Marcus Pavilonis
10/4/2018
The Ohio University LGBT Center has become a driving influence for inclusion and diversity on campus, but long before the office came to be on the third floor of Baker Center, other people and groups paved the path to make the university what it is today.
OU Gay & Lesbian Association is founded.
First workshop on counseling gay people is offered.
Sexual orientation is added to the university Non-Discrimination Policy.
Minority Affairs Commission of Student Senate is renamed to “Lesbian Gay Bisexual Commission.”
OU Swarm of Dykes is founded. The name was later changed to “Empowering Women of Ohio”.
LGBT Center is turned into a full-time operation.
Ohio University offers Domestic Partner Benefits to domestic partners and children of domestic partners.
ALLY student group, which strives for equal treatment for all minorities, particularly LGBT people, is founded.
SHADES student group, which fosters connections between multicultural LGBT-identifying people, starts.
Gender Identity and Gender Expression added to university’s Non-Discrimination Policy.
Gender-neutral housing opens in Smith House.
Graduate Student Senate passes resolution to include healthcare services for trans identified individuals.
PRIDE Alumni Society starts.
Preferred Names and Pronouns policy is implemented.
One of the earliest groups on campus was the Gay and Lesbian Association (GALA), which started in 1972. Jan Griesinger, the then-director of United Campus Ministry who started working in 1967, helped initiate the group and also housed the meetings in the United Campus Ministry facility. When she began to identify as a member of LGBTQ, she felt she needed to help students and faculty find supportive spaces.
“The LGBT people felt very safe at UCM space for a lot of years and met there every week,” Griesinger said. “My recollection is that the original group was very, very male, that not many women would go. Not many women wanted to be in a predominantly male space.”
Griesinger paved the path for more lesbian and gay programming and support throughout her career at OU. Other programs and policies began to follow. In 1975, for instance, a psychologist connected to the university gave a workshop on how to be inclusive of gay and lesbian people in therapy.
“As we created a group to give people support and give people energy, yes, things began to be organized on campus,” Griesinger said. “Get them to adopt a policy, get them to set up an actual LGBT center, which didn’t exist for years.”
Stefan Koob, a junior studying screenwriting and producing, has been digging into LGBTQ history for a video he is making for OU Homecoming. While rifling through the cabinets in the LGBT Center office to review old photos of clubs and events, he discovered that workshops were held in the ‘70s about coming out to families and how religion plays into perceptions of sexuality.
The Gay and Lesbian Association adapted as it was moved under different departments and was renamed Open Doors. Originally under United Campus Ministry, the association later went under Housing and then the Provost before becoming its own department in Baker Center.
“It’s pretty significant, especially given where we are geographically, in terms of politics and culture,” delfin bautista, the director of the LGBT Center said.
In the ‘90s, separate groups began to branch out from Open Doors as some people found the existing programs to be not inclusive or radical enough, bautista, who uses they/them pronouns and the lowercase spelling of their name, said.
One such group was the Swarm of Dykes, created in the ‘90s by radical lesbian feminists. The group planned counter-protests and different events. When the OU College Republicans hosted a family values day, the Swarm of Dykes performed a fake lesbian wedding ceremony on College Green. The group’s name was later changed to Empowering Women of Ohio, as many people felt uncomfortable by the usage of the word “dyke.”
“That’s really fascinating and awesome that they did that. It’s really empowering for people to see that, especially now,” Koob said. “There’s a lot of activism happening in the world, and people can get discouraged whether or not their efforts are doing well. I think it’s good to be able to look back at your history and see where you’ve come from.”
Sometimes, however, the group would receive censorship or backlash, such as painting over the word “dyke” on the graffiti wall. In 2003, for example, an unidentified group defaced the Swarm of Dyke’s mural with slurs against people who identified as LGBT, according to a Post archive.
Koob has found that alumni and students’ opinions on OU’s inclusion is a “mixed bag.”
While talking with different LGBTQ alumni, bautista has heard stories from alumni about harassments in the residence halls and on Court Street, such as name calling and physical assaults, but many of which were not reported.
“If they are reported, how they’re dealt with is very different,” bautista said. “Sexual orientation, gender identity, gender policy is not a part of the state’s hate crime policy, so some of these things don’t receive the attention that we would like them to receive.”
bautista said alumni tend to have polarizing opinions about their experience as students at the university.
“You have folks say the university is very supportive, you have folks saying it’s not as supportive as people think,” they said. “And maybe a handful of people in between.”
Despite concerns about the university’s quality of support, policies have continued to develop and become established to help make the university more inclusive. The university adopted sexual orientation into the non-discrimination policy in 1980, but gender identity was not included in the policy until 2007. In 2013, Graduate Student Senate passed a resolution to include healthcare services for people who identified as trans.
Most recently, OU has become one of 55 universities nationwide to offer gender-neutral housing. It is also one of the first universities to have names and pronouns as a part of the Name and Pronoun policy and is one of the few universities to offer trans health-care, bautista said.
“That is a reflection of the progressive nature, or inclusive nature, of the university,” bautista said. “The university has pioneered over the years several different efforts and initiatives.”
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