On the popular Facebook group Tufts Memes, an item was recently posted showing a desperate Snow White turning to alcohol because her Prince Charming is gay. The caption is "#tuftsproblems."
While this is an obvious exaggeration, Tufts is known for its robust and open lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. In 2006, Tufts was ranked among the 20 best schools for LGBT students in "The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students."
One of the places where the queer community at Tufts is most visible is the Tufts LGBT Center, which is part of the Group of Six. The Group of Six comprises a collection of cultural centers whose goal is to promote diversity on campus.
The Center was first established in 1992 and was originally located in Lewis Hall. Today, the LGBT Center shares a location with the Latino Center at the Bolles House on College Avenue.
Tom Bourdon has been the director of the LGBT Center since September 2008, and he explained that the Center provides a wealth of resources and support for queer students at Tufts.
"I always say there are four things we offer as a Center and I work on as a director: advocacy, community building, general support and education for the entire campus on issues around sexual orientation and gender identity and expression," Bourdon said. "As a space, this is somewhere where people can come to talk to staff members, get support if they are dealing with struggles or come just to hang out and feel comfortable knowing they can be themselves and have friendly people to talk to."
The Center's staff and its undergraduate interns emphasize that the Center provides a safe space for students.
"Our main objective is to be a safe space for all students, and education is secondary to that," Emily Mears, staff assistant for the LGBT Center, said.
"I think that the Center is important mainly because it provides a space, especially a safe space, for students who identify as LGBTQ [Q standing for queer or questioning] who want to talk about issues, their social lives and academic lives and how their identity affects them every day," junior Ben Serrano, an undergraduate intern at the LGBT Center, said.
Junior Katie Hegarty, also an undergraduate intern at the Center, added that the LGBT Center offers a variety of other resources for students of all sexual orientations.
"We have safe-sex materials, male condoms and internal condoms, dental dams, water-based lubricant, brochures on domestic and relationship violence and the dating scene on campus," Hegarty said.
The Center also hosts various student discussion groups, including Queer Students of Color and Allies (QSOCA), Men's Group, Women's Group and Bisexual Students Group.
Although there is no official student group for transgender students at Tufts, Mears explained that the Center welcomes members of that segment of the Tufts student body.
"We do offer resources for trans students, but there are not any groups because we haven't had a student come forward and make one," Mears said.
Bourdon said that resources for transgender students include the new gender-neutral housing policy and several gender-neutral bathrooms, adding that he has worked with the registrar on issues pertaining to name changes and diploma changes in relation to gender identity.
"We also try to do a great deal of programming each year which is specific to trans identities or issues around gender identity and expression," Bourdon said.
According to Bourdon, while the LGBT Center is primarily focused on LGBT students, allies are important as well.
"Our main focus is to support the LGBT community, but there is absolutely no way that this would be done without also working with the entire community at ensuring this to be a safe campus which understands the unique experiences and needs of the queer community," Bourdon said.
Mears said the LGBT Center attracts about as many straight allies as LGBT students.
"I would say that it is [a] 50-50 spilt," Mears said. "The LGBT Center is open for everyone. People assume it's just for LGBTQ students, but we are trying to focus on making sure our straight allies feel comfortable as well."
Recently, the Center has been focusing on events for GAYpril, including an open mic night, the Queer Straight Alliance's (QSA) Annual Drag Show, Lavender Graduation and the Lavender Letter Campaign. The Lavender Letter Campaign was a weeklong program in which allies were encouraged to come to the Center to get a picture taken wearing a Lavender Letter and holding a sign explaining their reasons for aligning with the LGBT community.
"One of the things I am most excited about is our Lavender Letter Campaign," Bourdon said. "There has been an amazing response from all over campus and we now have these beautiful photos, which
are a great symbol that shows how much support there is from queer and straight people alike on this campus."
At the Center there are six undergraduate student interns, many of whom are also involved with other LGBT initiatives on campus.
Sophomore Mark Tyson, an undergraduate intern at the LGBT Center and co-President of QSA, explained that the appeal of the Center for him was the promise of a welcoming community.
"Initially, I got involved with the LGBT Center because I first came out when I got to Tufts and it was a way to be more of a part of this new community," Tyson said.
