正如沃伦塔居民chuckle bitterly at the irony of attending a school that boasts to offer “dorms like palaces,” some of us wonder how on Earth the Princeton Review decided to rank Boston University #2 in “gay community accepted.”
Just ask the students who have been fighting in vain to have a sexual orientation clause added to the University’s anti-discrimination disclaimer, although the entire State of Massachusetts has prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation since 1989. Just ask the members of the BU Academy’s gay-straight alliance, which Chancellor Silber has so tolerantly ordered to disband.
Silber is quoted in The Boston Globe as justifying his opposition of a peer support group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and questioning students and their straight allies with the comment that students who “want that kind of program can … go to public school and learn how to put a condom over a banana.” Silber’s implication that sex education has no place within a respected learning environment was certainly contradicted by his decision to speak about the perils of promiscuous sex at this year’s freshman matriculation ceremony which, in the past, has functioned as a formal welcome to incoming students, not a forum for didactic justifications of Boston University’s strict guest policy.
Furthermore, the Chancellor’s erroneous belief that gay-straight and GLBT support groups encourage “premature sex” and call unnecessary attention to their members’ personal lives indicates that he has never attended any such function. Perhaps if he had, Silber would realize that such support groups generally focus on providing a safe haven for youngsters to discuss issues of safety, emotional difficulties and societal prejudice. While gay, bisexual and transgendered teenagers continue to suffer abnormally high rates of depression, family abuse and truancy (often due to the intolerance of their educational environments), these support groups are necessary to provide a forum that may be otherwise lacking in students’ lives.
A support group that meets after school on a voluntary basis would not “rub [Silber’s] nose” in their lifestyle unless he expressed undue interest in the members’ intimate affairs.
Chancellor Silber is entirely out of touch with Boston University’s student population, and is certainly no more involved with its Academy students, yet he continues to assert that he understands the needs and concerns of the intelligent and independent youngsters who pay thousands of dollars each year for a quality education. How can the administration of any private, secular institution actually respect its students while refusing them the opportunity to convene in a private manner to discuss a form of prejudice that the State of Massachusetts outlawed more than 10 years ago?
Amy Chmielewski CAS ’05
Jaime Garmendia III COM/CAS ’03
Sarah Long CAS ’04
