On: A&M and Homosexuality

If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald noted, “[t]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”, then the students of A&M are indeed first-rate. Or, more likely, they are simply complacent with a paradox whose existence they should find intolerable: Aggies, as they are called, vainly believe that they are, at once, the friendliest college in the nation and, more accurately, unfriendly to their LGBT students.

The first claim is mere campus lore, unofficial but doled out to prospective students and accepted as fact. As one description of the school reads, such good-naturedness is part of “[t]he untold spirit at Texas A&M” and “the underlying pulse of Aggieland.”

To the percipient, such gratuitousness will fall on deaf ears; experience warns that if an entity boasts in such a manner, their claim is most likely untrue.

And it is. In an annual survey published by The Princeton Review (TPR), Aggies crossed the following: “Students treat all persons equally, regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.” Students responded by using a Likert scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”

Earlier this summer, the results came back: In comparison to other American colleges, it appears, Aggies rank seventh in LGBT-Unfriendliness.

This is not a stain on an otherwise implacable record.

In 1976, after members of a gay Aggie support group were threatened at knife-point, the members sought official recognition through A&M’s Student Programs Office.

Dr. John Koldus, the Vice President for Student Affairs, denied their request; University President Jack Williams issued a memo saying the school would not recognize the student group “until and unless [they were] ordered by a higher authority to do so”; and a transcript of an A&M Board of Regents meeting reads as follows:

“So—called ‘gay’ activities run diabolically counter to the traditions and standards of Texas A&M University, and the Board of Regents is determined to defend the suit filed against it by three students seeking ‘gay’ recognition and, if necessary, to proceed in every legal way to prohibit any group with such goals from organizing or operating on this or any other campus for which this Board is responsible.”

The "suit" in question was Gay Student Services v. Texas A&M, and it would be eight years before the Fifth Circuit of Appeals would rule that "TAMU's refusal to recognize [the group] as an on-campus student organization impermissibly denied [them] their First Amendment rights.” The case set a national precedent by removing all legal restrictions for gay organizations on public college campuses.

More recently, however, A&M’s problem has been with its pupils: For the past eleven years TPR has classified A&M as one of the top twenty schools unfriendly to their LGBT students; for six of those, they were in the top ten. Few expected "the friendliest college in the nation" to receive recognition in 2011.

Having been falling on the list for the past several years, in 2010 A&M ranked 17^th  in the country, and seemed poised to exit the top twenty. 

But like Sisyphus, the anticipation of success is greeted only with the reality of failure.

Their felling was probably due to a student senate bill introduced the previous year. The bill requested the university  "provide equal funding for family and traditional values education, as well as alternative sexual education” and opposed “any increase to student fees to fund this mandate”.

Such conditions, it was rightly feared, would lead to budget cuts for the university’s LGBT Recourse Center. During the floor debate, the ten sponsors of the bill were openly hostile to student funding of the LGBT Resource Center, despite the fact that none of them, by their own admission, had ever visited.

Therefore, in 2011, instead of leaving the list,  Aggies jumped from 17^th to tenth.  Now at seventh, they are the highest ranked students who attend a public institution. 

Speculation is optional folly, and indeed, the reason for A&M’s persistence can only remain a matter of speculation. However, it is worth noting that TPR ranks Aggies as the 13^th Most Religious Students, the seventh Most Politically Active, and the Most Conservative in the country.

Still, with every year comes a new class, and renewed hope for change. In substitution of Fitzgerald’s affirmation, their test of “first-rate intelligence” will be to devise a way to liberalize A&M’s upperclassmen, a task at which all prior classes have failed.

They’d be forgiven for preferring Sisyphus’ punishment instead.