LGBTQ at Santa Clara

By Brooke Boniface

What is it like to be LGBTQ at Santa Clara?

"I don't think it's hard to be gay here, there just are not enough of us," said junior Chewy Jang, "just not enough of a presence."

"I don't want my sexuality to completely define me," said junior Parker Johnson.

"One girl [in my dorm] told me I had a demon inside me and I was going to hell for it," said sophomore Kyle Arrouzet.

Each one of these students is openly homosexual, and agreed to speak with me this past week concerning gay and lesbian culture at Santa Clara.

For Kamila Lambert and Chewy Jang the lack of Lesbian students at Santa Clara has proven to be a slight annoyance.

 "It's like a drought honestly," said junior Kamila Lambert.  

Going out and hooking up or even just flirting is such a huge part of the college experience, and as a lesbian, the process is all the more difficult due to the small "out" population.   

As much as they like going out to house parties with their friends, sometimes it is a good change of pace to be in a predominantly homosexual environment.  

Arrouzet and fellow sophomore, Micah Brodoff, had similar feelings about the lack of gay males. Brodoff, Jang, and Lambert all get their temporary relief from their environment problem by going to Brix in San Jose or The Castro in San Francisco.   

Each of the students also had basically positive coming out experiences.  Most found acceptance among their new Santa Clara peers, and their friends and family at home. Only Kyle experienced any sort of homophobia on campus, with a few incidents involving residents on his floor last year.

After multiple interviews, I discovered that the experiences and opinions of LGBTQ students are just as varied and numerous as their heterosexual counterparts.

Overall, Santa Clara, even as a Jesuit University, is an accepting place for its LGBTQ community.

There are multiple student/faculty/staff organizations that include, but are not limited to, Gay And Lesbian Alliance, Gay and Straight People Educating for Diversity, Spectrum, Equality SCU and On Our Way Out. Last year, SCCAP sold "Gay? Fine By Me" t-shirts and recently an LGBTQ website was redone through the Office of Multicultural Learning.

Furthermore, the campus recently sponsored a panel in which administrators, teachers and staff questioned openly LGBTQ students about how they could improve their experience on campus.  

However, Santa Clara could do more. The LGBTQ community  remains relatively closeted and behind the scenes.

It is not enough to have these support clubs on campus or occasionally have a student walking around in a "Gay? Fine by Me," shirt.  

At American University, ranked as the most LGBTQ-friendly campus in the United States, there is an entire LGBTQ resource center, which actively assists LGBTQ students in anything and everything from socializing to finding internships.

Currently there are some LGBTQ students and clubs lobbying for a similar resource center at Santa Clara in the new Locatelli student center. The resource center would not only act as a place of support for current LGBTQ students, but it would also increase awareness and tolerance on campus and encourage future LGBTQ students to apply to Santa Clara.  

"I think that with representation there will be acceptance," explained Jang, "and it will only get better from there."  

Brooke Boniface is a junior political science and history double major and editor of the opinion section.