I'm a high school senior so of course half of my thoughts this year are spent on college lol. I've finished applying and right now I'm just waiting on my decisions! But I just realized something a few days ago.... Since I have been telling more and more people I am gay I have gotten more and more excited to go to college and have relationships with other guys. I come from a pretty conservative little town where there are hardly any gay people, and the only gays I know are the self-loathing, antisocial, and just plain weird gays (sorry if i'm stereotyping, thats literally how they all are though). So I just CAN'T WAIT to get to college and meet a really nice and normal gay guy who I can get to know better. Except I'm wondering how possible this fantasy really is... so does anyone know in general if most colleges are pretty gay friendly or not? My actual list is: University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and University of Penn. Like for example, Duke and UVA are both in the south, a typically antigay area, but I'm wondering if its difference in a college setting?
Well, most colleges in general are pretty gay friendly, but a few I can think of right off in NC are Appalachian State, UNC-Asheville, NCSU, and Western Carolina University.
I would say nearly all Liberal Arts colleges and most universities will be gay friendly. The less educated you are, the more likely you are to hate people for being different. I am educated and I now just hate stupid people. Ah, to be an pinko-commie-elitist-queer! Now, I would recommend avoiding any "Christian Colleges" or universities that have any religious affiliation at all. While many are fairly tolerant, there are some that are not and I wouldn't risk it if I were you...
I agree with the above post. All good advice. The Seeker is right. Stay away from religious affiliations. Good Luck!
Do a google on each of the places you're interested in along with terms like 'gay friendly' or 'gay acceptance' and see what comes up. Look at several of the results that come up. You should be able to get a fairly good cross-section of thoughts on the matter. Look for trends. Keep an eye out for how old the site you are looking at is, if possible to determine. I did a quick-n-dirty google on UVA and just looked at 1-2 sites. One said it isn't terribly conservative and largely apathetic re gay issues. But that's just one site. You might also try to locate websites or contact info for any LGBT groups on each campus (campus directory maybe?) and reach out to them for information on the general atmosphere and experience. Just some thoughts, Todd
My school is religiously affiliated. ( It has Saint in its name even) and its even becoming more gay friendly. We have an LGBT society that is entering its second year.
Why? I attend a Catholic university and they're very open-minded, and it's the best university in my area. Don't choose to not attend a certain university just because it's religious affiliated. Select one you feel comfortable with.
I think that the key here is to make sure that if you do choose to go to a religiously affiliated campus, do some research. Make sure that they are an accepting campus before you go there and find out otherwise.
My university is Methodist affiliated. There's a joke that the girl:guy ratio is 1:8 and the girl to straight guy ratio is 1:4 I'm honestly not entirely sure it's a joke though. I go to OKCU.
As a general rule most Colleges are more liberal than the surrounding area, but if the area is very anti-gay then then college itself probably won't be very liberal. As others have said, stay away from religiously affiliated institutions as a general rule. There are exceptions, including one right down the road from where I live, but even those have large groups of homophobes. One big thing to remember about the south is that cities, with exceptions (Atlanta),are generally more liberal than the surrounding countryside. I'm pretty sure John's Hopkins is fine, although I haven't done any research on it myself. I can attest that the Durham area of North Carolina is a lot more liberal than the rest of the state and that students at Duke will probably be very accepting too. I was actually looking at going there for a time and when I was doing my research I didn't see any red flags pop up.
If it's still published, there's a book that used to be updated every year called the Underground Guide to Colleges (or something close to that) which was written much more from the perspective of students, and it has a section on how open and accepting the school population is to LGBT students. I'd suggest getting hold of a copy of that (even an old one, as it would be unlikely those attitudes have done anything but become more accepting in the past few years.)
Campus Pride is a non-profit that helps universities evaluate how LGBT-friendly they are, using this criteria. The problem with relying on student reports is that students usually only have experience of their own school--so they don't know how what they individually experience might be different from other schools, necessarily. Participating colleges can keep their score private, or publish it in their index. According to them, your best bet is probably University of Pennsylvania, which got their highest score at 5 stars. University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins both got 3.5 stars, which isn't too bad. University of Pittsburgh at Greensburgh (the only listing for U of Pittsburgh) had 2.5 stars. Duke is not listed, and comments I've read elsewhere lead me to think that it's not great, particularly for gender non-conforming people. They seem to be making some efforts, but they have a pretty bad reputation in this area, which will be kind of self-feeding since it will tend not to attract as many gay and gay-friendly students for that reason. You can look at each school's details in the index for a breakdown of why they got the scores they did.
I live in a very 'we dislike gay people' town but at the college everything seems fine. There are actually a lot of Bi people I have met and two gay guys and they didn't have any problems outside of late homework. College is just its own world.
