Bryce
The Second Semester
Chapter 6 - Bryce and the GLBT
During his first semester at the University of Clifton, Bryce Winslow had few associations with the GLBT Club, the organization of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered students on campus. There had been several conversations with Josh Young, the rather pushy Vice-President of the organization, and a single attendance at a public lecture sponsored by the group, which turned out to be pretty much of a travesty as far as Bryce and his friends were concerned. Towards the end of the fall semester, there were rumors that the radical element, represented by Josh Young, were being challenged for leadership of the organization, but that is all he knew. In a spirit of solidarity, he and Damon had joined the organization at the beginning of the semester, but even then they encountered signs of internal dissension.
Bryce tried to figure out the gay population of the University. In round numbers, there were about 22,000 students at the University of Clifton, divided between about 17,500 undergraduates and 4,500 graduates. University publications stated that the student body was 12% black, 8% Hispanic, and 4% other racial/ethnic minorities, leaving 76% white or Caucasian. Bryce paused to consider those categories for a moment. So-called whites were not actually white unless they were albino or very ill, and except for a very small minority, most blacks were not actually black, either. Bryce had seen three students on campus who looked truly black, two of whom were students from Africa. And what was Hispanic? Those who spoke Spanish or Portuguese? It included persons of purely European ancestry, persons of purely Native American ancestry, persons of purely African ancestry, and all combinations in between. And how did Europeans get to be called Caucasian? As far as he knew, none of his ancestors had anything to do with the Caucasus. Such labels were often misleading. But this sideline was a distraction. Nowhere in the University statistics was there anything about the homosexual population of the student body.
It was impossible to get any reliable figures about the homosexual (gay and lesbian) population of the country as a whole. Bryce had consulted a large number of web sites since admitting to himself that he was gay. Several seemingly reliable sources maintain that the percentage of homosexuals in any given population was about the same regardless of cultural or ethnic identification around the globe. But none of them present convincing information about what that percentage might be. Those which appear to be advocates for homosexuals in some fashion tend to cite a figure somewhere around 15% of the population. Those who wish to minimize the homosexual element in society, cite a figure around 3%. Of course, the most homophobic elements deny there is any naturally occurring homosexuality at all. Homosexuality is merely dissolute and deviant behavior by degenerate people who are naturally heterosexual. That group, Bryce decided, could safely be ignored as far as any reliable information was concerned. Figures based on studies of the population of New York City or San Francisco varied wildly from those based on such centers as Atlanta, St. Louis, or Denver. It seemed pretty certain that a large portion of the homosexual population was not out, and was therefore more or less invisible to statisticians. There was also some evidence that some of the most virulent homophobes were closeted homosexuals who hated their orientation. That would seem impossible at first glance, but then Bryce remembered reading an article about a young man sometime in about 1965 who joined Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party, then killed himself when it was made public that he was of Jewish ancestry. Evidently, some people do hate themselves.
Not being a statistician, and having no unquestionably reliable information to deal with anyway, Bryce decided that for his purposes he would assume that about 10% of the male population was gay. There seemed to be a slightly smaller percentage of the female population which was lesbian, but he was not immediately concerned with that. The University did provide the information that the student body was about 51% female and 49% male. There were no figures immediately available on the University web site as to whether this gender division was true for both graduate and undergraduate students, but, again making the assumption that it was, then there should be about 10,780 male students on campus, of whom about 1,078 were gay. That conclusion surprised Bryce. There certainly never seemed to be that many gays around. How many, like himself at the beginning of the academic year, were unwilling to admit their sexual orientation, or were uncertain of it? How many simply minded their own business, and saw no need to make their orientation known?
These musings were engendered by the information, passed to him by Mike Sandoval shortly after he and his boyfriend, Damon Watson, returned to campus after the Christmas holidays, that there was a major split within the GLBT Club between the radicals and the moderates, each claiming that the organization no longer represented their interests. There were flyers slipped under doors and posted on bulletin boards, in which the two groups lambasted each other, although it was not immediately apparent what each was accusing the other of doing or representing or not doing or not representing. There were emotional phrases, such as “a failure to represent the broad spectrum of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered students,” found in what was evidently a moderate attack on the radicals, and “treason to the cause of multi-sexual liberation” from the other side. One side was accused of being “obsessed with meaningless showmanship,” the other with being “sexual Uncle Toms.” It was all very interesting, but not doing the gay community much good in the eyes of the larger student population.
