Faculty Out On Campus

Editor's Note: This is the second part in a three part series exploring the issue of homophobia on campus.

Boston College faculty and staff who self-identify as GLBTQ said that, for the most part, they have encountered a comfortable environment on campus. However, they said, there athe campus more welcoming.

"I feel like there are two kinds of homophobia. The first is the direct kind of impersonal homophobia," said Colleen Olphert, membership director of the Center for Corporate Citizenship. "That's a type I really haven't experienced at BC." Another form of homophobia is institutional, she said, and has to do with establishing a welcoming environment for faculty who identify as GLBTQ. "This kind of institutional homophobia doesn't allow for the same sort of benefits and rights," said Olphert, who has a partner with whom she has raised two children. "At BC, there are a lot of people who are very accepting. My own department, we had a little wedding ceremony for me. They ask me about my kids, they ask me about my family."

John McDargh, professor of theology, said that he feels comfortable on campus mentioning his partner and the son they have raised together. "Your straight professors come out to you all the time as straight, when one says, ‘My wife and I went out to see the best movie.' A lot of people don't realize how often in the course of a day you come out as a straight person so casually you don't even think about it," he said. "I just teach out of my experience where that is appropriate, and sometimes across the classroom you can see the gay or lesbian kid, or the kid who has a favorite gay uncle, and you see a spot of recognition. If I talk about my life, I don't change pronouns or shy from the fact that my partner and I are raising a son."

McDargh is a member of the faculty GLBTQ advocacy group, the Lesbian Gay Faculty, Staff and Administrators Association (LGFSAA). He said that he thinks that it is important for GLBTQ faculty and staff to be out on campus, to provide support for themselves as well as for students. It is also important for the GLBTQ community to have allies who do not identify as GLBTQ, he said. "The LGFSAA is not just self-identified gay and lesbian people," McDargh said.

Ricco Siasoco, a professor in the English department, said that homophobia on campus is not necessarily a matter of people "fearing" homosexuals. "It is taken out of the context of your values, and the reality, and more what people see – the individual," he said. "Sometimes for a person who is gay, who self-identifies as gay or lesbian, we have come to terms with that, but the person who sees us, we also internalize their feelings. So even though I don't wear on my sleeve that I'm gay, you wouldn't know it unless I disclosed it to you."

The experience of a homophobic attitude may be different for faculty than it is for students, Siasoco said. "I think it is different for me than for some students because for faculty and administrators and staff if someone is gay, because it is like you have come out and you've probably come to a place in your life where you've been out for a couple of years," he said. "For students, it is the decision of their lives. For us, it is one part of our life."

Siasoco's attitude about being out on campus has changed over the nine years he has spent here, he said. "When I first started teaching at BC nine years ago, I think I said, ‘OK, this is my life, I'm going to keep it out of the classroom and off the campus,'" he said. "Then I made a point to come out more frequently, to be very visible, to be on panels, to not just talk about my dog, which I did for the first couple of years, as my teaching persona, but to talk about my partner."

Kevin Ohi, professor in the English department, said that the effects of homophobia are broad and touch on the core identity and mission of a university. "I think that there is something stultifying about homophobia, and that is that one of the things that I think is destructive about homophobia is that it means that there is one kind of question that you can ask about sex, which is, ‘Are you gay, or are you straight?' These are not fundamentally interesting questions." Apart from this effect, Ohi said, non-GLBTQ students should be interested in homophobia on campus if only out of concern for the well-being of their fellow students. "It's not good to be on a campus where you're making people uncomfortable or hurting people, and doing that unconsciously is no better than doing it consciously," he said.