The Index is intended to set a standard for improving the quality of life for LGBT students at college campuses across the country. It assesses campuses’ LGBT-friendly policies, programs and practices and rates schools on a five-star scale.

This year, nearly 300 schools participated in the survey. Washington University was one of 33 colleges to score a perfect five-star overall rating.

On the specific LGBT-friendly inclusion factors, the school scored five stars on student life, housing, campus safety, counseling & health, and recruitment and retention efforts.

Campus Pride publishes the Index every year. According to its website, it is the only national nonprofit organization focused on helping student leaders and campus groups to create a safer college environment for LGBT students.

The organization sends the survey out to schools, which then have the opportunity to respond. Saida Bonifield, coordinator for LGBT Student Involvement and Leadership, filled out the survey for the University.

“It’s something we do annually,” Bonifield said. “The questions are public for anyone to see…it’s an easy way to gauge campus climate for the different universities.”

Both co-presidents of the Pride Alliance, a student group that aims to provide a dynamic community for LGBT students and allies, supported the rating but noted that there is still progress to be made.

“The rating is a good sign we are moving in the right direction, but the top rating doesn’t mean Wash. U. is perfect, and many aspects can still be improved,” said Pride Alliance Co-President Vinita Chaudhry . “Regardless of the rating, there is always more community work to be done.”

Bonifield is pleased with the rating.

“The rating is pretty accurate,” she said. “We provide healthcare coverage for students who are transitioning, we provide domestic partner benefits, and we have a nondiscrimination policy for gender identity and sexual orientation.”

Chaudry said that while the school provides many important services to LGBT students, it needs to work on making students aware of those offerings.

“I think the rating is accurate in terms that there are resources such as gender-neutral housing, Lavender Recognition ceremonies and other honoraries for LGBT students,” she said. “While they do have services available, they are not made public. Not everyone knows about them.”

Co-President Jenea Nixon voiced similar sentiments.

“I would love to see Wash. U. implement more services for transgender students and [make] knowledge about LGBT issues known to people who don’t seek the resources,” she said.

To spread awareness, Pride Alliance coordinated with Safe Zones this past April to introduce Ally Day, where community members wore pins to show support for their LGBT peers. Various campus LGBT organizations contribute to other events throughout the year at regular LGBT advisory board meetings.

Godiva Reisenbichler | STUDENT LIFE

California has taken steps to prevent this longstanding issue of ignorance, and other states should do the same.

On Thursday, a landmark bill was passed in support of including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people among a list of social and ethnic groups that must be covered in social studies lessons in California public schools. If signed by Governor Jerry Brown, California would be the first state to include the teaching of gay history in its curriculum.

As a college student, I wish that I had the same opportunities to learn about LGBT history at my Arizona high school. While I have long been familiar with the debate surrounding the place of sexuality discrimination in the legal system, my interest has been purely extracurricular, gleaned from newspaper articles and debates with friends. As a senior, I have spent 16 years of formalized education without a mention of a minority that has just as legitimate a voice and history as any other group. Legislation is making some progress to even the playing field. However, it seems that this process is weighed down by the issue of ignorance—which could be mitigated by following California’s example.

While society is making strides, schools should be as well.

Of course, this raises the question of what merits inclusion in a textbook. Some will argue that the murky lines of sexuality make a definitive, cohesive educational effort an almost impossible task. Even the term LGBT has a negative connotation with those smaller communities that do not identify with the four-letter acronym. If we can’t decide on a chapter name, how on earth can we decide on the content? More specifically, which voices deserve recognition within a text that will be read by millions of young minds? All of them. Whether this is possible at this juncture is debatable. Whether this should be a point of open discussion and understanding in a formal, safe setting is not.

Sexuality is complicated. I’m pretty sure that hormonal high school students will have no problem grasping that concept.

The recent wave of suicides among students due to bullying as a result of sexual orientation proves that what we need is more understanding, not less. Ignorance is not bliss, but a burden and a barrier when what we need is to understand each other in an increasingly complex world. With more education bills similar to California’s, we might just be taking a step in the right direction.

