Word: gsa
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...industrial city in northeast Ohio, Tarver played in the high school band, acted in plays, debated on the shool team, and edited the yearbook. During his four years at Harvard. Tarver has published the yearbook and been active in the Black Student Association (BSA), the Gay Students Association (GSA), the Democratic Club, the North House Committee, Freshman Council, and drama. And he's even studied biology...
...GSA as a political lobby faces special challenges, in fighting assumptions so deep-seated that most people are not even aware of them. The conceptual jump from homophobia to tolerance can probably take place for a heterosexual in only two ways--personally, through actually discovering the homosexuality of a friend too close to discard, or politically, by observation of the inescapable parallels between the plight of gays and minority issues to which they have less resistance. As numerous discussions of "visibility" have stressed, it is far more difficult to hate a gay classmate or neighbor than to hate gays...
Schatz's genius and that of the GSA last year was their knock for arguing like any other student group. When the College refused them permission to include GSA pamphlets in students registration packets, they argued not as representatives of a minority sexual persuasion but as a legitimate student group--which they were. They argued so successfully that to oust them from the packet, the Faculty was forced to remove all other student activity leaflets, along with the GSA's to a hurriedly created "second packet." When the group tried to put a statement on the books affirming the College...
...approach was that people could debate the issues without actually confronting their feelings about homosexuality. Even someone who felt uncomfortable attending Gay and Lesbian Awareness Day (GLAD)--an annual event whose attendance has been dropping discouragingly--could stand firmly on the moral conviction that denying GSA space in registration packets because they were gay showed explicit prejudice and injustice. Put another way dealing in formalized issues obviated the necessity to reform deep instilled impressions of homosexuality...
...recent furor over the letter from Pattullo, director of the University's Center for Behavioral Studies, provided a perfect example of such blurring Pattullo expressed his belief that "negative social pressure" might help dissuade potential gays from pursuing an undesirable lifestyle. The GSA's demand that Pattullo apologize and that the University investigate his academic practices threw wide open the debate over the origins of homosexuality and in the absence of conclusive scientific answers, that debate drifts inevitably back to regions that smack of homophobia...