The Campus Closet | Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Tasting the Rainbow

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by Kilian Kröll '01

Picture this: An extravagantly decorated and colorfully lit Founders Great Hall where professional drag queens and student and faculty amateurs perform on a long runway. A cheering multi-college crowd of students, faculty members, deans and the president, many dressed as members of opposite sex or flamboyantly "hoochified," watching, performing and dancing the night away. Girls dressed as boys dancing with other girls, boys dressed as girls dancing with other boys dressed as girls, boys dressed as boys dancing with any combination of the above. All this is happening at Haverford's biggest and best received party event in recent history, Taste the Rainbow, where everyone is happy together in a space in which everything goes, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. This is Haverford putting itself to the test at a queer-organized, queer-sponsored, and queer-celebrating event -- a large step beyond what our community is usually willing or able to accept or promote.

The day-to-day life of bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender students and those questioning and challenging their gender and/or sexual identities at Haverford (present-day activists and academics identify all these groups with the cumulative term "queer") is not always a celebration. There are many issues one has to confront in this small and sometimes conservative community setting. Along with these concerns come the many benefits of being queer at Haverford, which are just as important to establish as the troubling aspects.

Coming out as a queer person at Haverford, where one need not fear physical threats and can generally count on the concern and support of other community members, can be a rewarding and enriching experience. Seldom will one find a place like this where one can explore one's identity in both a personal and intellectual manner, and gain the self-confidence to face the world as an openly queer person. However, coming out on campus requires more energy than is often imagined. Non-heterosexuals are still seen as the Other and as deviating from the Havernorm. And sexual orientation is often viewed in terms of a heterosexual-homosexual binary, a view which particularly intimidates and ostracizes those who are still questioning their sexual orientation as well as those who do not identify with either of the two categories. Once one comes out to the whole community there is always the danger of being ignored or disregarded by one's former straight-identified friends or to be iconized as the token gay spokesperson, both inside and outside the classroom.

Some of these issues are being addressed in the academic realm, where there is currently a push (following many of our peer institutions) to create an official Gay & Lesbian or Queer Studies program. The increasing number of classes with queer themes and content in the Tri-College community makes it possible for current students to independently concentrate in Queer Studies. With the help of interested students and professors, particularly in the English and Spanish departments, such a program will hopefully be made official in the near future. What is currently hindering this process is the overall lack of personal interaction between students and queer or queer-friendly faculty members. Sadly enough, it seems that faculty and staff members are hesitant to be open about their sexuality at Haverford, which makes their access rather limited to students who would like to discuss concerns about life after college, being out in the workplace, establishing families, and creating academic paths suited to their personal interests.

Recently, the Admissions Office has been doing more to recognize the needs of queer applicants to Haverford (including, for example, a brochure on queer life at Haverford). Simultaneously, the openly queer student population has visibly grown in the past few years, particularly the number of out men in the first-year and sophomore classes. This increase in numbers has been immensely valuable for the whole Haverford community, which is now able to see how diverse the queer community really is. However, once these students arrive on campus, they are not always greeted with active support from the administration. As of now, there is no queer-identified advisor to help students figure out their own personal concerns, to help coordinate and sponsor queer events, or to represent queer interests in college policy making processes. In addition, the administrative definition of "diversity" generally does not include sexual orientation; when it does, it is dealt with separately from race and gender. Yet the queer community includes people of color, people with disabilities, people who are non-male, people from various national, religious, cultural and political backgrounds, and those whose voice will never be heard because they are forced to hide their sexual orientation. Administrative support needs to cater to all of these students in order for our community to advance as a whole.

Even though queer students face many struggles at Haverford, events like Taste the Rainbow provide the reassurance that there is the impetus to make queer voices heard and readiness of the community at large to listen. Haverford has great potential - we are all trained to absorb, process and challenge voices other than our own. It is now time to act on that potential -- with a concerted administrative effort towards all-emcompassing diversity -- and time to change.