so on campus because… Nobody really cares about it. Not in a negative way, mind you, but in an “ok, you’re gay, that’s great, but it doesn’t define you in my mind” sort of way. If you want to be active in glbtq life, you definitely can, but you’re also welcome to live completely normally on campus while just so happening to be gay. Most times it will probably go like this: “hey, friend x, i’m gay.” “oh, cool, friend y, that’s nice. Now… Can you show me how you did problem 22 on the chem problem set?”