I saw a similar omission at my floor’s “diversity meeting,” where we were asked about issues such as our religion, our race, if we’d been sexually harassed, or if we had physical disabilities; psychiatric disorders went unmentioned. Directly outside my room, brochures with phone numbers are hung on the wall: for rape hotlines, for SHS, for LGBT groups…but no numbers for a suicide hotline. In fact, throughout the information barrage that is the beginning of freshman year, I don’t think I once received information about depression or a suicide hotline. I have five diagnosed psychiatric disorders, including two forms of depression, so I know first-hand just how horrific dealing with despair, anxiety, guilt and a whole host of other negative feelings can be. The battle is even harder when it seems like you have nowhere to turn. As for those suffering from an as-yet-undiagnosed mental illness, a symptom of many mental illnesses is that you blame yourself for your misery and are reluctant to seek help, lest you “burden others.” Add to those worries the societal stigma of being diagnosed as “mentally ill,” and few people seek out the help they need.

With its mix of academic stress, social pressures, alcohol and unfamiliarity (for freshmen especially), a college campus can easily induce a feeling of hopelessness and despair for anyone suffering from depression, and becomes an incubator for suicidal thoughts. In fact, according to a Student Life article last March titled “Depression [and] suicide rising among college students,” suicide is the third most common cause of death among college students. Student Life also published an article six years ago, “Level of depression at WU surpasses national average,” in which a student mentions that she rarely spoke with others about her depression because of “the stigma” associated with it. As someone who struggles with depression and other mental illnesses, I feel that there is still a great stigma associated with mental illness, largely because so few people know what depression and other illnesses really are and how debilitating and miserable they can be. It seems that the only group on campus that really makes a point of offering help to people with depression is Uncle Joe’s; no other student group really reaches out to those with mental illnesses.

Depression is a major problem, and it can be treated with a high degree of effectiveness (studies show success rates approaching 90%). But first, we must all be accepting of mental illness and support those among us who are struggling. As a personal plea, I ask all of you reading this who have wondered whether you might be depressed to go to SHS and get information, and I ask all of you who haven’t wondered, to look at your life and decide if you should wonder. Now, we as a campus community must educate others and ourselves about these serious afflictions and take steps to combat them. If we fail, our campus could become the background for yet another all-too-preventable tragedy.

Jack is a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences.

Students gathered Thursday night for the Vigil for Awakening in remembrance of the recent suicides of students who had been bullied for being gay. The vigil was also in support of all of the LGBTQIA youth affected by anti-gay prejudice. Members of the LGBT community and a large number of allies attended the vigil, as well as several community members.

“It was powerful seeing so many people here,” said junior Allison Reed, a co-president of Safe Zones, a student group of LGBT peer educators. “It was good to see so many faces and so many groups.”

The number of suicides related to sexual orientation—at least seven this past month—has captured media attention, and Pride Alliance, Safe Zones and Open, a group that helps students come out, all came together to put on the vigil in hopes of bringing this national issue home to Washington University.

“Numbers and blurbs cannot capture the truths of this quietly raging epidemic,” Reed said of the bullying and depression of gay youths.

“Bullying is an issue for a lot of students, but it can be so much worse for an LGBT student when they’re struggling with identity issues,” said junior Sienna Malik, Pride Alliance secretary

After a moment of silence to remember all those who have committed suicide or have been bullied based on their sexuality, Stereotypes a cappella group sang “The Sounds of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel.

“It was taking a moment to reflect on people who face hardships I don’t have to face, so it was bittersweet,” said senior Ayla Karamustafa, a co-president of Safe Zones.

Poets from WU-SLam also performed at the event.

LGBTQIA leaders hope that the vigil raises awareness of LGBT issues and creates a dialogue on campus.

“We just wanted to show that Wash. U. is a supportive place and that there are allies on this campus.,” said Saida Bonifield, the coordinator for LGBT student involvement and leadership.

“Everyone has a right to feel safe, respected and validated,” said James McLeod, vice chancellor for students and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. “We cannot assume the tragedies from distant places have nothing to do with us. We are here tonight to say we are one with them.”

Many LGBT students find that while Washington University is an open, safe place, areas off campus are less welcoming.

“I feel like a lot of people at Wash. U. have an unrealistic idea of how the LGBT community is accepted in the real world,” said senior Taylor Martin, a Pride Alliance member.

Junior Evan Wilson, the co-president of Pride Alliance, found an accepting atmosphere at the University.

