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."