Good news for LGBT students

When I was helping my younger brother get ready to go off to college this fall, we did the usual — shopped for a desk lamp, tried to fit his belongings into a few small boxes, checked out his class schedule, and looked online for the location of the semester’s first LGBT student organization meeting. (Okay, maybe that last one isn’t always considered the usual, but for a queer sister-brother duo, it is.)

But something I found highly unusual happened during this process. We clicked our way around his college’s Web site about three times. No LGBT student union, no other gay-sounding acronymed organizations. All we could find was a listing for the “Alternative Lifestyles Student Organization,” which had no information further than its name and appeared to be defunct. (And really, with a name like that, who wants it?)

Living on campus and meeting other LGBT students was a big part of my coming out process. I assumed that once most kids got to college, they were welcomed with big, gay, open arms like I was. I went to Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio. Yes, it was a small town in Appalachia, but there had to be 10 different active LGBT student organizations. There was something for just about everyone: clubs for allies, caucuses within student senate, groups for people of color, organizations that seemed to be solely dedicated to throwing dance parties, coming out support groups, and even the Swarm of Dykes — a group of fierce (mostly) lesbians whose duties seemed to include everything from debating anti-LGBT ministers on cable access to walking LGBT students home safely late at night.

Looking at a sad listing for an “Alternative Lifestyles Student Organization” made me worry that my brother was going to have a harder time navigating his small-town campus as a gay student. I mean, don’t all new LGBT kids deserve to have a Swarm of Dykes around to protect them? I tried to look convincing as I assured him that he would be fine, that of course gay boys have nothing to worry about in rural Kentucky.

But last week I stopped worrying. My brother called me to tell me some of his peers had re-energized the Alternative Lifestyles Student Organization. Thankfully, it was renamed: The ALLYance. The group now has more than 100 student members in its Facebook.com (an online social networking site) group, and around 30 youth showed up to the first meeting. I think one reason the group has gained so much momentum so quickly is that LGBT groups aren’t new to these students — many were involved with Gay-Straight Alliances in high school.

Though my brother and I didn’t have GSAs at our religious high schools, more and more teens across the country do have support from GSAs before they even think about applying to colleges. To date, more than 3,000 high school GSAs are registered with GLSEN, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network.

In 2003, not even 100 institutions of higher learning in the US had LGBT student centers with paid staff members, as reported in the Task Force’s Campus Climate a report on LGBT issues at universities. Just four years later, that number has grown to more than 120 — not counting centers run by student volunteers and not counting student organizations — according to the National Consortium of Directors of LGBT Resources in Higher Education.

And now, even at a rural college of 9,000 students, my brother and his LGBT peers have a safe place. Whether it’s through an official LGBT student center or a brand-new student-run organization, LGBT youth are making strides across the country. It’s great to see teens who participated in high school GSAs go on to form similar groups at their universities.

Oh, and the ALLYance is an official student organization, with faculty advisors and, best of all, a Web page — which is sure to put some big sisters at ease next fall.

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