Word: gsa
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...letters asking alumni to withhold contributions from the College, because the Faculty Council refused this spring to adopt a policy of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual preference. Protests of discrimination against gays steadily gained momentum during the year, from charges that University administrators were unfairly restricting GSA's rights to publicize its activities on posters and in student registration packets to the demands by gay students that the 1981 yearbook staff publicly apologize for describing Adams House as a "haven for homosexuality...
Many attribute the meteoric rise of the gay rights movement on campus to the determination of its earliest leader, Benjamin H. Schatz '81, a class marshal, former president of GSA and founder of GOOD, who graduates today. Administrators who have watched the movement's rapid growth with discomfort say privately that "it will all blow over when Schatz graduates." But Schatz's leadership is only one of a set of circumstances that have coalesced in the last few years to make gay rights activism possible. "A lot of things came together at once," Michael G. Colantuono '83, a member...
Schatz remembers his first GSA meeting: A small circle of nervous white men sat around and discussed "topics like, 'Is there anything good about being gay?'" The organization provided a desperately needed but isolating social setting. If a gay student did not go to a GSA meeting, several members noted, the chances that he would meet another avowed gay elsewhere were slim. Most members had not, publicly "come out of the closet," and the few who had were not yet emotionally steeled to speak out politically. "They had to guilt trip somebody into being president each year," Schatz remembers...
...reluctance to make one's sexual preference known stood firmly in the way of GSA's political effectiveness. Fear of public exposure even stalled GSA's formation for some time. University rules require that a student organization submit a membership list of at least ten names to be kept on permanent file in University Hall. Because no student wanted his name in official hands, GSA seemed fated never to gain official recognition. At last, after several pleas from gay students, a dean bent the rules and agreed to sanction the group if the students just waved a list of names...
...Because GSA members back then were looking for a socially secure and private haven, the struggles that flared between GSA and the administration in these years were typically set off by perceived threats to GSA's social privacy. Barbara G. Rosenkrantz, professor of History of Science, who was faculty adviser to GSA for five years, recalls that, "the issues were things like how many policemen should there have to be at a [GSA] dance." For the most part, the students in GSA kept a low profile. "I never knew who I was advising," Rosenkrantz says, adding that only later...