Yay! another home rum by Mr. Lott. Very nice essay.

It’s amazing that Roger thinly veils his profound ignorance of LGBTQ issues with “let’s learn to live together”.

I am sorry that you are not familiar with the concept that people can be uncomfortable with a gender binary, and not actually be transsexuals – transsexuality implies that you have actually changed your physical sex via surgery and hormone reassignment. A transsexual student might be more likely to pass as her/his identified gender than a non-op/no-ho transgender or genderqueer student, which is much more common. Gender neutral housing is a necessary resource on this campus for students who feel uncomfortable or unsafe living in other campus housing options (and cannot live off campus because that is not covered by financial aid). Until students on this campus do learn to live together, and that is shown by students no longer feeling the need to apply for gender neutral housing, the College has a responsibility to provide living options in which students feel safe.

Dartmouth has been in the vanguard of pushing social engineering for decades. This is a reationary position due to geographical location of the school, the Live Free attitude of the state and the people vs. the telling you what to do and think of the college progressives, and the religious founding and historic all-male student body vs. the progressives concept of the state as religion and Dartmouth as the indoctrination vehicle.

Though this is not an appropriate forum for discussing the general merits of admissions outreach and recruitment, I would like to take a moment to address Lott’s mischaracterization of the admissions office’s recruitment strategy vis-à-vis LGBT students. For any population or interest, we in the admissions office try to connect prospective students with current undergrads who represent those interests. As LGBT students rightfully have questions about the campus climate, it should be obvious that putting those students in touch with LGBT undergrads is the best way to address their concerns. We do the same for other groups, including students who plan on going to medical school, international students, first-generation college students, students interested in the arts and others. I can’t imagine anyone would consider such efforts controversial. – John Beck ‘09, Senior Assistant Director of Admissions

“Ultimately, we should be trying to combat the notion that homosexuals are essentially different from straight people.”

Then you must support gay marriage, right?

This editorial is both ignorant and offensive, and the fact that stuff like this is being published in Dartmouth’s newspapers is exactly the reason why there is a need for an LGBTQA affinity house.

Have you heard of The Tabard? It is a co-ed fraternity and has been historically LGBT-friendly. In some ways, it could be considered a kind of “LGBT affinity house” you mentioned as in the works by the College. The Tabard is based on inclusivity, has house meetings open to campus, and can be joined by literally anyone. I am seriously wary therefore, when you claim that “an LGBT affinity house… would only encourage sexual minorities to isolate themselves from the campus at large.” Either you feel strongly about the necessity of “sexual minorities” to interact with the campus at large (which yes, is necessary), or you have forgotten how isolationist being in a single-sex Greek house can be. If anyone needs to be taught a lesson about ‘integration’, it is the exclusive Greek houses that have caused a need for an LGBT affinity house. I’m not claiming that the system is inherently evil, but the fact that many LGBT students feel uncomfortable and unwelcome should cause us to think about how we can change Dartmouth on the SOCIAL level, instead of just the infrastructural level.

Regarding Madeline Sturm’s comment “and that is shown by students no longer feeling the need to apply for gender neutral housing, the College has a responsibility to provide living options in which students feel safe.”

Plenty of people apply for gender neutral housing solely because they are nice suites in McLane. Six kids from my fraternity lived their my sophomore year, and I can assure you they did not “unsafe living in other campus housing options”

I’m going to try to boil down Roger’s arguments. 1. Transsexuals are rare, and therefore don’t merit a serious budgetary commitment. 2. Dartmouth’s admissions policies are unfairly skewed toward LGBT students, leading to an unusually high LGBT population. 3. An LGBT house is expensive. 4. The college should look beyond LGBT affiliation when evaluating students, OR, more broadly, affiliation in general should have no bearing on college policy (this seems to be his larger point).

Now I’ll answer each point. 1. Transsexuality is a red herring here. The house is for all LGBT students, not just transsexual students. Besides, if we followed the logic that the rarity of a need indicates low priority, we wouldn’t build wheelchair ramps. Or fire alarms. 2. John Beck already addressed the question of Dartmouth admission procedures quite well. I’ll just say that the percentages Roger quotes, aside from smacking of the quotas imposed on Jewish admission in the early 20th century, aren’t comparable. He compares Dartmouth’s percentage of LGBT students to the national percentage. A better comparison would be the national COLLEGE percentage. 3. Dartmouth spends money on lots of projects, but most of them are funded by concerned donors; that is, the money for a project such as the LGBT house would likely come from alumni who wanted to fund that particular project. Since their donation is for that project only, the money effectively does not exist otherwise and the cost to the college is considerably offset. (I’ll confess that I don’t know the particulars of the LGBT house’s funding proposal, but this is my suspicion.) 4. If your issue is with affiliation in general, write about that. But affiliation housing is a fact of college life. Dartmouth has a Spanish language house, a Native American house, a LALACS house, a Chinese language house, Hillel apartments, German apartments, Russian apartments, an African-American dormitory, and many others, I’m sure. There are physical spaces dedicated to shared heritage, shared religion, and shared interest. To deny such a space to LGBT students does not, as Roger says, “combat the notion that homosexuals are essentially different from straight people;” it simply sends the message that LGBT-ness does not deserve the same consideration as other sources of affinity.

