May 3, 2002
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Casey Creel
ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR
It was the best of times, it was
the worst of times. Well maybe it
was neither.
Queer life at Guilford seemed
below the periphery this year, fea
turing several fantastic opportu
nities for everyone to enhance
their own relationships with the
queer community, most of them
severely underutilized. The col
lege also faced a number of not
so-friendly incidents that no one
seemed willing to acknowledge or
address.
Which means for some
people, being queer at Guilford is
no big deal at all (whether or not
they want it to be). For others, it's
much harder than it looks.
Pride, our Gay, Lesbian, Bi
sexual, Transgender, Queer,
Questioning, Ally, Androgynous,
Asexual student club, faced the
debilitating problem all year of
attracting non-queer people to its
events. At the lowest point of the
year, its biggest problem was at
tracting anyone to events besides
its own officers.
This might be due to our fail
ure to publicize happenings or to
offer many compelling reasons for
people other than our friends to
attend them. Next year's presi
dent, junior Cindy Holloway, will
be Pride's first-ever non-gay
leader. Hopefully this will open the
group up to other people who
Features
don't necessarily feel the need to
join "the Gay Club."
The most frustrating part was
when the events were compelling,
and nobody came; everyone loves
the Coming Out Ball, sure, but
when each member of Amanda
Bailey's senior course on Gay and
Lesbian studies presented a pub
lic tackling of some sort of queer
issue, where was everyone?
I know you've seen the white
flyer of the butch girl in a dress
raising her hands to the title
"Queer Consortium." If you're a
professor in Archdale, you prob
ably have one on your door. But
with shamefully few exceptions,
each event was grossly
underattended, some with only
one or two lesbians and other stu
dents from the course present.
You know, one of the most
offensive absences from our cur
riculum is a viable coarse load in
queer studies (Guilford seems
perpetually 20 years behind most
aspects of its mission statement).
And here we have an excellent
resource in Bailey's course
projects, but few support them in
both mind and practice.
One presentation, which only
20 people witnessed (laudably,
two of them were Don and Britta
McNemar), left me shivering from
its passion and precision. Alex
Wilson's superb examination of
his own "privilege of silence" on
homophobia and the oppressive
heteronormativity of society
should be a requirement of every
FYE. Hopefully he will donate a
recording or at least a script of his
30-minute monologue-with
drums to the library. It's some
thing everyone needs to hear.
Speaking of underused re
sources, the GLBTQA Resource
Center, abeyantly hidden in an
outgrown closet in Dana, recently
came into a stupendous addition
to its library. William Mac Donald,
gay emeritus professor at the Uni
versity of Toledo and mentor to
English professor Jeff Jeske, has
donated a massive collection in
several installments. These books
are an enormous asset to both the
struggling Resource Center and to
the entire community.
Another outstanding project
was the QLSP Third Year Confer
ence on Quakers and issues of :
gender and sexuality. The three- !
day seminar featured four guests, .
all addressing Quakerism and I
their own experience: a feminist I
from Earlham; an African Ameri- j
can lesbian who developed a lit- 1
eracy program in Belize; a gay !
man who worked for passage of
the Vermont Civil Unions Law; j
and a transgendered professor at |
Florida State University.
The seminar, enormously in
formative and entirely relevant,
was the largest instance in my |
experience of the Quaker principle
of seeing that of God in everyone.
The Guilfordian
Plus, those who went got to
hear Max Carter discussing
"transgendered folk."
Not every instance of queer
life here has been so flowery and
progressive. In March of this se
mester, "Homo" was spray painted
on the walkway in front of Duke
with a ghost-buster symbol on top
of it. A rainbow already painted
on the pavement was blacked out,
and two overlapping women signs
(a symbol of lesbianism) were also
defaced. Outside Founders,
"Jesus Saves" was painted in the
same incident.
Most of the painted bricks
have since been replaced, but
Jerry Godard was the only admin
istrator to publicly decry the hate
crime. Roll your eyes if you like,
but that's what it was. If "nigger"
were similarly painted and
marred, what would the response
have been? Security has not yet
discovered who did it, and queer
students on campus aren't sure
how safe they are.
That's the problem; ho
mophobia doesn't seem to exist on
the surface. One can manage not
to run into it except for sporadic
echoes in the caf or funny looks
outside Milner.
Unless, of course, something
big happens like the spray paint,
when it gets swept under the car
My first (and last) words
I have never written for the Guilfordian.
There, I said it, I admit. I have been Editor-in-Chief of this
newspaper for two years and aside from two articles in which I was
quoted (the first of which announced my becoming Editor-in-Chief),
I have not composed one word that has appeared on these pages.
But in the past two years, the Guilfordian has been my life. 1
have eaten meals in the Pub Suite, done my homework there, and
even slept there. And as I sit here on the veiy last day that I will be
Editor-in-Chief, 1 cannot help but think about all of the wonderful
and not-so-wonderful ways that this publication has impacted my
life.
When I first took on this job, I had no idea how important the
Guilfordian is to so many people. And as the figurehead for this
organization, I was the one who got the glory and took the heat.
Britta McNemar never failed to commend me on the paper each time
she saw me, as did Mona Olds.
Yet, if there was ever a misquote (or an entirely fabricated ar
ticle for that matter) or even a squashed picture of the new president
on the front page, I was the one to call as well. I received a particu
larly memorable voicernail alerting me to the fact that ultimate frisbee
is not a sport, and therefore should not be in the "sports" section, as
well as commenting on my ailedged sexual promiscuity and my like
ness to a female dog.
1 do not tell you this so that you can feel sony for me, but just to
remind you that there are many people behind this paper. It is not
lust an entity that produces itself each week. This is not a job; no
me is paid for it. It is simply something that interested students do
for fun or to just be involved. While we strive to be as professional as
sossible, there are time, space, and budgetary limitations that we
nust contend with.
This year, the Editorial Board has been an extended family to
ne, and I will miss them. As I head off to Arizona in the fall, I will
continue to be an avid reader of the Guilfordian, and I encourage you
o check it out as well. Just try not to forget all the students that put
heir time and energy into its production ... even though their name
nay never appear on the page.
Alison M. Goss, Editor-in-Chief 2000-2002
pet of apathy, with glossy new
bricks and not a word about it in
our voice mails, no public pres
sure to discover who did it, and
no coverage in The Guilfordian.
Alex Wilson was right on tar
get when he spoke of the "privi
lege of silence." Most of us have it
good enough here not to care
about those who might not. Pride
held a forum on homophobia to
correspond with the Day of Si
lence, where Shavon Andrews,
one of the only out black lesbians
on campus, spoke of homopho
bia in the African American com
munity.
She and the friend she
brought were the only African
Americans in the audience.
Too many events addressing
queer issues on campus leave us
preaching to the converted. With
athletics the final frontier in ac
knowledging homophobia and
actually dealing with it,
multiculturalism a much empha
sized but rarely realized ideal in
too many facets of Guilford life,
and an incoming president of a
religious denomination notori
ously bigoted against queer people
(let's hope Max can emphasize to
"Catholic folk" that Guilford re
spects the rights of "queer folk"),
there's much to be done before we
whip out the rainbows and cel
ebrate.
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