For Hegarty, involvement with the LGBT Center as well as Team Q and QSA, helped define her queer identity.
"At first I took the job because I was really devoted to the cause as an ally. I believe LGBT rights are fundamental human rights and many of my friends were queer-identified," Hegarty said. "It so happened that I also came to identify with the queer community myself. My involvement helped me develop my queer identity and helped me to realize that I want to do this type of work forever. It has been an affirming experience on multiple levels for me."
Serrano, who came out as a freshman, has also shaped his identity through involvement at the LGBT Center.
"For me personally, I have all these intersections: gay, Latino, black, and being involved, especially with the LGBT Center, helped me develop an identity," Serrano said. "One of the reasons I am involved is to help others learn and discover their own identities. You feel like you're working for a cause and working to better the world."
One of the major LGBT organizations on campus is Team Q, which is run through the LGBT Center.
"Team Q started as a speaker's bureau, sharing our stories and bringing awareness to these issues," Hegarty said. "But there was more of a need for us to be an education bureau and be a voice on campus that can answer questions when they come up."
Serrano is the student coordinator for Team Q. He explained that Team Q is invited by various school groups, residence halls and faculty meetings in addition to off-campus outreach at local schools to give presentations.
"Basically we give programming to help educate [the] wider Tufts community, including students and faculty," Serrano said. "We host Guess the Straight Person every year, which is a game designed to help dispel stereotypes, and we have a stories panel where we have Team Q members tell their coming out stories, stories about family, experiences and school, etc. It's a way to help educate the community and show that these stories are real and don't just happen on TV, but happen to people they know."
Another student group, Queer Students of Color and Allies (QSOCA), offers a community for LGBT students of color, as the name suggests.
"It's a group that acknowledges the fact that sexuality intersects with other identities like race, class, ethnicity and gender. We try to provide a space that brings these issues to the forefront," senior Darius Izadpanah, co-leader of QSOCA, said. "In a lot of other LGBT spaces this is acknowledged, but is not the main topic of conversation. QSOCA is a space for people who are queer and of color to congregate."
Serrano, who co-facilitates Men's Group, emphasized that it is important to have groups that acknowledge the intersections within the LGBT community.
"Even within a specific group like the LGBT community, it doesn't mean that everyone has the same shared experience. There are specific things that men or women or students of color can relate to," Serrano said. "The idea of intersectionality is really important. The smaller groups address these intersections and are a good way of making sure that nobody feels left out."
According to Bourdon, one way in which the LGBT Center focuses on intersectionality is through constant collaboration with other members of the Group of Six. He meets with the directors of the Group of Six on a weekly basis.
"Intersectionality is crucial in the work that we do," Bourdon said. "It is so important that we recognize that individuals are much more than just their sexuality. We all have so many other aspects of our social identities, which must be considered as well. I try in my work to make sure that our programming is reflective of that."
Sophomore Grainne Griffiths, the LGBT Center Representative for the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, explained that it is difficult, if not impossible, to represent such a large and heterogeneous group of students.
"I go to the LGBT Center a lot, but I'm aware that it is only one-tenth or one-twentieth the LGBT population at Tufts," Griffiths said. "I do try to reach out to people I know who identify as LGBT and don't come to the Center, and I go to different group meetings just to see what's going on and talk about what's happening on Senate."
As the LGBT Center Representative, Griffiths worked on implementing gender-neutral housing through both the student group Students Acting for Gender Equality (SAGE) and the TCU Senate.
"The reason community reps exist [is] to voice opinions the regular senators would not have and voice issues that wouldn't necessarily be heard during debates," she said.
Griffiths added that she saw the importance of her role as a community representative when the Senate was discussing re-recognizing Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) because the military's "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) policy had been repealed.
"In the original resolution, there was a statement saying the decision to recognize ROTC was due to the repeal of DADT, but the Senate took out that language because they didn't want to make it political," Griffiths said. "But it was inherently political. Me and two other Senators that were openly LGB were the only three members that were vocal about it and tried to get the language put back in. I felt it was important that I was there to explain why it was important to my community."
Griffiths said that this experience influenced her to run for reelection.
"Last year I became involved with Senate because the seat was open and I was really involved with QSA and interested in Senate," she said. "I ran for reelection because of the ROTC issue. I saw the reason I was there."