“The LGBT atmosphere here at Washington University is actually pretty nice compared to other communities, even [the] local [ones]. We have it pretty good here,” he said.

Wilson, however, does wish that people were more aware of LGBT issues.

“We could make people more aware of issues that are going on and still more accepting,” Wilson said.

Campuspride.org, a website devoted to LGBTQIA issues, gave Wash. U. five out of five stars in a campus climate review, but the LGBT community still wants to do more to raise awareness and acceptance of LGBT youth.

“Things do not just get better. We must work to make them better,” Reid said.

Clementi’s death, just one of several suicides by gay students in the past month alone, shines a light on the importance of acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students on college campuses.

Here at Washington University, which recently received a five-star rating in the Campus Pride LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index, we should take pride in our support of LGBT students. Wash. U. provides substantial LGBT resources, from health services to a gender-neutral housing program, to multiple LGBT student groups.

However, we must also guard against a culture of complacency. Despite last year’s burst of student activism centered around David Dresner’s (’10) “Right Side of History” gay equality campaign, students this year have idled by key issues like repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, promoting same-sex marriage, and fighting LGBT employment and housing discrimination. Whereas last year’s W.I.L.D. saw students chanting “We’re all just people” in support of Dresner’s campaign, this year’s W.I.L.D. approaches a campus where participation in LGBT rights campaigns is conspicuously absent.

This should not be. LGBT student groups and leaders need to engage more with the student body as a whole, and equally, students need to respond to this outreach in greater numbers. One opportunity for both sides to rise to action is in a candle-lit vigil planned for Tyler Clementi on campus on Oct. 21 at 7 p.m. We would like to see this well-attended.

Additionally, a particularly cogent recommendation that we have is for students to attend a Safe Zones “Open Ally” workshop. These one-time, 3-hour sessions act as a key resource for students who want to educate themselves on how to be stronger, more sensitive allies. Participants in these workshops receive rainbow placards that they can post on their doors to show their neighbors that they have been trained as LGBT allies.

As Tyler Clementi’s death shows, homophobia on college campuses does more than just hurt people’s feelings. It makes some people feel fundamentally unsafe. Consequently, we as students have the obligation to ensure that we take as many steps as possible to prevent an incident like the one at Rutgers from happening at Wash. U.

This is no small issue. This can be a matter of life or death.

James Harrang | Student Life

Saida Bonifield was recently hired as the new Coordinator for LGBT Student Involvement. She hopes to serve as a resource for students and to continue improving the campus community.

Bonifield was the LGBT coordinator at the University of Kansas while she was in graduate school and wanted to continue in the field.

“We are excited to have Saida Bonifield join us to continue the momentum that the first coordinator has done since 2007,” said Julia Macias, assistant director of campus life. “Under Saida, we hope to continue to help [present] Wash. U. as a welcoming experience for all students.”

According to Macias, who was spearheading the hiring process, a new coordinator was actually hired in November 2009 and scheduled to fill the post in January 2010. But because of family reasons, the new coordinator ultimately passed on the job. The University reopened the search process in January 2010 and Washington University was without an official LGBT coordinator for much of the 2009-2010 school year.

Michael Brown, the previous coordinator, left after September 2009, Macias said. “During the [interim], we had the help of two graduate students to continue the work of the coordinator position,” Macias said. “The LGBT advisory board, which is made up of faculty and staff, was also very helpful during that time.”

Finally, in the summer of 2010, the University hired Michael Brown’s successor, Bonifield.

“I wanted to continue my work as an advocate, but in a different context,

Bonifield said. “Working with college students specifically on issues related to sexuality and gender seemed to be a logical next step for me [after graduation].”

In 2006, Chancellor Mark Wrighton appointed a task force to investigate the possible help and resources that could be allocated to the LGBT community on campus. The position of coordinator for LGBT student involvement and leadership came about as the task force determined that more visible support was needed for the LGBT community on campus. The position was created in May 2007 via a Student Union resolution.

With the new coordinator in place, LGBT is expected to continue pursuing its mission of creating programs and resources to support the recruitment and retention of a diverse student body with particular attention paid to the needs and concerns of the LGBT community.