Bryce, ever the historian, was reminded of a parallel in European history. In 1848 there were Liberal revolutions all over Europe, but by 1850, or shortly thereafter, the forces of reaction were firmly in power everywhere. This was the “turning point in history at which history failed to turn” according to the Liberal British historian George Trevelyan. Bryce knew that there were multiple forces at play, but one surely was the fact that once the revolutionaries came to power they immediately began to quarrel among themselves. In Paris, the government of King Louis Philippe was overthrown and the Second Republic proclaimed through the joint efforts of the Liberal Republicans and the Socialists in March, but by July the Liberals were calling in the army to suppress the Socialists. This, incidentally, was the model of class warfare experienced by Karl Marx, greatly influencing his thinking. Elsewhere, Germans at the Frankfurt Parliament demanded national union and cultural expression, but denied the same rights to the Polish population of Silesia, Posen, and West Prussia. In Hungary, Louis Kossuth established a Liberal regime, and then began to impose Magyarization on the Slovak, Romanian, and Serb inhabitants of the Kingdom. This, moreover, was not the only time this phenomenon occurred. In his influential study The Anatomy of Revolution, first published as early as 1938 and frequently revised and reprinted, Crane Brinton noted the cycle of the English (1642), French (1789), and Russian (1917) revolutions, in which the leadership of the revolution passed from moderates to radicals, who destroyed each other, leading to a reaction and dictatorship with Cromwell, Napoleon, and Stalin. The obvious exception to this pattern is the American Revolution of 1776, in which Washington refused to play the role of Cromwell, and the real radicals, like Sam Adams and Patrick Henry, sank into obscurity, never achieving national power.
When Bryce attempted to share his historical insights with his friends, especially those in the gay community at the University, they rolled their eyes and said, “Yes, but what are we going to do now?”
The hand of the student gay community was forced when a body of radicals seized control of the lobby of the student union – all right, the Albert Benjamin Chandler University Center, to use it’s official name – on Monday, the first day of the first full week of classes of the spring semester. Officially, the first day of classes was the previous Thursday. The University calendar always seemed to begin classes on a Thursday, so there would be one class period for each course, whether it met on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule or a Tuesday-Thursday schedule, during which the instructor could pass out syllabi, call roll, explain requirements, and generally introduce the course to the students before getting down to the meat of the material to be covered. Many students, especially those who had been around for a couple of years, simply did not show up during that first week, so the first time it could be assumed that most students would be on campus was the first Monday of the term.
On this particular Monday morning, about three dozen students (later determined to actually be 26, but it seemed like more at the time) entered the lobby of the student union around 9:30, and simply took control. Some of the revolutionaries were attired in clothing typical of the opposite gender. Some had extravagant make-up, hair styles, and clothing, even if not of the other gender. Some wore tee-shirts with a variety of slogans, many of which were vulgar or blasphemous. They seemed determined to offend as many people as possible, later compared by Bryce to Father Noonan at St. Boniface the previous day. They ejected the student workers at the reference desk, and took control of the telephone and the computers. They proceeded to set up huge displays supposedly representing the grievances of the homosexual community at U of C, some of which were written in vulgar language and at least bordered on pornography. They had clip boards containing copies of a petition demanding the establishment of single gender physical education classes and required classes for all students in gay and lesbian studies, among other goals. Any student who happened to wander near the lobby was grabbed and told to sign the petition. Those who hesitated or refused were subjected to verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse. Not long after seizing control of the computer at the reception and information desk, several of the more computer adept students began hacking into the University records. It was later determined that one such student had worked in the office of the Vice-President for Student Affairs. They had obviously prepared well for this aspect of their activity beforehand. They proceeded to destroy any document which contained a reference to the gender of the students. This would seem to contradict aspects of their list of demands, but, while their activities were well thought out, their ideas were not. Quite a few records were destroyed before the technicians at the Information Technology Center, where the main University computer was located, were able to disable the computers in the lobby of the University Center from afar.
