One of my on-campus jobs right now is in my college's admissions office. I do everything from answering phones to entering applications, emailing students, sending out letters, putting together information on the school, guiding new and prospective students and essentially helping to figure out whether or not to accept a student. It is a great job and my boss is amazing. I get to learn things about our students before they come.
Every time I receive an application from a student that is out it breaks my heart. I realized this today when going over an application. In the time that I have worked in the office we have had a few applicants who are GLB and every time I want to tell them to run away. Due to my job I am unable to do this and I feel guilty. To say that my college is not a GLBT friendly environment would be an understatement. One student I know waited until after he left to come out. Another friend who recently graduated was out to a few people but when homosexuality got brought up in a class one day and the majority of the class essentially declared, without knowing it, that he was going to hell, he sort of shut down.
Being an ally in this environment has not been easy...especially as a theology major. we do not have a Gay Straight-Alliance or a BGLASS or anything of the sort. I have tried to defend and had people look at me like I was hand delivering Satan to campus. There really is not any venue of support on campus. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a gay man in the dorm.
When an openly bisexual student, who has been involved in the leadership of his school's GSA applies to our small extremely conservative college I want to tell him to run away. It breaks my heart looking over his application because I know that if he does decided to enroll here he will have a battle ahead of him. He should not have to fight to be who he is, but in this cruel world and in our little college bubble he will, and that depresses me immensely.
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