Vassar makes the grade in The Advocate

Guide cites Blegen, Queer Coalition as major supports for LGBT students

Jessica Hughes Guest Writer

National newsmagazine The Advocate recently joined the list of major publications that rank Vassar as a top college. The Advocate reports on gay news and entertainment. In its first comprehensive college guide, The Advocate includes Vassar as one of the top 100 supportive campuses for lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender (LGBT) students.
The Advocate’s criteria for compiling the list of supportive campuses veered away from traditional statistical measures of college merit and instead looked at student-sponsored programs, college policies, campus attitudes, and political progressiveness. The schools that met the criteria were compiled into a list, but were not ascribed specific numerical ranking.

From the list of 100, the 20 most highly- rated schools received special recognition. Vassar was not in the top 20.

Information on Vassar was provided to The Advocate by College administrators as well as sources at Blegen House. Blegen House focuses on issues affecting the LGBT community, and is part of the Office of Campus Life. Additional information for The Advocate was compiled through anonymous surveys completed by Vassar students.

According to The Advocate article, two elements that contribute to Vassar’s supportive environment are Blegen House and the Queer Coalition of Vassar College (QCVC).

But why wasn’t Vassar in the top 20?
While commended by The Advocate as one of the 100 most tolerant and progressive college environments, Vassar was absent from the list of the top 20 schools for LGBT students.

In its review of Vassar, The Advocate quoted an anonymous LGBT student who said, “The Vassar gay community seems to be white-dominated, and in turn exclusionary.”

Blegen House Director John Schoonbeck responded to this remark. “I’d say it is a fact that the experience of LGBT students of color at Vassar has not been completely equal,” said Schoonbeck. “It’s something I think about all the time.”

Schoonbeck noted that the efforts by LGBT students of color to develop more of a campus presence is seen in the founding of groups like the People of Color Collective, which was established in the African American/Black, Latino, Asian/Asian American, Native American (ALANA) Center. The People of Color Collective was the first LGBT student group to form besides QCVC, according to Schoonbeck.

Schoonbeck added that efforts to raise awareness of the diversity of Vassar’s LGBT population are ongoing.

“Events such as Conversation Dinners and All-College Day are held in the hope of bringing about inclusion of different fragments on campus and building an undivided community,” said Schoonbeck. He also said that the majority of Blegen head student interns within the last decade have been students of color. QCVC Co-Chair Steve Lavoie ’07 added that QCVC intends to initiate a concerted effort with the ALANA Center to bring together the diverse groups that comprise the queer community.

QCVC promotes LGBT image awarenes
Headed by a five-person executive board, the student-run QCVC offers support services and puts on events with the intention of raising awareness about the queer community. These efforts earned the organization the title of “best LGBT educational involvement opportunity” in The Advocate’s college guide.

QCVC Co-chairs Lavoie and Kelsey Smith ’07 spoke of the importance of stimulating queer consciousness on campus, and expressed concerns about how people can be apathetic towards QCVC. “Vassar can be such an easy place to be queer,” said Smith. “People become complacent.”

Presenting a broadened image of the queer community is an important task that the QCVC is planning to address in the coming months. Both Smith and Lavoie acknowledged that certain events like the Krystal Dance of spring 2006 and the popular annual “Gays of Our Lives” student panel have made some feel that the organization has promoting a limited image of the queer community—one revolving around physical glamour.

Smith clarified the organization’s intention for its image. “The image that QCVC wants to put out is not just one image, because the queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community is a very diverse community of many images, traditions, and cultures,” explained Smith.

This year, QCVC plans to work more on issues affecting transgendered people. Smith said that she hopes to discuss topics with College administrators such as having gender-neutral bathrooms in academic buildings.

Blegen House provides common ground
Rated as the “best hangout” by The Advocate, Blegen House stands on the outskirts of the Vassar campus as a representation of the intersecting LGBT communities both on and off-campus.

Described by Schoonbeck as a “complement to the QCVC student organization,” Blegen House offers “a more formal offering from the school itself towards the education of everyone.” As one of three resource centers under the Office of Campus Life (along with the ALANA Center and the Women’s Center), Blegen House began as a “safe house” for LGBT students, and later developed more “academically-based programming geared towards serving students, faculty, staff, families and the Poughkeepsie community,” according to Schoonbeck.

Schoonbeck described Blegen House as a “center for the study of social change” that regularly sponsors talks given by faculty members on topics pertinent to the LGBT community, thus enabling “a seamless transition between the classroom and Blegen.” Blegen house programs are developed around a thematic focus for each year. For example, last year’s lectures and events focused on gays in the military. Schoonbeck said that this year, Blegen House will turn its attention to international issues.

To further the “study of social change,” Schoonbeck said that Blegen House is willing to open its doors to almost any organization that applies for space, provided that the “Blegen staff is able to reach a consensus that the aims of the applicants are consistent with our own.” Currently, the center provides a space for Counseling and Response to Rape and Exploitive Sexual Activities, the Eating Disorder Reachout Service, and Circles. Circles is a high school LGBT group staffed by Planned Parenthood, as well as a group for young children with same-sex parents.

Schoonbeck emphasized that while Blegen House and QCVC provide support for students after they have matriculated, the College still has work to be done in terms of developing admissions initiatives directed toward gay students.

However, Schoonbeck added that the Office of Admissions “is addressing that now; for instance, Dean of Admissions David Borus will host a conference for Circles students that will advise them on how to get in to Vassar as well as college in general. That’s a first.”

Schoonbeck reflected on Vassar’s position in The Advocate’s guide’s rankings and said it is illustrative of the College’s high potential for improvement. Although proud to have made the top 100, Schoonbeck said he was “glad we didn’t make the top 20, because we still have so much work to do.”
Additional reporting by Lauren Sutherland, Life Editor