Most of the occupiers spent their time making out. Anyone who commented adversely about this public display, or even showed facial expressions of disapproval, was called names and treated roughly. The crisis came when two couples began to engage in oral sex in public. Two things happened almost simultaneously. First, a body of seven hefty males, later determined to be members of several athletic teams, invaded the lobby and began beating up the demonstrators, with special severity to those who had been engaged in sex. One guy was kicked in the groin by a steel toed boot. Second, five minutes after the attack, Campus Security arrived on the scene, called in even before the counter-attack was launched by several people who objected to the public sex.
Three people were sent to University Hospital. Twelve more were treated for minor injuries at the infirmary. All fifteen of these were from among the demonstrators. Evidently, the attackers were better at inflicting harm than the demonstrators. Everyone in the lobby was placed under restraint by Campus Security, both the demonstrators and the attackers. Each person thus arrested was questioned about who had done what, and the purpose of the demonstration. It was difficult to get consistent answers, so Security eventually decided that some students were purposely lying, some did not know what had happened as far as the computers and the physical attacks were concerned, and some had different goals for the demonstration than did others. The attackers were determined to be four members of the football team, one wrestler, one hockey player, and one baseball player, but all were members of the same fraternity. These enquiries took several days, with the students suspended until a decision could be reached. The University’s back-up files recovered all those destroyed records, but with some waste of time and effort. Campus maintenance was called in to clean up the mess.
But it did not stop there by a long shot. There were lurid and sensational reports in the press and on television that Monday and for several days afterwards, all of which seemed to stress the public sex. The Governor of the State called and chewed out the President of the University, threatening his job. The President in turn threatened several University officials, including the Vice-President for Student Affairs, the Chief of Campus Security, and the faculty sponsor for the GLBT Club. The state legislature was just beginning its sessions for the year, providing an opportunity for several lengthy speeches in both houses about the radical elements on campuses across the state, the subversion of traditional values, and threats to the peace and security of society. More ominously, the Chairman of the House Committee on the Budget spoke of a reduction of funds for higher education, as the existing funds were squandered on those who obviously did not appreciate what they were given. The public would not support, and should not support, attacks on its core values, the Chairman proclaimed. When it was pointed out to him that the incident concerned a handful of students on one campus, he replied, “Such things would not take place if the university faculties were not riddled with left-wingers and secularists who have no respect for American values.”
It was to this situation that Bryce and his friends felt called upon to respond. The first meeting of the GLBT Club of the spring semester was scheduled for the Tuesday of the week of the demonstration - in other words, the next day. Because of the controversy engendered by the internal split and the public demonstration, it was anticipated that there would be a large turnout, unlike the usual dozen or so students. Consequently, the Club obtained permission to hold its meeting in the same small auditorium in the University Center which was used when there was a guest speaker, although any connection between the GLBT Club and the University Center was questionable in the eyes of some in the administration after the demonstration. Although this was a Tuesday, and thus a time when the Sigma Alpha Tau fraternity held its business meetings, Bryce and Damon decided it was more important to be present at this meeting, as it might affect the future of all gays on campus.
When they arrived, they found two members of Campus Security on duty, one in the corridor, and one inside the auditorium. Damon noticed two seats free next to Larry Guthrie, the student who had been helpful when they signed up for membership after first arriving back on campus, so they sat there. Larry looked relieved. As the meeting time arrived, a student on stage took the microphone, accompanied by two men in suits.
“Good evening and welcome. I’m Gary Woodson, President of the GLBT Club, for the benefit of those of you who might not know me.” This simple statement was greeted by boos and hisses from one segment of the audience. Ignoring that, Woodson moved on. “Before we begin, Dr. Burnett, the Vice-President for Student Affairs, wishes to make a statement. Dr. Burnett.” With that, Woodson turned the microphone over to one of the men in a suit.
Without prologue, Dr. Burnett began his statement. “You are all, no doubt, familiar with the events of yesterday morning, and the bad publicity the University has suffered as a result. This is not the 1960s, and such behavior will not be tolerated at the University of Clifton.” There were louder boos and hisses, and considerable shuffling about. Dr. Burnett ostentatiously waited for quiet before resuming. “We have talked at higher levels about withdrawing University recognition of this club, and consequently prohibiting meetings on campus and the use of the campus post office for distributing your literature. It’s up to you. We in the administration will be most interested in what you do here this evening.” With that, Dr. Burnett relinquished the microphone, and stalked out of the room, ignoring the shouted questions and comments from the audience.
