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Admissions officers of course deny that they give special treatment to homosexual applicants. But there is no doubt gays are on colleges' minds these days, as advocacy groups assess gay-friendliness and as a generation of high-school students graduates more obsessed with sexual orientation than any before it. Last May saw the first-ever college fair in the nation geared exclusively to this trendy demographic. The well-attended gathering was just one of many indications that gays are pushing for attention in the admissions process — and that they're being greeted with open arms. Motivated by a combination of misplaced concern for social disadvantage, sloppy arguments about the educational benefits of diversity, and sheer capitulation to political pressure, colleges are looking more and more favorably on gay and lesbian applicants. Colleges' efforts to attract gays and lesbians often take the form of aggressive advertisement. Many schools are trying particularly hard to signal to gay students that they're open and supportive. Harvard recently included information in its "viewbook" addressed specifically to homosexual applicants. Now, along with questions like "Must students live on campus?" and "What study abroad programs does Harvard offer?" there is a paragraph-long answer to the question "What is the climate at Harvard for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students?" Admissions director Marilyn McGrath Lewis explains that the addition was a response to interest from students, alumni, and applicants, many of whom are increasingly interested in diversity of this sort. At the University of New Hampshire, prospective students interested in homosexual issues are referred to the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, where an administrator in charge of gay issues waits to answer their questions. New Hampshire's associate admissions director Jibril Salaam says that gay students may indicate on their applications that they'd like more information about gay life on campus. More and more students are opting to do so, he says, and more are using their personal essays to discuss sexual preference and related activism. Several admissions officers share the impression that applicants are increasingly eager to divulge their inclinations. Yet the line between advertising and recruiting is a fine one, and colleges' interest in homosexual applicants goes beyond merely signaling their openness. According to one of the recent college fair's chief organizers, several schools had approached gay organizations to learn more about how to appeal to these students. Harvard's McGrath Lewis says that many admissions officers look favorably on openly gay applicants because of the courage it takes to "come out" as a teenager and the experience of social adversity it entails. Gays also force others to "question their assumptions," she says. Salaam and a few others are even willing to consider adding a voluntary checkbox for sexual orientation on their applications. As it is, they have no way of knowing a student's preference beyond what's revealed through personal essays, high-school activities, and requests for information about gay life on campus. The problems with the diversity dogma are manifold, and have been amply discussed. But the case of gays and lesbians further brings to light the absurdity of some of its underlying arguments. Most important, this example illustrates just how quickly such purported diversity turns into intellectual homogeneity and coercion. First, there isn't clear evidence that gays as a group are particularly disadvantaged. Gay applicants don't fall into any one socioeconomic category, and there's little indication that on the whole they're academically unprepared. As for how they do after college, some studies suggest that gays are better off economically than their straight counterparts, since they fare well in the job market and usually don't have children. And despite all the talk about hate crimes and homophobia, the Census Bureau reports that in 1999, the last reported year, there were seven percent more bias-related crimes against religious minorities than against homosexuals. Yet one rarely if ever hears of elite colleges looking to attract more Jews or Pentecostals. Peter
Wood, a professor at Boston University and author of the upcoming
book
Diversity: A Biography of a Concept, points out that there
is no reason to believe that gays are discriminated against in the college
admissions process. In fact, in some places, the reverse is more likely.
"People who have a deep investment in the diversity ideology have
realized that this is one more identity group they can sweep into their
collection of identity groups to which they give special treatment,"
Wood says. Though colleges tend not to keep tabs on the numbers of openly
gay students on their campuses, he points out that the proportion of gays
at some schools (particularly elite liberal-arts colleges) may already
be higher than the percentage in the population at large. At Harvard, for example, the pro-gay contingent has nearly silenced all views about homosexuality that fall short of unconditional acceptance. Last fall, a dining-hall employee who was involved in the evangelical ex-gay movement garnered significant attention and outrage from students for speaking openly about his "conversion." In the pages of The Crimson, Harvard's daily newspaper, the worker and his group were accused of intolerance, indoctrination, and promoting homosexual self-hatred. When asked whether there is room on campus for debate about the implications of homosexuality, McGrath Lewis of the admissions office says, "Well, it's not really something one can debate about." With more openly gay students also comes more pressure to create "gay studies" majors and departments. The University of Chicago, the City University of New York, and several campuses of the University of California, to name just a few examples, have already established certificate programs or minors in gay and lesbian studies. At Wesleyan, years of pressure from gay students finally swayed the college, in the spring of 2001, to hire a full-time, tenure-track gay and lesbian studies professor. At Yale, alumnus Larry Kramer, the playwright who is an outspoken activist for gay issues and AIDS awareness, offered to donate $5 million to establish a permanent post in the burgeoning field. When Yale rejected his proposal, Kramer responded by calling the university homophobic. Last spring, Yale ended a four-year debate on the issue by accepting $1 million from Kramer towards a new Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies. Gay and lesbian studies programs strike a dangerous blow to the concept of a unified and unifying intellectual tradition. At UCLA, students may now receive a minor in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies by taking one introductory class in the field and eight courses on topics like "gender systems," "gay and lesbian perspectives in pop music," and "queer choreography." Even more regrettable is that universities have bought into the claim that knowledge is essentially about "perspective," and that new fields of learning should be created to express our disparate points of view. Even if one agrees that there is something worth studying about the cultural history of gays and lesbians, there's no defensible reason why these topics can't be incorporated into existing history, politics, even philosophy departments. Often the push to institutionalize such "perspectives" is more a question of power than of learning. And in the end, a lot of what diversity comes down to is which groups are willing to make the most noise. In the case of gays, colleges wouldn't be nearly so inviting were it not for pressure from advocacy groups, alumni, and hyper-conscious applicants. A report by the Massachusetts Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, the group behind last May's college fair, urges schools to prove that they're nondiscriminatory by — of all things — targeting gay students in their recruitment processes. Another problem with all of this — one that distinguishes the recruitment of gays from the recruitment of other members of the diversity bunch — is that there is an incentives issue to worry about. High-school students are undoubtedly impressionable when it comes to their sexual inclinations, and in light of recent cultural trends they hardly need more encouragement to "try out" being gay. This is separate from the question of whether students will lie about their sexual preferences solely for the purpose of getting into college. They may do this too, but fraud of this sort is not restricted to any particular label. (Peter Wood relates an anecdote about a student who pretended to be Native American for the purpose of getting into college. It's not difficult to imagine how students seeking to belong to the new "downtrodden" elite might pull similar stunts with other forged identities.) The real issue is that giving special treatment to gays and then celebrating their "perspective" sends a signal to high-school students that homosexuality is desirable in and of itself. In case college admissions officers haven't noticed, Americans already hear this message quite a bit: With television specials, colorful parades, and plenty of vocal celebrity representatives, there's something almost glamorous about being gay nowadays. Unfortunately, in today's climate of selective diversity, comments like the above can't be uttered on college campuses without an onslaught of vicious accusations. This is not the diversity we want. This is but an ugly, divisive imitation. |
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ere's a new
symptom of the diversity doctrine now ubiquitous in American higher education:
Across the country, schools hoping to compose "diverse" student
bodies are going out of their way to attract gay and lesbian students.
