Is Middlebury College More 'Out' Than Ever? GLBTQ (IN)VISIBILITY Part One of a Three-Part Series

Author: Claire M. L. Bourne

"I have never felt more open than when I'm here," says Paul Doyle '07 of Middlebury College as he hugs one knee in a booth at The Grille. Doyle, one of a handful of openly gay first-years, speaks about his sexuality with gentle confidence, not worrying to lower his voice when people pass by or install themselves at the table behind him.

When _____ ______ '07 sits down with his tray in the middle of Ross Dining Hall, I ask if he would feel more comfortable conducting our interview in the seminar room down the hall. "Oh no, I'm open," he responds before diving into his plate of spaghetti.

It hasn't always been this way for members of the College's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, questioning (GLBTQ) student community. After a decade characterized by a complex series of triumphs and setbacks, the College on the Hill appears to be experiencing a queer renaissance of sorts.

The Middlebury Open Queer Alliance (moqa) currently boasts more than 20 active members, up from about eight last year. Last month, Coming Out Week events attracted impressive crowds. The College's Ally Group - a network of students, faculty and staff committed to supporting GLBTQ members of the community - is in the process of drafting a constitution to gain official student organization status. And last, but perhaps most notably, a symbolic closet constructed by moqa in October on McCullough Lawn was left standing, without suffering vandalism, for the duration of Coming Out Week - something that hasn't happened in more than six years.

These developments add up to significant progress for a community still tending to wounds sustained when a closet similar to the one built this year was destroyed last fall. Until that incident, Middlebury had been making noteworthy strides in fostering a social climate hospitable to diversity.

Rewind to 1998, when Middlebury was in the midst of one of its most acute internal social crises in its 200-year history.



The Breaking Point



In the fall of that year, a conservative guide to the nation's top 100 colleges praised Middlebury as "a rarity in higher education today in that multiculturalist talk seems to be waning rather than gathering strength." Either the editors of "Choosing the Right College" were unaware of events that rocked the campus community five months earlier, or they chose to ignore them. By the time the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's 672-page volume hit bookstores, Middlebury had weathered a firestorm of internal criticism over its perceived failure to address the concerns of non-majority groups and, as a result, had launched a full-scale audit of campus diversity.

Two separate incidents provoked student outcry - the destruction of a closet built in October 1997 by moqa members and the publication of a racist and, some say, homophobic ad in the April Fools edition of The Campus the following spring. The ad depicted three black men with a caption that said the College was admitting "drug users, gang members, rapists, arsonists" to "increase the excitement in this sleepy Vermont town" and to counter the image of the typical Middlebury student, labeled as a "pansy."

Many students, moqa members in particular, argued the administration's response to the spoof advertisement was inadequate. While President John McCardell said The Campus had made a mistake in judgment, the then-newly formed Student Coalition for a Safer Community demanded a statement recognizing that racism, sexism and homophobia were problems on campus. Local newspapers reported that McCardell only conceded after "much prodding" by the 150 students gathered on McCullough Lawn.

In addition to wanting formal acknowledgement that Middlebury was not, in fact, immune to racism, sexism and homophobia, moqa and other student groups called for an office of minority affairs, more faculty from underrepresented groups, "a gender studies/queer house" and an assessment of the College's race studies and gender studies programs.

Around the time of the protest, then-Professor of Economics Richard Cornwall, an openly gay member of faculty who had taught at Middlebury for 21 years, tendered his letter of resignation, area newspapers reported. The climate surrounding gay issues at Middlebury was hostile, he said.

"It was a breaking point, a crisis," says Kevin Moss, professor of Russian.

McCardell soon commissioned the College's Human Relations Committee to "assess, systematically and comprehensively, the current campus climate on diversity."

The Committee submitted its findings to Old Chapel in March 1999. McCardell endorsed the report, and just over a year later, Associate Professor of German Roman Graf became Middlebury's first associate provost for institutional diversity. The new administrative department was given a broad mandate to oversee the College's diversity affairs - from the classroom to the admissions office to the social arena and beyond.



From Point A to Point B?



To say that the events of 1998 paved the way for continuous progress towards accepting and understanding the GLBTQ community at Middlebury would be untrue. The last six years have been peppered with obstacles and small victories alike.