As Dr. Burnett was leaving, the other man in a suit took the microphone from Gary Woodson. “As you know, I’m the faculty sponsor of this organization. I have attempted in vain to convince the administration that Monday’s demonstration was not sponsored by, or connected with, the GLBT Club, but my comments have fallen on deaf ears. That attitude makes it seem that the protests were justified.” There were loud shouts of approval from some quarters at this. “There remains considerable homophobia on campus.” More shouts of approval. “So, let’s get down to business, and determine what response we will make to the statement of the Vice-President.”
“Who is that?” Damon asked Bryce.
“I’ve seen him around. He’s in the Department of English. I think his name is Westover,” Bryce replied.
Gary Woodson resumed the chair, stating that the primary item of business is the response of the GLBT Club to the events of the previous day, and to the statement about them by Dr. Burnett. He then attempted to moderate the ensuing discussion, although excited and passionate students often failed to wait to be recognized by the chair before making their opinions known. As a result, it was sometimes hard to determine just what was going on, as more than one person attempted to speak at the same time. By an hour after the meeting began, two more or less coherent camps had emerged. One faction wished to distance the Club from the events of the previous day, and find some kind of accommodation with the administration. They argued that it was important to have a recognized presence on campus so that questioning students would have somewhere to go when they needed help. They also argued that alienating the broader public was not the way to achieve acceptance. The other faction called this position weak and compromising. They insisted that recognition of homosexuals had to be accepted, not as a gift from the University, but as a matter of right. The demonstrators on Monday were only acting for all when they disrupted normal activity, as this was the only way to get the attention of the administration and the public. They wanted to adopt a resolution in support of the student demonstrators, whose status was still uncertain. After all, they argued, while the demonstration was not officially an activity of the Club, all the major participants were members.
Bryce naturally found himself favoring the position of those he thought of as the moderates. He found the activities of the demonstrators unacceptable from anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, and the arguments in their favor lacking in logic and common sense. Despite his initial intention to observe only and not participate, he found himself speaking up. Approaching the two hour mark, President Woodson was frustrated with his inability to prevent students from simply starting to shout out their opinions without being recognized. He therefore shouted into the microphone for everyone to be quiet. As he had electronic amplification, he was able to make his point.
“It seems we’re spending more time calling each other names than doing anything useful,” he said. “There appear to be two positions here this evening, one favoring support for the demonstrators, one not. I’m going to call a recess for fifteen minutes, and ask representatives of both sides to draw up a written statement for the benefit of our secretary, who is having a great deal of difficulty taking minutes. Then we will debate the two resolutions.” Woodson then selected three individuals who had spoken in favor of the demonstrators and three who had spoken against them, and appointed them to draw up the resolutions. Because he had spoken well several times, Bryce was chosen to be part of the moderate committee.
Thanks in large part to Bryce, the resolution his committee drafted was calm and moderate, as well as literate. It stated that the demonstrations on Monday, 11 January, were neither planned nor executed as part of an approved activity of the GLBT Club. The Club regrets the excesses committed at that time, considering them inappropriate, uncivil, and counter-productive. At the same time, the Club condemns the attacks on the demonstrators, which it considers a sign of bias, fear, ignorance, and hatred. The draft produced by the other committee was much more emotional in its language, and considerably less grammatical. It called the demonstrations justified because of rampant homophobia across campus at all levels, and called for the exoneration of the demonstrators, and the implementation of their stated goals. At the same time, the attackers should be expelled from the University and prosecuted for hate crimes.
