What you can do to build a less homophobic campus

You may wonder why members of the Princeton community have to worry. Don’t lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people on campus have community resources, such as an LGBT Center? Aren’t many students, faculty and staff out of the closet? Yes — but to mistake this for evidence of a safe, fulfilling and welcoming environment is to mistake tolerance for acceptance. Those of us who are LGBT at Princeton have the benefit of some institutional support; threats of physical violence against our community are no longer the predictable routine they were 30 years ago. But Princeton is far from an accepting climate in which to be queer, and many members of the University community remain closeted. Marriage would help matters. It would give same-sex relationships the legal and symbolic status of opposite-sex ones, and, practically speaking, it would make less complicated the lives of Princeton employees who live in New York, which recognizes same-sex marriages (but not civil unions). With that option now off the table, however, it’s time for us at Princeton to look inward. There’s much that we can do in our own community to change policies and attitudes, make it easier for students, faculty and staff to come out of the closet and move from relative tolerance to full acceptance of LGBT members of our community.

Official University policies have come a long way, but still could use some improvement. Princeton made history by instituting spousal benefits for same-sex partners in the early 1990s, but non-partner-related policies still leave LGBT students and employees facing a variety of challenges. Transgender students and employees, in particular, must negotiate the world of gender-segregated bathrooms, dorm rooms and locker rooms (though next year’s gender-neutral housing pilot program in Spelman Halls may help upperclass students somewhat). They must also jump through hoops to get their paperwork to reflect the gender with which they identify or struggle with financial issues, as the University’s student and the employee health insurance plans do not cover the gender reassignment surgery some transgender people need. We on the LGBT Task Force are working to address these issues, among others, but doing so is an uphill battle.

Even where institutional policy does meet the needs of LGBT students and employees, campus culture frequently lags behind. Homophobia remains widespread, with no shortage of incidents reported every year — whether in the verbal harassment of same-sex couples, particularly on the Street; on some sports teams which are particularly hostile to LGBT members; or in the actions of the Anscombe Society, whose critique of the so-called “hook-up culture” has in the past year devoted more energy to debates about the morality of homosexuality than to anything actually relevant to relationship choices, creating a false dichotomy between the LGBT community and chaste or abstinent students. When factored in with the concerns of faculty and staff, who sometimes worry about how coming out might affect tenure and job security, it becomes apparent that Princeton still has a culture of closetedness. It is 2010, and yet there are voices on campus which leave many LGBT students, staff and faculty preferring to stay in the closet, rather than be saddled not only with misplaced judgments of immorality, but also with social segregation and harassment. As any publicly out person can surely attest, institutional policy can be quite tolerant, and yet it still only takes one homophobic or transphobic person to sabotage all sense of belonging.

The upside to this state of affairs, however, is that all members of the University community can take action to fix it. Given the political situation in Trenton and Washington, marriage equality is more than any of us can achieve this semester. But by calling out homophobia and transphobia when you see it, challenging stereotypes about LGBT people when you hear them and even coming out yourself as LGBT or as a straight ally, you can help to move Princeton into a new era of acceptance of your LGBT professors, students, classmates, roommates, teammates, friends, administrators, supervisors, colleagues, co-workers and fellow community members.

Emily Rutherford is a sophomore from San Diego. Calif., who runs a blog on gender equality issues. Jen Rexford ’91 is a computer science professor. Jan Runkle is the business manager of University Health Services. All three of the authors are members of the LGBT Task Force. Rutherford, Rexford and Runkle can be reached at erutherf@princeton.edu, jrex@princeton.edu and jrunkle@princeton.edu, respectively.

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