“This might be a call to arms for Harvard to centralize resources so LGBT students don’t feel ostracized and alone,” Coyne adds.

Prior to these events, the College had been planning to form a BGLTQ Working Group, and the announcement of its creation in October came at an opportune moment, given the national spotlight on the discrimination faced by LGBT individuals, according to Wang.

“The national landscape and the two alleged hate crimes reported at Harvard during the first month of school intensified awareness of the lack of infrastructure the College has in addressing LGBTQ issues,” Wang says.

ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSE

While the LGBT community notes that these recent incidents highlight the need for greater resources at Harvard, the administration and Harvard University Police Department say they worked to the best of their abilities to address each of these problems.

According to Kevin Bryant, HUPD’s diversity and community liaison, the police department uses the Massachusetts General Law on Interference with Civil Rights to investigate acts of bias, including those targeting LGBT individuals.

“Awareness of diversity is very, very important,” Bryant writes in an e-mail. “HUPD is committed to serving every member of our diverse community.”

He says that HUPD has diversity training sessions during which officers are invited to examine how their own cultural identity affects their relationships with others.

According to Laura Snowdon, dean of students at the Graduate School of Design, the community at Harvard is generally accepting of people of different identities, and the recent incidents do not represent the norm.

“I’m glad to say there haven’t been many cases like this at our school,” says Snowden, who helped the victim of the homophobic graffiti find alternate housing.

“We have zero tolerance for any hostile behavior toward any student or any group of students because of their identity or perceived identity.”

Assistant Dean of Student Life Susan B. Marine, who often serves as the informal point person for members of the LGBT community who do not know where to turn, says that the recent incidents belie a generally positive community setting.

“Events like these crystallize the opinions of people who feel that Harvard is not an accepting place and negates the positive things that are going on,” says Marine, who is also director of the Harvard College Women’s Center. “I’m convinced we have strong and robust community.”

Marine adds that the BGLTQ Working Group is currently working to examine the student perspectives obtained from the open forums held in each of the upperclass Houses and in the Yard over the past few weeks.

“We’re very much in the process right now of meeting and taking in all the information,” she says, anticipating that the group will move into the stage of organizing its thoughts into concrete action next semester to prepare a recommendation to be submitted to the College Dean in March.