Let’s start with the bad news: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, asexual and allied interests are sorely neglected on campus. In large part, this is due to a conservative culture when it comes to GLBTQA issues.

For example, Residential Life refused to allow a transgender student to live with friends of his own gender, according to Spectrum Alliance President Kristen Chopra. The student in question was a biological female who identified as male, and wanted to live with other guys in sophomore housing.

Rob Wild, associate director of Residential Life, said legal concerns kept him from confirming the existence of such a case, though he said that Residential Life typically assigns housing based on biological sex. A transgender student wanting to live with others of the same gender would have to get an administrative assignment. To his credit, Wild said, “We’d be open to looking at that request.”

The problem isn’t confined to an individual, though. The problem is the policy, which Wash U is delaying formulating. Concerning implementing a transgender housing policy, Wild said that Residential Life was looking at what other schools, like MIT, are doing in this area. “We’ve been talking about this at Wash U for the last three years,” he said.

According to leaders in the sexual minority community, the campus as a whole is ill-equipped to handle GLBTQA issues. “Residential Life, Student Health Services, and Student Admissions don’t have enough support staff to field GLBT questions and that is not acceptable,” said Safe Zones Director Daria Pelech [Jan. 28, 2005].

Pelech insightfully pointed out that the problem starts before students even get to campus, with Admissions. Indeed, the Admissions Web site on campus life makes no mention of GLBTQA groups, though it covers “multicultural opportunities,” “the Greek experience,” “politics and social justice” and nearly every other type of student group. That’s not right, both in the sense of accurately portraying what groups exist on campus as well as the moral sense.

It’s also hard for sexual minorities to identify themselves as such. Rob Stolworthy, a former senior Forum editor, called coming out a “terrifying” experience. In a Nov. 8, 2002 column, Stolworthy, who is openly gay, said that open homosexuals are an “extremely narrow portion of the gay population at this school.” The difficulty of coming out makes closet homosexuals practice riskier sex, like “cruising” in campus bathrooms, said former Spectrum President Andrew Ross [Nov. 1, 2002]. These statements were part of an outcry from the GLBTQA community following the release of a survey that found that 20 percent of RAs believed homosexuality was a sin.

Chopra believes that coming out is still difficult, so we clearly haven’t made sufficient progress on GLBTQA issues in the last two years.

Now, the good news: responding to this crisis, the Student Union Senate urged the administration to investigate GLBTQA issues. The chancellor duly appointed such a task force, which is now looking into hiring a resource director for the GLBTQA groups on campus.

Reports from SU officials suggest the chancellor was receptive to this idea, which is encouraging. Wash U urgently needs that center and corresponding director to supplement the resources offered to GLBTQA students. Having a resource director will allow the GLBTQA community to preserve institutional knowledge despite constant turnover of students, much like ethnic minorities do with Lamara Warren, coordinator for multicultural student groups.

The solution to creating a more welcoming community for sexual minorities, though, truly begins with Admissions. For starters, they should admit to GLBTQA groups’ existence on campus. Furthermore, just as Admissions grants affirmative action to racial or ethnic minorities to enhance the quality of the student body by making it more diverse, so should they implement and publicize a policy to actively recruit GLBTQA students. Why not make it easy and have a self-identification check box, like some grad school apps? We need to send a message to prospective students that sexual minorities are more than tolerated on campus; they are valued for the different perspective they bring.

That’s what this debate is ultimately about-seeing sexual minorities as an asset to the campus, not as a looming Gordian knot. Rather than waiting for other universities to figure out that they are, indeed, an asset to diversity and then jumping on the bandwagon, Wash U should be a leader in embracing the GLBTQA community.

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