The mass shooting early Sunday at an Orlando nightclub that left 49 people and the gunman dead has heightened fears of anti-gay discrimination and persecution, especially among the college-aged. While officials were still investigating the shooter’s motives on Tuesday, the effects of the massacre were acute among college students — and not just because several of the victims were enrolled in local institutions.
Young lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are often particularly vulnerable and seeking a supportive community, said Shane L. Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride, an organization that promotes the creation of safe environments for LGBT students on college campuses. That often sends them to bars like Pulse, the Orlando club, where gay people are welcomed and their identities are celebrated.
And it makes the shooting all the more painful for them, said D.A. Dirks, co-chair of the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals. “This is a very personal tragedy,” Dirks said. “To go into a space that should have been safe for folks to celebrate, to gather, to connect — that sense of violation is quite profound.”
As acceptance and awareness of LGBT issues have grown in recent years, campuses have sought to institutionalize that welcoming environment, through, among other things, centers that are dedicated exclusively to gay students, faculty, and staff members.
There are about 250 LGBT resource centers on campuses across the country, Mr. Windmeyer said. Such institutional support, he said, is key to making students feel welcome. “We need to have higher expectations for higher learning, and we need to ask them to take responsibility by creating institutional support,” he said. “That’s where an LGBT center comes into its importance on campus.”
The centers do more than provide a meeting place for gay students. They can provide guidance geared toward LGBT students, who are at higher risk of depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide.
And when tragedy strikes, the centers spring into action. Centers at campuses nationwide hosted vigils and other events on Monday to help gay people cope with the news. At the University of Georgia, for example, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Resource Center hosted a safe space on Monday for people to “be in community and process together.”
Staff members at the centers can set a positive example in more than just times of crisis, Dirks said. “Young LGBTQ people need to be able to see that there are staff, faculty, or alumni who have preceded them, who have succeeded in graduating and becoming fully actualized adults.”
‘There Was No Support’
Many campuses don’t have dedicated LGBT centers. That’s often because they lack the resources to fund one, Mr. Windmeyer said. In fact, it often takes a crisis to build enough will to create an LGBT center — “the typical higher-ed way of dealing with things,” he said.
At Georgetown University, for instance, students protested the institution’s response nine years ago to anti-gay incidents, which helped spur the creation of its LGBTQ Resource Center.
When campuses don’t have centers, responsibilities often fall on other staff members, Mr. Windmeyer said. “We ask LGBT students to do their own programs,” he said. “We ask them to run their own safe-zone programs for safety and to feel included. We ask them to basically put the responsibility for their safety on their own backs.”
“They shouldn’t be responsible for their own safety,” he said.
Dirks found a sense of community at a gay bar at age 19: “There was no visibility on my campus. There was no support on my campus. To go to a bar, where queer people of all stripes and identities and expressions were around, was tremendously eye-opening and liberating in many ways.”
“Feeling that safety and feeling that community in that space was really something I didn’t have in my college campus because there was no center and because it was almost 30 years ago, and there was not a lot of visibility for queerness,” Dirks said.
In the absence of such centers, bars for LGBT people still serve as key fixtures in college students’ lives. Or in addition to them. Even when campuses offer safe spaces and resource centers, students tend to gravitate to off-campus destinations, away from the rigidity of an academic setting.
One of those places is the Back Door, a nightclub in Bloomington, Ind. LGBT students from Indiana University at Bloomington are visible at the club as patrons and employees, said Sara A. Gardner, who co-owns the club. In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting, the Back Door shared news of a vigil for the town on its Facebook page, Ms. Gardner said.
“We are the only queer bar in town,” she said. “We do provide a safe space.”
