Word: schatz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This time a year ago, after the meteoric rise of gay rights as a campus lobby issue, an administrator pivotally predicted that "it will all blow over when Schatz graduates." "The cynicism was understandable Benjamin Schatz '81, last year's GSA president, was the single figure generally credited most with bringing Harvard's gay rights movement to prominence. But what has happened since Schatz left is not so extreme as that prediction. Rather, observers can detect a subtle shift in the GSA's tactics, away from its political stance as a minority group like any other, fighting for representation...
...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...
...sure that the political climate is so polarized here as to prevent minority representation under a straight electoral system. Benjamin Schatz '81, for instance, won one of the coveted class marshall spots last spring even though--or perhaps because--he was closely identified with the struggle for gay rights on campus. But minority students are correct in calculating that, even if the politics of race or sexual preference did rule, they would be at a great disadvantage in a normal voting system. Black students, for instance, are widely scattered enough among the Houses that they nowhere form a majority...
...expansion of the overtly gay population, have been forced by the political debates and activism of the last year to recognize its existence: "It is interesting to hear Bok or Rosovsky refer to the 'gay community.' It never would have occured to them to do so a year ago," Schatz says...
Having established that gays exist at Harvard, launching the second stage--winning of equal rights--will come with time, gay students believe. "Truth is on our side," Flaherty says. "Gays are being discriminated against and eventually they will have to acknowledge it." Schatz echoes that conviction: The University will inevitably come to understand their position, Schatz says, because "we are obviously right. Everyone knows gays are discriminated against, because everybody does it. When they meet us and see we are not ogres and lechers, they have to recognize our humanity...