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On a pleasant October day, a multicolored archway of balloons rises like a miniature rainbow over one end of the West Campus Plaza. To one side, students are swarming a table of pork barbecue and hush puppies, and a guitarist is performing ironic versions of top-forty hits.
Volunteers are busy passing out stickers, brochures, cookies, and T-shirts. Behind them, on the railing, hang rainbow flags, signs boasting the names of various student organizations, and banners with slogans like "Get Out and Stay Out." On the front of each free T-shirt is a short logo: "Love=Love." On the line below are three sets of universal symbols arranged side by side—a pair of female figures holding hands, a pair of male figures holding hands, and a male and a female figure holding hands.
This is National Coming Out Day, an annual observance first organized in 1988, following the 1987 Gay and Lesbian March on Washington, to raise awareness about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and issues.
It's not the first time Duke's LGBT community has marked the day, but it is the first time that they've done it so publicly. In years past, small groups had congregated in the Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Life and elsewhere on campus to support one another and encourage individuals questioning their sexuality to feel comfortable about the process. But this year, they are doing it big. Their aim is simple: visibility.
To some observers, the community's pursuit of visibility is an imperative that calls for courage. After all, they say, this is Duke, and Duke, lest we forget, is a Southern university with a capital "S." To others, it may seem offensive, silly, or even superfluous in this day and age. As an elite American university, isn't Duke a bastion of liberal political correctness?
But for those on the ground, those members of the LGBT community and straight allies who experience life at Duke every day, the reality of life on campus is more complex, more nuanced than that. In general terms, they acknowledge, the university's administration and board of trustees have been supportive of the LGBT community in recent years, embracing progressive policies and providing funding to support the center and various student groups. But press them on specifics, about such things as the campus climate and the ease of coming out of the closet at Duke, and you get mixed responses. Just about the only thing that can be said for certain is that every individual's experiences and perceptions are different.
In 1989, responding to calls from vocal gay and lesbian advocates, Duke added the category "sexual preference" to its nondiscrimination policy. By that time, the gay-rights movement was in full swing—New York's Stonewall riots, considered by many to be a watershed event in the growth of the movement, had taken place two decades earlier. And, like many other colleges and universities, as well as corporations, Duke was beginning to feel pressure to offer additional support to its gay constituents. The following year, President H. Keith H. Brodie convened a task force to advise the administration on issues of importance to gay, lesbian, and bisexual members of the university community. The group remains active today, advising President Richard H. Brodhead.
Members of the task force "monitor the university climate and report back about their experiences," says Damon Seils, a senior research analyst at Duke's Center for Clinical and Genetic Economics and co-chair of the task force. The task force comprises faculty and staff members representing a variety of campus divisions—from student affairs to residence life, student health, and athletics—and students. "It's crucially important to have student voices on the task force," says Robin Buhrke, senior coordinator of research for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) and a longtime task force member. "Staff and faculty experience the campus culture, but not in the way students living on campus do."
The group, which reports directly to Ben Reese, vice president for institutional equity, comes up with policy reports and recommendations. Seils acknowledges that the need to work through administrative bureaucracy means that sometimes the going is slow. But Laura Micham, director of the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture and the task force's other co-chair, points out that the task force's official capacity has allowed it to be "action-oriented, goal-oriented, and successful."
Over the years, its reports have inspired a number of changes in university policy, including, in 1994, the extension of health benefits to same-sex domestic partners of employees. It also supported a move to open the Duke Chapel to same-sex unions. So far, one such union has been held, in 2000.
Three years ago, the task force formed a committee to consider extending the university's nondiscrimination policy to transgender individuals. (The term "transgender" refers to any individual whose gender identity or expression differs from his or her biological sex at birth. It can include transsexuals, both pre- and post-operative; transvestites; and others who exhibit gender-bending behaviors.) The committee examined policies favored by peer institutions, as well as state governments and corporations. After ten months of research, it issued a report to Reese, recommending that the university protect transgender members of the university community from discrimination based on "gender identity or expression." Last February, the board of trustees approved an update to Duke's statement of equal opportunity that included the words "gender identity." At the same time, it voted to change the wording of the section covering gays and lesbians to refer to "sexual orientation" rather than "sexual orientation or preference," to reflect the evolution in the ways that the nature of sexual orientation is understood.