As the LGBT Center Representative, Griffiths has also done research on what it would take to bring queer studies to Tufts.
"It's just something we don't have," she said. "All women's studies has is one course, Introduction to Queer Studies. A major problem is that seniors who are writing their thesis about queer issues have no faculty to go to because their advisors have to be on tenured track and a grad student teaches the class. [Doctoral candidate] Nino [Testa], who teaches the class, gets requests from students who are desperate for an advisor who is familiar with the scholarship on queer studies."
Hegarty also said that the administration could do more for LGBT students.
"I think the main thing is that, from my own knowledge and experience on the campus, I don't expect that any LGBT-related change would result from the administration unprompted by a student," she said. "I'd be happy to hear I'm wrong, but that's just what I've seen in three years."
Students also say that Tufts could do more to support its transgender students and point to Keith Ablow, who is affiliated with the Tufts University School of Medicine, as an example. Ablow attracted widespread media attention with public comments he made last fall that were widely perceived as transphobic.
"I wouldn't consider our school to be trans friendly. One reason is because of the Keith Ablow incident, obviously, where there was no university response denouncing what he said," Griffiths said.
Although the university did not formally denounce Ablow's comments, University President Anthony Monaco sent an email to the Tufts community reaffirming the university's commitment to diversity and inclusion. Monaco explained that Ablow was not an employee of the university and that his remarks should not be attributed to the university.
Griffiths also expressed a desire for further trans programming.
"There could also be more programming reaching out to transgendered people who could learn more and be better allies," she said.
Tyson explained that the university does make an attempt to provide necessities for transgender students.
"Tufts is a very different experience for people who are trans," he said. "Recently Tufts has been trying to address that issue with gender-neutral housing and more [unisex] bathrooms so students can focus less on day-to-day hurdles and more on higher education."
Additionally, while Tufts is known as a queer-friendly environment, LGBT students still face discrimination, Bourdon said.
"While overall an LGBT-friendly campus, we are by no means immune to the homophobia, biphobia and transphobia that exists in the world," Bourdon said. "Incidents still happen from time to time and we do our best to address the problems as they occur, but also be proactive so that hopefully we will see fewer, or even better, none one day in the future."
Tyson said that while he has not experienced any severe instances of homophobia, he has dealt with micro-aggressions from other students.
"There have been a couple of instances where I have my arm around another guy, and a small fraction might stare, but I never deal with aggressive encounters," Tyson said. "Also, a lot of times people might accidently say stuff that might be offensive, but they don't mean it as an attack."
"I think that the times I hear about issues, it's always involved Greek life," Griffiths said. "There are frats that are super accepting, but I do consistently hear about incidents about people at parties being called homophobic slurs."
Mears added that TUPD acts as a support system to deal with LGBT discrimination.
"When we do see anti-LGBT stuff, we take photos and send it to the Tufts police department," Mears said. "They make it known that they want to help us in any way possible."
In Tyson's opinion, some of the most important issues for LGBT students at Tufts are issues that go beyond their life on the Hill.
"There are a lot of students who wind up getting emancipated from their families, who have a lot of drama with their families, who don't enjoy going back home and have to go back into the closet when they go back home," Tyson said.
Overall, many students say they feel that Tufts is, in general, a friendly environment for queer students.
"It has earned its ranking as one of the top schools, at least for LGB students," Tyson said. "Overall for LGB folks, it's an environment where we aren't harassed or bullied, and people are very accepting."
Mears agreed that she feels comfortable being open about her sexuality here.
"Even as a staff member, I would absolutely call Tufts an LGBTQ-friendly campus," she said. "I've never been out at work before, but because of the Center, I feel more comfortable being out at work."
Mears went on to say that the two years she's worked on the Hill have shown her that the LGBT student population at Tufts is very luck.
"I went to a state school, and there is a much more open environment here," she said. "Students are generally very open and very proud, and they like to let people know they are welcome."
Hegarty said she would also call Tufts an LGBT-friendly campus, but with some reservations.
"It's complicated. Tufts is working toward full inclusion, and I would rather be at Tufts as a queer individual than at many places I applied," she said. "It's not perfect, but we're working every day to make ourselves progressively more queer. It's not a queer best friendship, but definitely a queer friendship."
