Although there may be some differences among the LGBT student subcultures depending on what college or university you look at there is a general national history. This history includes LGBT student organizations, which make up most of what describes the LGBT student subculture, and stories of harassment or discrimination.

Since the start of the modern day LGBT equal rights movement in the United States, which took place at the Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969, LGBT students have been organizing student groups at colleges and universities around the country. The Stonewall Inn, a relatively small gay bar located on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village is heralded as the spark that re-ignited the modern day LGBT rights movement. Police raided the bar supposedly looking for illegal sale of alcohol, which was a usual occurrence in the city's gay bars. "the Police raided and attempted to shut down the Stonewall, which was frequented by gay street people, drag queens, students, and others. While patrons usually accommodated the officials, this evening was different: fed up with their ongoing mistreatment, the patrons fought back. Neighborhood residents quickly joined the fray, flinging bottles and rocks at police in riots lasting for three nights."

Out of these riots organizations started springing up all across the country. This included LGBT student organizations. "The first LGBT student group was chartered at Columbia University in New York City in 1969. Named the Student Homophile League, it created quite a stir on campus and received a great deal of media coverage. This publicity spurred the formation of similar groups at Cornell University, New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and elsewhere. Relatively few active members were initially involved, and groups were politically weak, but the seeds had been planted, and a fledgling LGBT student movement was underway."

The first "out" student government president, Jack Baker, was elected in 1970 at the University of Minnesota. The University of Michigan was the first to hire counselors, Cynthia Gair and Jim Toy, to specifically address counseling needs of LGBT students. The University of Massachusetts was the first to hire a director, Felice Yeskel, for their new LGBT student service office in 1985.

Many stories that have been passed down over the years or are documented are about harassment and discrimination against LGBT students and people.

"Stories like these are the substance of an oral tradition by which gay academics who came of age before the 1970's warned one another of the dangers they faced and socialized their younger peers into necessary habits of caution and discretion."

"In 1959, at a small Midwestern college, a student told her faculty advisor that one of her friends was a homosexual. The advisor informed the dean, who called in the student in question and pressured him into naming others. Within twenty-four hours, three students had been expelled; a week later, one of them hung himself.

"About the same time, a faculty member at a Big Ten school was arrested in mid-semester on a morals charge (at that time, all homosexual expression was subject to criminal penalties). The police alerted the administration, and the professor was summarily told to leave the campus. He never appeared before his classes again."

"At an elite college in the northeast, male student in the 1960's were in he habit of training a telescope on the windows of the women's dormitories. In one instance, they spied two female students erotically engaged. The women, not the men, were disciplined."

"At a women's college in New England, where accusations of lesbianism were periodically leveled against roommates in the 1960's, the standard solution was to separate the accused by housing them in different rooms."

[ return to top ]