Thoughts on the LGBT Report

I have to admit, after reading the report, I'm feeling a lot grumpier about UT than I have been in a while. Like some of the students in the report, I'm from the Northeast, and I have to agree that Austin is still comparatively more conservative than say, NYC or even Boston (which in many ways, is still a very old-school NE city). Certainly, I've heard things at UT that I thought were obsolete (like one student believing that gay people who got AIDS "deserved" it) or that I hadn't heard said since high school (and even then, it was said by people that no one ever took seriously).

Sadly, even as a straight student, I've noticed a certain ambivalence towards any mentions of gender and sexuality on the part of some faculty members. Twice when I've chosen material that contained gay themes for a class assignment, the professors were at best, puzzled, and at worst, distanced themselves. Nothing overt was ever said or done, but I could tell by the expression on their faces that they found my choice of material either strange or off-putting in some way. (And this was pretty mainstream material - Angels in America and Kenji Yoshino's Covering - and both were appropriate choices for both the class and the assignment.) I don't know why they reacted the way they did, but if I were a gay student, I can imagine how such a reaction would have a chilling effect on my performance for the rest of the class.

My undergraduate institution was an women's college, and I know that many of my gay friends and acquaintances found it to be a welcoming space for gays and lesbians. The part about UT losing a number of good professors and staff because of the lack of DPB should be a wake-up call to the administration to change their policies and get in line with the rest of the top-tier universities. If we want to be viewed as one of the top research universities in the world, maybe we should start acting like one, and then people will view us as a desirable place to work and live.

Brief rant: When I was looking for housing, I saw the part about same-sex students not being allowed to room together without some kind of administerial approval, and it made me go, wtf? And don't even get me started on how wrong it is that a major research university and the largest public universities in the nation didn't even have a gender and sexuality center until 2005. It's just sad.