These despicable events serve to remind us that even at our generally liberal and tolerant campus, significant pockets of prejudice remain. As members of the Amherst College community, it is our responsibility to stand in solidarity with the victimized visitors by closely examining exactly how hospitable our college is to its LGBTQ students, and taking steps to combat both homophobia and the apathy that permits it to thrive. It is not acceptable to palm the blame off on the Amherst students’ assumed inebriated state.
It is equally counterproductive to take the position held by some LGBTQ students here, who believe the campus is divided into “safe” and “unsafe” areas, and their fellow students, into allies and potential foes. It is imperative that we stand together to make this college in its entirety safe and welcoming for the gay community. We owe our guests from Hampshire—who expected to have fun at Amherst but instead received abuse—nothing less.
There are a number of simple ways in which we can battle intolerance and homophobia. Individually, we can protest and correct our friends and acquaintances when they use anti-gay terminology in conversation. We can tell people we know who are openly gay that we support them and don’t condone intolerance. On a more immediate level, we can sign the Pride Alliance’s banner apologizing to the Hampshire students and welcoming them to return to campus, and support the Alliance in their protest today. Fighting homophobia does not mean we can’t engage in intellectual arguments against gay marriage or gays in the military. It does mean that we have to be vigilant against the blind, mindless hatred that manifests itself in crimes like the ones that allegedly occurred last Saturday.
Amherst can also support its LGBTQ community in our response to the recent decision in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, in which the Supreme Court held that schools could not bar military recruiters from campus in response to the armed forces’ discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy towards gays. At the recent faculty meeting, President Tony Marx announced the College’s intention to allow equal access to recruiters, in order to keep federal funding for research (See News Page 2). While it is painful for us to concede that it was a reasonable decision, we recognize that the crippling of our science programs would be a devastating price to pay for upholding our prior non-discrimination policy.
However, if military recruiters come to campus, we as a college community should rally around our LGBTQ friends and independently force the military to answer for their policies. The administration has promised to hold a forum on gays in the military while the recruiters are here; we must hold them to that promise. As students, we should ask the recruiters the difficult questions that will expose the fallacies inherent in “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
While we should not sink to the level of insulting or disrupting our soldiers, it is important that we demonstrate as a college that discrimination based on sexual orientation is as heinous as discrimination based on gender, race or creed. Such a statement, however we choose to make it, is extremely important in light of the events of Saturday, which showed that certain people on this campus think that they can get away with homophobic behavior.
Is there any doubt that if blacks or Muslims had been so treated, the outrage would be universal and palpable? We cannot afford to ignore persecution based on sexual orientation when it occurs in our midst, and we must not create the impression that the rights of homosexuals are any less sacred than those of other minorities. We have a responsibility to assure the LGBTQ members of our community that they are as welcome at Amherst as any other student.