Visitors
to campus March 18, 2004, would have had a hard time believing
Notre Dame has a reputation for being unwelcoming to gay people.
Hundreds of students and employees that day could be seen wearing
bright orange T-shirts reading "Gay? Fine by Me."
An unofficial student group called the Gay-Straight Alliance
said it sold about 1,600 of the shirts and encouraged people to
wear them March 18 and thereafter as a sign of solidarity between
gay and straight members of the campus community. The event was
modeled on a concept born at Duke University. A second unity day
was held April 21.
Participation in the events appeared motivated at least in part
by last year's Princeton Review guide to the nation's Best
331 Colleges listing Notre Dame No. 1 in a category labeled
"Alternative Lifestyles Not an Alternative." Ratings in the wide-ranging
and widely read guide are said to be based on poll responses of
students attending the colleges rated.
Acceptance of homosexuality has been a topic of widespread discussion
and sometime protest at Notre Dame for nearly two decades. Two
issues have dominated the debate.
One is whether the University should grant official recognition
to a gay-lesbian student organization. Recognition would make
such a group eligible to receive money for programming and allow
it to advertise its meetings and events on campus. (Organizers
of the T-shirt days were able to advertise by convincing two academic
units, the departments of anthropology and sociology, to lend
their names to the materials.)
In deciding against recognition, the University has insisted
that the issue is complex and requires collaboration among administrators,
pastoral ministers and students. Today's administrators point
to resources already in place that are intended to support students
and heighten awareness. The most prominent of these resources
is the Standing Committee on Gay and Lesbian Student Needs, part
of the Office of Student Affairs. And although the University
has not approved a student club, despite numerous requests, an
unrecognized organization has existed for many years.
The other issue is whether the University should amend its legal
statement of non-discrimination to include sexual orientation
alongside characteristics like race, color, gender, and national
and ethnic origin. While condemning harassment of any kind, the
University's Board of Fellows, Board of Trustees, and officers
have declined to make this change because of concern that a court
might not understand the distinction the Catholic church draws
between sexual orientation and sexual conduct. Church teaching
holds that a homosexual orientation is neither sinful nor evil
but that sexual union is reserved exclusively to a man and woman
joined in marriage. If sexual orientation were named as a protected
category in the non-discrimination clause, the argument goes,
civil courts could measure the University's decisions in this
regard, potentially jeopardizing Notre Dame's ability to make
choices that support teachings of the church.
The first gay group to seek recognition at Notre Dame was Gays
and Lesbians of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College, which applied
for and was denied recognition in 1985. In the following years
GLND/SMC, originally composed mostly of graduate students, continued
to meet regularly in the University Counseling Center. The group
was allowed to advertise in The Observer, but the ads
could not include the name of the organization or specify the
meeting place.
In late 1994, GNLD/SMC decided to challenge these restrictions
by deliberately advertising the place of its next meeting. The
group was soon banned from meeting anywhere on campus, sparking
protests that drew wide press coverage.
In 1995 then-Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia O'Hara
formed a committee of students, faculty and administrators to
look for ways to address the concerns of homosexual students short
of granting official recognition to GLND/SMC. A year later this
committee made 12 recommendations, 11 of which were accepted by
the vice president.
The recommendations included establishing an in-house group
to provide support for gay and lesbian students, with advisers
appointed by Student Affairs. The measures also created the Standing
Committee on Gay and Lesbian Student Needs. Although student interest
in the support group waned, the Standing Committee continues to
serve as the primary vehicle for the University's education and
outreach efforts.
The 12th recommendation of the 1995-96 committee concerned amending
the non-discrimination clause. In 1997 Father Edward Malloy, CSC,
University president, published a letter to the campus announcing
his decision to let the existing wording stand and explaining
his reasons for doing so. He issued a new policy statement, the
"Spirit of Inclusion," stating that the University welcomed people
of all kinds, including those of different sexual orientations,
and that Notre Dame condemned harassment of any kind.
Two years later, advocates of amending the non-discrimination
clause tried going over Malloy's head by asking the boards of
trustees and fellows to make the change. Both bodies declined
to do so.
Later in 1999 a new controversy erupted when The Observer
published an ad from the unofficial group Gay and Lesbian Alumni/ae
of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College. Printed in the student
paper's final issues of the year, the ad congratulated any gay,
lesbian, bisexual and transgender students on graduating and invited
them to join the organization.
A representative of Father Malloy warned that the paper was
not allowed to carry ads from outside groups that espoused positions
contrary to the Catholic church.
Later, in the fall of 1999, the paper published an ad from OutreachND.
This successor to GLND/SMC developed in the mid-1990s and is described
as being oriented more toward undergraduate students than was
the original organization.
No serious repercussions resulted from the Observer's
acts of defiance, and a spirit of live-and-let-live appears to
have prevailed. OutreachND continues to meet on campus and even
advertise occasionally in the student paper. But neither it nor
any other gay-related student group has succeeded in winning formal
recognition.
The latest to try was the T-shirt effort's organizer, the Gay-Straight
Alliance. In March the administration turned down this group's
request to form a new group with the proposed name United in Diversity.
Unlike OutreachND, which is primarily a support group for gay
and lesbian students, United in Diversity said it would be open
to gays and straights alike and would focus its efforts on changing
the campus atmosphere. One of the group's leaders, Joe Dickmann,
a senior this past year, said in February that he had received
e-mails from "600 to 700" students expressing support for the
concept.
In denying the Gay-Straight Alliance's application for recognition,
the University again said it already has programs and structures
in place to support gay and lesbian students and to educate and
sensitize the campus community about issues related to homosexuality.
Ed Cohen is an associate editor of this magazine.
(July 2004)
