What Happened
Troubling Fact:
this year has been witness to repeated aggressive acts towards queer
students and groups on campus--
targets included people and groups who were, or were perceived to be, gay,
lesbian, or gender-variant.
Here is a partial list of incidents.
Please note that the intent is to give a sense of the climate for
students at this school, not to complain about specific responses
of University representatives.
- In the Fall, first-year undergraduate student Robert Hubbard was an
invited guest at a campus fraternity party. He was dancing with another
man when when full cans of beer were thrown at him. No one has
come forward to publicly identify the assailant(s).
- On November 20, first-year undergraduate student Emily Alpert
received a violently harassing, anonymous email in response to having
written in the
Maroon that the campus community should support Robert
and speak out
against antigay violence. The email singled her out for "pro-Faggot
sentiment" and threatened her vividly with beating and rape. (In January, the
emailer's identity was discovered, and he turned out not to be a U of C
student; nonetheless, it was a chilling incident for the queer community
here.)
- At the "Mr. University" pageant hosted by the sorority Kappa Alpha
Theta
in February, an estimated 700 students converged on Mandel Hall to watch
men compete for a beauty title. Homophobic comments were heard loudly and
repeatedly, particularly when a student onstage from one fraternity was
harassed by members of another fraternity with shouts of
"Hey Faggot! How
does cock taste?".
The student whose yelling was most prominent was
removed from the event, and several students have been subsequently
disciplined in closed-door sessions.
- In Winter quarter, a third-year undergraduate student was
accosted
as a "faggot" by drunken fraternity members while sitting in his house
lounge. He was particularly distressed that his friends and peers, when
informed about the incident, were dismissive.
- Posters advertising queer-positive events sponsored by campus
organizations have repeatedly been torn down and defaced when hung in
public spaces, including dormitories, the Regenstein library, and outdoors
on campus. In the Max Palevsky dormitory in April, events went a step
farther when there was harassing counter-postering: signs were created to
mock the Queers and Associates' "Genderfuck" dance, proclaiming
"Fucked
in the head, you must mean."