The title of this piece is ironic, since Lott’s naive approach to the LGBQT population at the College is more divisive than anything resembling “living together”. I’ve come to expect that from Lott’s columns though, written as they are from a perspective of white masculine privilege.

Again, Lott conjectures on subjects and communities with which he has only faint understanding—and assumes, much as he has with affirmative action, for instance, that the College is wasting its resources giving LGBQT students the kind of support needed to make the College as inclusive as it is today. The suggestion that somehow the College has attracted a population of LGBQT students beyond some questionable national average is silly. Where Mr. Lott sees a problem, I see Dartmouth stating itself as a unique opportunity within the higher education landscape: providing a safe, supportive home for all students to discover the rich contours of the liberal arts is something we should be rightly proud of. That so many LGBQT high school students feel ready to bring their energy and interests to the Hanover Plain is a testament to a job well done. Dartmouth today stands as a more accessible opportunity to so many who may have once looked elsewhere.

So, once again, you’ve missed the point, Mr. Lott. “Living together” we are—and the College would be well advised to continue the fine work of making a Dartmouth education attractive and accessible to all by ignoring your hateful and ignorant rhetoric.

Roger, You say that “skin color and sexual orientation” are “innate traits”… just out of curiosity, are you a supporter of gay marriage?

Exactly where does Roger Lott say anything “hateful” in this column? Answer: he doesn’t. Mr. Lott is politely disagreeing with the views of the LGBT movement on campus, never accusing anyone of bad intentions. On the other hand, you, Mr. Labove, throw out the word “hate” as a convenient way to dismiss HIS opinion as unworthy. Who’s the real hater here?

I figured that a Dartmouth student would be able to produce a better article than this. Weird syntax, passive verbs, too wordy…

People like you are the reason I didn’t want to “live together.” Why would someone want to live with people who barely manage to mask their homophobia and ignorance? Let’s save money by getting rid of all the same-sex houses, so that we can really learn to “live together.”

@ William Bishop, you conveniently abstract “the views of the LGBT movement” from the actual bodies who are LGBT. Hate is real, and it’s easily masked, and it’s not convenient for people who are trying to develop safe spaces to throw around. It’s a daily reality actually. And why wouldn’t the fact that someone is anti-safe spaces for LGBT students not be an important distinction in determining the worth of someone’s comments? While we are determining worth, let’s include the logical fallacy that the small numbers of “transsexuals” indicates a lack of need for affinity housing (not to mention the misnomer of ‘transsexual’ which indicates an ignorance on the part of the author), or the highly questionable supposition that an LGBT affinity house is exemplar of our (poor) spending practices, or the trope of moving away from guilt as a rhetorical strategy to minimize the hugely hurtful and ongoing impact of “past or present discrimination,” that, by the way, the author himself perpetuates. Which is hate.

And just what does it mean to make an “unnecessarily big deal” out of people’s sexualities? For someone who seems to have put a lot of thought into this article, you throw away all eloquence at the end, just when it is most needed. Who has the right to arbitrate the line between necessary and unnecessary “big deal making” when it comes to homophobia and other forms of violence? You have skirted this entire issue and instead implicitly asserted that you have the right to make that call, and not only to make that call but to imply that those who are LGBT don’t because they are making too big a deal of things. That’s circular logic, and it’s cowardly writing.

From another perspective your argument could be explained as follows: If someone calls attention to sexuality, then that is bad. We should make no distinction between those who call attention to sexuality in effort to denigrate people’s sexual practices, and those who call attention to sexuality (often their own, understood to be perverse or non-normative sexualities) in order to call attention to a form of discrimination happening in the status quo.

But you are wrong. We SHOULD and must make that distinction. Otherwise, we get people writing about how we are all just presenting viewpoints as if those viewpoints are not weighted with a history of violence and discrimination which has created the conditions of possibility (and indeed NECESSITY) for articulating a pride in being different.

All that to say, your argument is basically the same as the argument that we shouldn’t have gay pride celebrations because it calls attention to the fact that gay people exist as gay and that this somehow denigrates their common humanity, when in fact the existence of pride parades speaks TO the fact that gay people are human too, in the face of a status quo that behaves as if we are not.

I love all of your columns. You hit the nail on the head with this one with your detailed analysis of both rides of the issue.

You do realize that the VAST majority of LGBTQ students are not out in high school and therefore have very little way of showing their interest in the LGBTQ community during the application process. If my parents had seen that I wanted to receive LGBTQ-related material from Dartmouth while I was applying, they probably wouldn’t have allowed me to apply in the first place! Many of those students stay closeted even at Dartmouth because it’s not a perfectly accepting place. But of the students who are out and active or even out and in-active in the community, most of them did not show any interest in LGBTQ related issues or material during the Admissions process. They were brilliantly smart, wonderful, interesting and qualified individuals just like the rest of the Dartmouth student body. Dartmouth has done something RIGHT if more and more LGBTQ students feel comfortable enough to come out on our campus every year.

What you don’t understand is that within recent years there have been a large number of LGBTQ students at Dartmouth as at most institutions across the country, the majority of them have just been silenced for a number of reasons about their sexual identity. Dartmouth has become a much more accepting place and continues to grow in that regard but don’t for a second think that every proud LGBTQ student on campus was actively recruited or singled out because of their sexual identity.

My suggestion to you is to really try and get to know someone who is LGBTQ. Listen to them. Ask them what it was like to come-out and educate yourself.