Many gay Harvard first-year men and women coming from traditional homes and high schools expect college to be a liberating experience.
Imagine their surprise when in the College's orientation packet, they receive a student publication, conservative magazine Peninsula, that called their sexual orientation a "bad alternative."
"It was a shock," says Royce Lin '96, a Greenough resident. "It didn't really scare me, but it did make me angry."
Lin, who hails from Orange County, Calif., says he visited Harvard during pre-frosh week last year and discovered that the College did not fit "the Harvard myth of a stuck-up, preppy school."
The Peninsula's November issue, which featured an exploding pink triangle on the cover, called on gay students to attend counseling sessions and rethink their way of life. The issue sparked a series of student protests and inspired two respected faculty members to reveal their homosexuality.
Says Lin, "I knew Peninsula did not represent what the majority of students at Harvard feel."
Most gay students seem to agree that Harvard as a whole is a relatively welcoming and tolerant place, but many say they can cite instances of campus intolerance.
"I think that Harvard in general is very tolerant," says Javier Romero '95, co-vice chair of the Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Student Association (BGLSA). "But I think that there's a lot of underlying homophobia."
Last year's Peninsula issue and an anti-gay slur posted on a Lowell House student's door were the most blatant anti-gay actions. But more subtle indications of hostility are also prevalent, say some gay students.
BGLSA leaders say, for instance, that the organization's posters are often torn down almost immediately, especially in certain houses.
In another example, Benjamin F. Bruch '94 says a friend overheard a Harvard guard slurring gays. The friend, who notified his house's authorities about the incident, was told that sensitivity training for the guard was useless, Bruch says.
And Sheila C. Allen '93 says she remembers a Harvard Law student urinating through the window screen of the Adams House dining hall and yelling anti-gay comments.
"I don't think I've ever been personally called any bad names," Allen says, "but you don't feel exempt from the possibility of things happening to you."
Students also agree that tolerance and openness varies from house to house. A number name Kirkland and Eliot as houses with an unfriendly image among gays, while Dunster, Lowell, Adams and the co-ops were often cited as welcoming and comfortable places for people of all sexual orientations.
"I have a friend who lives in Kirkland who says she's really afraid to be out [of the closet] there just because of the attitude of the house," says Cynthia R. Phillips '95.
