The 1987 March on Washington brought 500,000 activists to Washington D.C. to speak out for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. That same year, a road trip from the University of Colorado to Syracuse brought two students to a campus wrestling with many of the same LGBT issues.

The lesbian couple drove to Syracuse University to begin their graduate studies at what they hoped would be an accepting college campus. What Mary Porter and gender-transitioned Rob Pusch said they found in 1987 was a less than welcoming environment.

In their first two years on campus, a fraternity printed T-shirts that read ‘Bash Fags, Not Baby Seals.’

‘They wore them all around campus, and I don’t even think they got a slap on the wrist,’ Pusch said.

A year later, the Harvard Review listed SU as one of the 10 most homophobic schools in the nation.

A lot has changed in 20 years. This past spring, The Advocate, a publication dedicated to coverage of the LGBT community, gave SU a five-star rating for LGBT acceptance based on its resource center, programs and education. SU was one of the nine institutions to earn the five-star rating. As a result of the award, Syracuse will host OUTspoken, a student-run conference for students throughout the northeast interested in improving their campus climates.

Porter remembered a Syracuse where if you chalked the Quad with rainbows or gay pride logos, the university would wipe it clean by the next day. Porter said she initially felt out of place.

‘I don’t shave my legs, and they’re fairly hairy, so here I am, this open lesbian, the only one I knew of, in my program with 60 or 70 kids,’ Porter said. ‘I kept it to myself, especially in the beginning.’

Porter’s initial hesitancy to come out is known on today’s campus.

Lauren Hannahs, president of SU’s Pride Union, said there are students all over campus and even in the group who face a similar discomfort.

‘The thing is, it’s based on a core identity that isn’t accepted overall,’ she said. ‘We have people active in Pride Union who can’t talk about it or get their picture taken for fear of it getting out.’

By her second semester at SU, Porter became more active with LGBT issues and helped form the first LGBT grad student group on campus, the Lesbian Gay Graduate Collective.

The established group was known more subtly as ‘The Collective.’ Most members who signed up added asterisks to their names, requesting confidentiality.

‘If I saw an asterisk I knew I couldn’t call those people at home, or at least that I couldn’t leave a message,’ Porter said. Even putting up flyers around campus, Porter would get snickers and often see the posters defaced.

The Collective petitioned faculty and staff to get same-sex partner benefits, which included remitted tuition and health insurance on campus. Porter worked on the petition for four years and finally got the benefits the year she graduated in 1996. Porter said by the mid-1990s she felt more supported by the university and by on-campus publications.

After Porter left to teach in Indiana, Pusch remained at SU working at the Center for Instructional Development, now known as the Center for Support of Teaching and Learning. He continued advocating for LGBT rights and transitioned from female to male in 1993.

Pusch recalled his boss’ reaction to his decision to transition.

‘It was the best reaction you could hope for,’ Pusch said. ‘He said, ‘All right, we’ll print you new business cards, but if you change it again, you’re paying for it yourself.”

Pusch served on the original University Senate LGBT concerns committee, which was an ad hoc committee at that time. In 2001, USen recommended the school establish an LGBT resource center. The center opened in October 2001 in the basement of the Rape: Advocacy, Prevention and Education center before moving to its current location, 750 Ostrom Ave., in March 2002.

During his 20 years on the LGBT concerns committee, Pusch helped establish the resource center and create a minor in LGBT studies. He is currently working to make the campus more transgender friendly.

This year’s committee chair, Giovanna Albaroni, said the committee is trying to get restroom reassignments to make restrooms transgender/gender non-conforming. They will also work toward updating the same-sex domestic partner benefits that Porter helped create in 1996. The committee proposed a policy change to extend tax and healthcare benefits to couples with same-sex marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships in October 2007.

Michelle Khudak, a senior in The College of Arts and Sciences, said when she looks back on the work of USen and at the progress the school has made, she feels privileged.

‘The fact that other people struggled to make the center happen, a Pride Union happen, a learning community happen, reminds all of us of the work we need to do and gives me an obligation to pay it forward,’ she said.

Khudak is ‘paying it forward’ through her work on OUTspoken, the first student-run LGBT awareness conference, which will be held at SU Oct. 24. The purpose of the conference is for students from other schools to be able to learn from one another on how to make their own campuses more LGBT aware and friendly.

For current LGBT students, the transition to SU is much different than what Porter and Pusch experienced in the late 1980s. Lauren Hannahs, an LGBT studies minor, music education major and the president of Pride Union, transferred to SU two years ago from Hobart and William Smith College. After starting at SU, she said the schools were rather different in the services they made available.

‘I still remember during October, I was walking across campus and there was this huge rainbow arc on the Quad,’ Hannahs said. ‘I felt very supported and awed that here it is, mid-day on a Thursday, and we have these big rainbow arches proudly displayed in the middle of campus and everyone going about their daily activities.’

Hannahs said she was also impressed by the center’s location.

‘You didn’t have to peek behind corners,’ she said. ‘People know where it is. It’s not out of sight, out of mind.’

Porter teaches at Saint Mary’s School in North Carolina. The school is yards away from Notre Dame, which was ranked number one on the Princeton Review’s list ‘alternative lifestyles not an alternative.’

‘It’s very backwards in terms of LGBT issues,’ Hannahs said. ‘When I came here, (Notre Dame) had just kicked its lesbian gay group off campus.’

Still, Hannahs said she feels proud of the five-star rating and the support SU provides LGBT students. She said one of the main indicators of their support is the recruitment literature that goes out.

‘It shows that they’re proud of us, that they’re willing to stamp information about our services and our rank on flyers that get sent to everyone,’ she said.

It was the ranking and the literature that helped attract Shareece Mayers to SU. The freshman, who was born in Barbados and then moved to Queens in 1998, said she researched schools with high LGBT acceptance ratings before making her decision.

‘I didn’t want to go to any school where I wouldn’t be accepted or where people would look at me like, ‘Oh no, you can’t talk to her,” she said.

Mayers, who wants to major in sports management, lives in DellPlain Hall. In addition to struggling with sharing a space and living with a stranger, she also grapples with whether or not to come out to her roommate.

‘I’m thinking about it, but so far I haven’t told her,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty sure she knows because she hears my conversations, but I don’t know if she wants to know, to be honest.’

Mayers said she and her roommate get along well and that the campus as a whole made her feel welcomed. She also stressed that for freshmen, the LGBT support system is essential for a comfortable transition.

‘It’s important to make them feel comfortable because if they’re not, it’s going to affect them and their ability to be themselves and enjoy SU,’ she said.

Hannahs said she envies freshmen such as Mayers who have four years left at SU. Hannahs graduates this year and said while she’s hesitant to leave the community, she feels ready for what lies ahead.

‘I’m totally scared to leave, but I think with my (LGBT) minor I’m much more well equipped to stand up for who I am and change things in other places,’ Hannahs said. ‘It’s going to be hard, but I’m here for a little while longer yet.’

jmterrus@syr.edu

Published on October 6, 2008 at 12:00 pm