“My predecessor, Michael Brown, laid the framework for the LGBT student involvement and leadership position,” Bonifield said. “I hope to continue his efforts and work with students and the LGBT advisory board to pursue new LGBT-related initiatives.”

Bonifield indicated that first and foremost, she hopes that students will continue to see the LGBT coordinator as a resource for them.

She plans to work on a graduate and undergraduate mentorship program, a special graduation ceremony, an initiative for alumni engagement and the annual Holobaugh Honors. She will also be acting as the advisor for various campus groups such as Pride Alliance, Safe Zones, Open and the Alternative Lifestyle Association.

“I think it’s important to make sure that students are involved in all levels of the decision-making process,” Bonifield said. “I look forward to responding to current issues and continue to improve the current structure of the position.”

So far, Bonifield has been working closely with student groups.

“We have contact with her on a weekly basis and [Saida] is extremely helpful with the planning of events to reach a larger audience,” said junior Adrienne Sands, the co-president of Pride Alliance. “She is very involved in helping us with the reorganization of our constitution. She is also very active in bringing the different LGBT student groups together.”

Bonifield received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Kansas in Spanish literature in 2005. She spent three semesters abroad during college, including one year in Costa Rica and a semester in Spain.

When she was not studying abroad, she volunteered at the local domestic violence shelter and helped to organize various related campus events like Take Back the Night, Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Upon graduation, Bonifield lived in San Francisco for a year working in the non-profit field before returning to Kansas to work full time as an advocate for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. She continued this work before deciding to make a career change and pursue a master’s degree in higher education administration.

Some of the comments posted on Student Life’s news article (“WU ends partnership with Target,” Aug. 25) last week called Wash. U.’s decision an act of coercion or indoctrination. We disagree. This is not an instance of Wash. U. dictating behavior to the student body. Rather, it is a case of our private university acting in accord with its own institutional values. In previous policy decisions, such as removing bottled water from vending machines and banning tobacco on campus, Wash. U. has been open about the set of principles upon which it acts—principles such as sustainability and public health.

We see Wash. U.’s decision as well within the scope of its position as a private institution with explicit goals and ideals, and in keeping with an appropriate degree of autonomy to uphold these goals and ideals through policy decisions. In many ways, Wash. U. is very clear about the goals and ideals underlying the decision to opt out of its partnership with Target. The value of diversity, including with regard to sexual orientation, is a pillar of Residential Life programming and is actively advocated to freshmen. Wash. U.’s decision is thus consistent with its agenda and with the message it wishes to send to the freshman community and the student body at large.

We also believe that acting in opposition to anti-gay sentiments is commendable in itself; it is a decision in line with tolerance, diversity and human rights, and we believe that it is representative of the wishes of the overall undergraduate community.

The Citizens United decision allows corporations to donate funds in support of political agendas through political action committees. It also gives us, as citizens and consumers, the ability and responsibility to hold these corporations accountable for where their donations go. We commend Wash. U. for doing so.

We would also like to add some perspective regarding the value of the canceled event: We feel confident that Wash. U. freshmen will be able to acquire hangers and doorstops even though they are no longer being bussed to Target. We recognize that Wash. U.’s action was only a small gesture in a larger battle against homophobia, but we feel that for the small price of opting out, it was the right symbolic message.

As students, we can only hope to remember the University’s decision as we shop for school supplies for the rest of the year—though most of us will inevitably forget and shop at Target without thinking. We can’t all be perfect.

The Laclede Group ranked dead last this year in the Human Rights Campaign’s annual Corporate Equality Index of companies’ LGBT employment policies.

In the recent past, all the gas used on the Washington University campus was provided by the Laclede Group. The gas used on the Danforth Campus, the South 40 and the Medical Campus is purchased from Laclede Energy Resources on the open market while the gas for the other properties is bought directly from Laclede Gas.

Both Laclede Gas and Laclede Energy Resources are subsidiaries of the Laclede Group.

Companies ranked on the Fortune 1000 and Forbes 200 lists and firms on the AmLaw 200 ranking are invited to participate in the Corporate Equality Index.

Along with the Exxon Mobil Corporation, Laclede was one of only two corporations to recieve a score of zero points. Three hundred five companies received perfect scores of 100. Five hundred ninety companies were rated in the index.