In September 1999, the moqa bulletin board in McCullough was vandalized. At the time, Moss called the incident "a minor act of terrorism." Moss, himself, is no stranger to such discrimination, having had a number of posters defaced or torn from his office door during his 20 years at the College. He returned to his office one day about four years ago to find the phrase "All fags should die" written on a flyer he had posted on his door in memory of Matthew Shepard.

The closet once again became a symbolic battleground last fall when it was vandalized and demolished after surviving a week in the College's main quad. "At least, this time around, the closet was allowed to stand for most of the week," then-moqa Co-convenor Chris Atwood '03 told The Middlebury Campus. "Maybe Middlebury has experienced tepid progress."

After establishing the Office of Institutional Diversity in 2000, the College followed up by hiring its first full-time women's and gender studies (WAGS) professor the next year. And in another step toward greater recognition of the GLBTQ community, Middlebury added gender identity and expression to its non-discrimination clause this July - 13 years after it became one of the first colleges in the nation to officially prohibit discrimination based on "sexual orientation."

Demands for a "queer" house on campus have gone unanswered, although Chellis House, first established in 1993 as a "safe space" for women, currently serves a similar purpose for moqa.

This year's increasingly visible GLBTQ community harkens back to the early 90s when the College's tendency towards increased dialogue about sexuality was palpable, if not always inclusive. The Opinions pages of The Campus were bursting with debate over homosexuality. A submission published in April 1991 that called homosexuality "unnatural" and "evil" was one of several to condemn members of the GLBTQ community. Moss, in his own article to the college paper, wrote, "I am both concerned and encouraged by recent discussions in The Campus." Such a response is not uncommon - as long as the issues are on the table, progress is a possibility, many say.



The Silence



There is no denying the existence of homophobic discourse at Middlebury. A number of openly gay students interviewed for this series - who never knew the Middlebury of 1998 - testified that they or someone they knew had been called a "faggot" or had received threatening voicemail and whiteboard messages from other students.

______, who chose Middlebury for its sprawling bucolic campus - "This is heaven," he remembers thinking - and its reputation for lan
guages, says, "There is only so much you can expect. Middlebury is not a horribly repressive place," he says. "It may not be as liberal as Greenwich Village, but it is certainly better than most places."

More than vandalism, threatening comments or engrained homophobia, the silence surrounding sex and sexuality on campus is considered by many to be the GLBTQ community's greatest challenge.

When Karl Whittington '04 came out to some friends at Middlebury three years ago, few people were talking about sexuality. Now, although there is "still way to much silence," the increasingly visible GLBTQ community is fast becoming a social and a support network for both those who are "out" and those still questioning their sexuality, he says.

The climate at Middlebury is "accepting," says Elise Harris '06, who self-identifies as a lesbian. "Even though Middlebury describes itself as a liberal, open-minded place, people here are accepting when they first hear [about my sexuality] and then they never talk about it again."

"To accept difference, you have to discuss difference," says Colin Penley '05.5, one of moqa's four co-presidents and also a junior counselor in Stewart Hall. Penley, who does not know "many people on campus who are as out" as he is, has noticed a changing climate on campus - Middlebury is more open, he says. "This year, there are a lot more people who are out in general."

While many openly gay and bisexual students will take a stand when a friend or acquaintance uses homophobic language, some are still uncomfortable about "outing" themselves in a classroom setting.

Which is not to say that Middlebury has failed to diversify its curriculum to include classes - not just limited to the WAGS department - that address queer theory and other topics relevant to the GLBTQ community. All four of Whittington's classes this semester - two in art history, one in religion and one in French - have touched on sexuality and queer identity. "These issues are on people's radar screens," he says.

Moqa has done its part this semester to bring GLBTQ issues to the table, and it will continue to organize events throughout the year to promote visibility, education and acceptance.

"It is my job to break the silence. But it's not just my job. And it's not just because I'm gay," says Jason Siegel '06, an active moqa member.

Is this year a turning point in Middlebury's relationship with its GLBTQ community? By most accounts, it promises to be. With the College's Ally Group mobilizing to become an official student organization with a budget to hold lectures, symposia and social events, the increase in "out" students on campus and notable attendance at moqa- and Ally-sponsored events, the 2003-04 academic year could mark a permanent changing of the tides.

"We're on the right track," Moss says.