When the meeting resumed, a spokesman for each of the committees were asked to read out its draft resolution, with Bryce chosen to do so for his group, and Josh Young for the other group. Then the debate resumed, with President Woodson having a firmer grasp on the proceedings. He called on one speaker for each side in rotation. By common consent, Bryce spoke first for his committee. He argued that students of all sexual orientations needed a source on campus, one they could trust, not just for the prestige of being approved, as one speaker earlier in the meeting suggested, but as a resource for those in need of information, sometimes just in need of a friendly person to talk with, on occasion as a last desperate measure before doing something really final. If the Club were banned from campus, there would be no such visibility. How much confidence could a questioning student have in a disavowed, off-campus organization which was more or less underground? With respect to the demonstration, Bryce argued that such things were counter-productive. He pointed out the many letters of outrage in the local newspapers, and the reaction of government spokesmen at the local and state level. If actions like this result in cuts in state appropriations, whose scholarships are going to be lost? Which courses will not be taught? Which outdated equipment will not be replaced? It’s not as though any cut could be made up by donations from the private sector. Representatives of the private sector seemed to be the ones writing outraged letters to the editor. He emphasized that every member of the gay community at Clifton should remember that homosexuals of all kinds make up a distinct minority of the population, so that to obtain the recognition and acceptance we seek and deserve, we must convince the majority that we are responsible citizens, not threats. Events like the one on Monday are counter-productive because they alienate the general public and thus push back the acceptance we seek.
The presentation by Josh Young was in keeping with the tone of the other draft resolution. He spoke movingly about the rights of all being violated when the rights of one were abused. He again noted that the most visible participants in the demonstration had been active members of the Club, even if their demonstration was not a Club sponsored event. He hinted that his opponents on the moderate side were not real members of the GLBT community. He argued that equal treatment was not a gift, but a right, and we should not be required to beg for it. Actions such as those in the University Center were the only way to bring the situation of the real GLBT community to the attention of the general public. If some were outraged, all the better, for now at least they were being talked about rather than ignored. The time for pretending that everything was fine was past. To abandon those who were in the front lines of the struggle for acceptance was betrayal, a stab in the back.
There were many other speakers. By ten o’clock some people were starting to leave, saying it was all talk, and nothing would ever be settled. The two sides seemed to be hardening in their positions as barbs were traded back and forth. Some of the phrases from those flyers found around campus were dusted off and used again. References were made to persons and events of the previous semester, which those like Bryce did not understand. Finally, President Woodson accepted a motion to end debate after one more comment from each side. Bryce used his opportunity to call for unity, burying past grievances, and cooperating in improving the condition of the entire GLBT community on campus. His opposite number, however, returned to the theme that those who opposed his resolution were betraying the cause. The vote was then taken, with those favoring the moderate resolution outvoting the radicals by only ten votes, out of more than two hundred cast.
When Woodson announced the result, after having the votes counted twice, there was a howl of protest from the radical element. Josh Young jumped up and shouted that the vote was invalid, as people like Bryce were not regular members of the Club, but only came to torpedo the aims of the regular members. When President Woodson pointed out that it had been decided early in the meeting that everyone present had a vote, as everyone was concerned about the situation, Young and his followers stalked out of the auditorium, yelling that they no longer wanted to be associated with such a yellow-bellied Club. Among those leaving was the Club secretary, so Woodson asked for a volunteer to take minutes for the remainder of the meeting. Mike Sandoval volunteered. Woodson then noted that the Vice-President, the Secretary, and one of the three members-at-large of the Club’s Executive Committee had just walked out. He asked what the wishes of the Club were about filling those offices. The majority decided in favor of electing new officers to serve out the remaining portion of the academic year, until regular elections at the end of the semester. Mike Sandoval was nominated for Vice-President, along with two other students, with a student named Felicity Gaines actually elected. Someone nominated Bryce for the office of Secretary. He rose to decline the nomination, noting that Josh Young was at least partly correct, in that he had not been a regular member in the past, having only joined a few days previously, and he had another standing obligation on Tuesday evenings.
To the frustration of President Woodson, that led to an extended discussion of the Club’s meeting time. That, in turn, resulted in a motion to change the regular meeting time to the second Wednesday of each month, which passed. Then Bryce was again nominated, and this time he did not have an excuse for avoiding office. He was elected as Secretary of the GLBT Club. Mike was elected to the at-large position also abandoned earlier.
As the meeting broke up after eleven o’clock, Bryce sighed heavily, as he collected the Secretarial files left behind by his predecessor. Damon poked him. “Congratulations, Boyfriend, you just got yourself another commitment.”
“At least it’s only once a month,” Bryce said, as he prepared to carry out his first duty, drafting a letter to the Vice-President for Student Affairs announcing the outcome of the meeting, and giving the text of the resolution adopted there.