The recent news that the Board of Directors of the Common Application has rejected a proposal to "add optional questions on sexual orientation and gender identity" to its application illuminates an interesting, and perhaps inevitable, shift in how sexual orientation is treated during the college matriculation process. Elmhurst College, a private institution in Illinois affiliated with the progressive United Church of Christ, is beginning to ask applicants about their sexual orientation, and is believed to be the first American college to do so. Elmhurst's most surprising decision, perhaps, is providing admitted students who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) with scholarships of up to a third of the tuition cost, just as they grant diversity scholarships to other minority students.
Elmhurst's administration has claimed that its new policy is designed to provide better services for LGBT students once they matriculate. It's an admirable goal; if a college can determine how many LGBT students it has on campus, it can design and fund appropriate student services - including student organizations and counseling - to reflect their numbers. But an application is not the right place or time to ask for sexual orientation.
Think back to the fall of you senior year of high school. Imagine yourself as questioning your sexual orientation, or closeted. You're sitting in front of the Common App website, flanked by your parents and perhaps a fancy college admissions counselor. Suddenly, you notice that you are asked to declare your sexual orientation, along with your gender, race and religion. Unsure about your orientation, you list heterosexual, adding further stress to an already taxing process.
A better alternative is to reach out to matriculating students about their sexual orientation during the spring or summer before their freshman fall, when they have already chosen an institution to attend. The University of California system has proposed adopting this strategy. The UC's Academic Senate recently passed a proposal to ask students about their orientation when filling out an already existing questionnaire required upon declaring their intent to attend a university in the system. They plan to use the information to provide better assistance to LGBT students, bolster LGBT centers on campuses and monitor LGBT dropout rates.
It is remarkably inane to ask students to declare their sexual orientation while applying to colleges, especially for purposes of bolstering diversity. The rate of LGBT students tends to be fairly consistent at specific universities from year to year, and LGBT applicants doubtlessly flock to schools with strong, existing LGBT communities. Admissions offices' providing LGBT applicants with a leg up in their pools is equally silly, as homosexuality should not qualify as a cause for affirmative action.
The effort to determine the specific LGBT makeup of a student body seems sensible in the larger fight to end discrimination against the community. But there's a right time and a right place for it - and students navigating the college admissions process hardly need another obstacle to overcome along the way.