When psychologist Buhrke arrived at Duke in 1992, the university was just beginning to figure out how to offer institutional support to gay and lesbian students. As coordinator of gay and lesbian services for CAPS, she was the first staff person hired by the university to focus primarily on the LGBT student population.
She recalls spending her first few years on campus advocating, along with the task force, for a center for gay and lesbian life, "a place with a constant presence" where gay and lesbian students could come to support each other and socialize. Just downstairs from Buhrke's current office in the Page building, there is a small seminar room, measuring roughly sixteen feet by sixteen feet. This was the center's first home. "It was an empty room when we got it," she says. "We made a sign on the computer that said, 'LGB Center,' and slapped it on the door."
In the early days, the center was staffed by work-study students and graduate-student volunteers. In 1996, it moved to a slightly larger space and hired a half-time director, who also taught in the history department. By 1999, it was known as the Center for LGBT Life and had a full-time director, as well as a part-time assistant director.
Since 2004, the center has been housed in a 2,500-square-foot suite, just off the West Campus Plaza. Its full-time staff of three is led by Janie Long M.R.E. '81, who has served as director for a year and a half. A therapist by training (she holds a Ph.D. in couples and family therapy), Long previously taught on the faculties of Antioch University, the University of Georgia, Purdue University, and the University of Louisiana. She primarily trained graduate-student therapists, but also regularly taught an undergraduate course in human sexualities. On the side, she advised LGBT student groups and helped to start faculty and staff groups on several campuses.
At Duke, she has continued her commitment to the same sort of networking. Duke has several student groups dedicated to LGBT issues, at least enough that the landscape can seem confusing to an outsider. The Alliance of Queer Undergraduates at Duke, or AQUADuke, caters to undergraduates, and its partner group, Duke Allies, to straight supporters of LGBT rights. DukeOUT represents the Graduate School; OUTlaw, the law school; Sacred Worth, the divinity school; Fuqua Pride, the Fuqua School of Business; and the LGBT Alumni Network, Duke alumni.
In the past, these groups worked independently of one another to come up with programming for their various constituencies, but Long has made an effort to bring them all together, inviting the leaders of each group to join a new advisory board for the center and encouraging them to co-host campus events and collaborate on projects. "They are truly beginning to get that we can go much further on this campus in terms of increasing the visibility of the LGBT community if we work together," Long says.
"Janie's been an advocate for the center and its constituencies," says Seils, the task force co-chair. "She's been big on making sure the student organizations are active. She's been giving them a kick in the pants."
Long also created Duke's first LGBT organization geared specifically toward faculty members and employees. In just a year, its e-mail listserv has grown to more than eighty members.
For someone who reports to the division of undergraduate student affairs, her focus on the faculty, staff, and graduate student body is somewhat unorthodox. But she defends it, saying, "I'm a very big believer that we have to look at the campus as a whole." If the university is not friendly and welcoming to all LGBT people, she says, it will not be an entirely comfortable environment for LGBT undergraduate students.
In an effort to create the type of friendly campus she envisions, she has ramped up the center's programming. Every Friday, she and the center's staff host a "Fabulous Friday" themed social event. The events, which draw a regular crowd of twenty or more students, have included poker nights, a Thanksgiving dinner, and a recruiting reception sponsored by Wachovia Corporation, the country's fourth-largest bank. With the various student groups, the center has also sponsored films and lectures on campus, including a talk by gay former NBA player John Amaechi, who is now a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign.
Of course, not all LGBT students at Duke use the center or socialize with the various student groups. Some say that students who patronize the center have a reputation for being cliquish, while others worry that they will be painted as LGBT activists if they attend too many events hosted by the center, even social gatherings. And there are those who have simply developed comfortable social networks and informal support systems of their own that include LGBT and straight students alike.
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