BY GWYNETH SPINCKEN ’21
When I was a senior in high school, I often overheard others discussing their plans for college. Talk of possible majors, clubs, dorms, food and classes circulated the classrooms of my suburban high school. It was all decently exciting until the topic of roommates cropped up and some classmates mentioned that they would switch rooms if they found out that their roommate was gay.
The conversation in that high school classroom escalated until people began arguing, their voices low. One contested that colleges with LGBTQ+ communities pressure straight newcomers into becoming gay. Like a few others in the room, I was disgusted, but believed that this attitude was not widespread. I was wrong.
On Debate.org, 43 percent of people claim that students should be notified if their roommate is gay. Nate Heffernan at the Duke Chronicle described Duke University students’ discomfort with having a gay roommate.
“Much to my surprise,” he wrote, “many students began to put down ‘I’d prefer not’ or ‘not sure’ in the box asking if they were comfortable with having a gay roommate.”
Homophobia isn’t always a physical threat, but an insidious apathy manifesting in gossip, lacking in LGBTQ+ history and prospective students’ prejudice against LGBTQ-friendly colleges. Not every one of those students escape the attitudes that propagate homophobia and they carry those biases with them when they choose their roommate, and even their school. It’s enough of a problem when students would reject a LGBTQ+ roommate, but this bias can extend to the ultimate choice of a college as well.
By coming to a college like Mount Holyoke, I managed to evade that kind of thinking.
When it comes to LGBTQ+-friendly colleges, The Princeton Review places Mount Holyoke in its #2 spot, second only to another of the seven sisters, Bryn Mawr College. Anyone walking through our campus can hear, just from snippets of conversation, that LGBTQ+ experiences permeate casual and academic discussion at this school and that these voices add a richness to the community, creating a space of acceptance for those who are still forming and exploring their own identities.
“I chose [Mount Holyoke] and didn’t know how prominent the LGBTQ community was here until after I was already accepted ... but after I realized how prominent the community was here, even though I identified as straight at the time and I don’t anymore, I was happy to be here because being LGBTQ wasn’t just accepted or tolerated, but celebrated,” Rose Marie ’21 said. “Everyone here just seemed kind of liberated in a way as compared to home.”
Avoiding an LGBTQ+ College and discomfort with a gay roommate are not the same, but they’re two symptoms of a deeply rooted issue. Homophobia comes in many forms, some subtle and pervading so- called pleasant conversation, evidenced by a refusal to treat LGBTQ+ people as they should be.