Intellectual Climate
Wednesday, April 23, 2014 • page 13
identity on changing campus
Elon has grown and is continuing to grow to
reflect that.”
For his part, Bosch holds confidential
meetings with students struggHng with gen
der identity, visits classrooms when invited
to speak on LGBTQ_ issues by professors
and helps focus the attention of the Presi
dential LGBTQIA Task Force, a 14-person
collaboration of students, faculty, staff, senior
administrators and alumni, co-chaired by
Bosch and Leigh-Ann Royster, director of
inclusive community wellbeing.
Already, Elon University has established
a three-pronged alert system for students to
report incidents, on campus — anonymously,
online, in-person or over the phone. All re
ports of bias are filtered through Royster’s
office.
But not aU of the problems facing LBTQ_
students on campus are tied to homophobic
slurs and other issues of bias, though they
have occurred in the past. In September
2013, a depiction of male genitaUa was found
scrawled on a whiteboard in Colonnades D,
along with a swastika and the letters “KKK.”
Though the September incident wasn’t
thought, at the time, to be promoting ho
mophobia, Bosch said it’s important to re
member that all discrimination is tied to
each other — that acts of hatred against re
ligion or race are every bit as demeaning as
LGBTQ_epithets.
In the wake of that incident and others,
including one April 2013 where students
living in an off-campus apartment found a
handwritten note that included a racial slur
referencing hip-hop and rap music, then-
SGA President Welsford Bishopric and
President Leo Lambert announced the for
mation of a committee designed to further
Elon’s intellectual climate.
Bosch said the progress made in the
time since has been remarkable, and Wilkes
agreed.
“Since [Bosch] came, there have been such
strides made between us and the administra
tion,” he said. “It’s crucial for someone who
can devote all of their time to helping people
like me be given the position he has. There
have already been noticeable changes in Elon
pohcies, like the name change option, that
has made me feel more comfortable here.”
Elon’s 5,599 undergraduate enrollment
is on the smaller size nationally, but it’s still
surprising how few incidents of bias have oc
curred in the nine months Bosch has been at
the university, he said.
“It’s surprising to me how few bias in
cidents there are in the grand scheme of
things,” he said. “When people hear about
an incident of bias happening, there’s this
immediate response, and that can highlight
when things go wrong, but it’s good in the
sense that people aren’t afraid to report and
shows the amount of allies we have on cam
pus, the number of people who really care.”
People who identify on the LGBTQ_
spectrum can be their greatest advocates, ac-
Wilkes said he’s used to fielding the kind
of innocent questions children ask — about
whether he’s a boy or a girl, the kind of ques
tion not intended to be offensive, only curi
ous.
“It happens with kids all of the time,” he
cording to Bosch, but that doesn’t mean the said. “Yeah, it’s kind of uncomfortable being
responsibility of educating others should or asked who I am or what’s wrong with me,
does fall on their shoulders. but it’s a whole lot different being asked by
“People who have the experience of it are a child why my hair is so short if I’m a girl,
always going to be the greatest educators,” he than being asked what gender pronoun I
said. prefer in front of the whole entire class.”
CAROLINE OLNEYI Photo Editor
The Gender and LBGTQIA Center contains a social space, a lending library of books and DVD’s, a quiet study space and multiple student volunteers.