The index allots points based on a variety of criteria. Among these criteria are the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the anti-discrimination policy, benefits for legal partners and spouses, transgender health insurance coverage and the agreement that the company will not do work that goes against the goal of LGBT equality.

Students on campus are calling for the Laclede Group to change its policies.

“I think we should find someone else to get gas from,” sophomore Elizabeth Thames said. “It is baffling to me that there are still companies that discriminate based on sexual orientation. I think gender identity is like any other demographic classification; it should never dictate whether you should be hired.”

Thames thinks that the best way to combat this discrimination is to put pressure on the company.

Senior Victoria Blood also thinks that students can effect change.

“We can have an awareness of what is going on. People in our generation just take these rights for granted,” Blood said. “If we increased awareness, maybe people would have more of a right to choose another company.”

Many students who live off campus also use Laclede Gas as their gas utilities provider.

“I wish that we could avoid using Laclede Gas, but I guess that it is up to the convenience of each individual person,” said Evan Wilson, co-president of Pride Alliance. “It would be nice if we could boycott them.”

According to Samir Luther, associate director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Workplace Project, Laclede Gas added sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination policy after the index was released.

Members of the University administration and Laclede Gas declined to comment for this article.

The following non-discrimination statement can now be found on Laclede Gas’ Web site:

“Laclede will hire, place, upgrade, transfer, promote, recruit, solicit for employment, treat during employment, pay and otherwise compensate, select for training and development and lay off or dismiss without regard to race, color, sex, age, religion, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, veteran status or information protected by the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.”

Gender identity is still missing from the nondiscrimination statement.

“It is weird that they would get a zero and then not educate themselves completely on the issue. Transgender employees need to have equal rights too,” Wilson said. “It is definitely a step in the right direction, but it is a shame that they didn’t include gender identity.”

This is a shared sentiment. Although the full effects of the ranking remain unclear, students are grateful for the small changes that the survey has caused.

“We are definitely encouraged because Laclede Gas added sexual orientation to their nondiscrimination policy, and we would encourage them to make their policy fully inclusive by adding gender identity,” Luther said.

Laclede Gas is in a unique position. The company owns the pipelines that transport gas throughout the St. Louis area.

According to Luther, because the Laclede Group is in such a position of power within the St. Louis community, it tends not to be accountable to its customers.

“Laclede Gas is a unique company because you can’t really go to anyone else to get your gas,” Luther said. “They are missing the customer case. They don’t get that even though consumers do not choose where they get their gas, they still care about LGBT inclusion.”

“It could definitely use some work,” Wilson said. “They could definitely make it a lot better, but I am not sure that that should stop Wash. U. from using Laclede Gas.”

The Right Side of History seeks fundamentally to pass legislation allowing gay marriage nationally in the next two years. Their method in doing so is, they claim, novel: They seek to engage the 95 percent of straight youth in an effort to support gay marriage, rather than focusing on the 5 percent of the population that identifies as LGBT. Pride’s original disagreement with this policy was that it more or less cast to the side the voices of the community for which it sought to attain civil rights. This skirmish between different ideas in service of the same basic goal demonstrates the relevance of a prominent political binary: that of ends and means.

More simply put, organizations like Pride that focus more on LGBT populations perform gay-marriage advocacy with a focus on the means of the movement—it is only valid, presumably, if its means are true to the goal trying to be achieved. The Right Side of History, on the other hand, seems to display a greater concern for their goal, the end of their action—the legalization of same-sex marriage—than for the supposed integrity of its means.

Arguably, The Right Side has reached many more students already with their appeal to the majority “straight” audience at W.I.L.D. than has Pride in quite a while, but only because they sought to find allies among those not explicitly engaged with the collective LGBT voice. The Right Side of History might be credited with this, then: They are not afraid to succeed.

These words are a paraphrase of the description given by Slavoj Žižek of Vladimir Lenin, in a compilation of Lenin’s early writings that illustrate his push toward further revolution in the midst of the passive opportunism of many of the rest of the Russian Communists, who kept faith to the deterministic means dictated by Marxist texts. Žižek proposes that this attitude by Lenin—of reformulating means in order to get to what we know are just ends—is one we might adopt today. The Right Side of History seems to have adhered to this advice: By really actively rethinking the means used to achieve legislation on gay marriage, it moves toward the end goal of success rather than worrying so much about its own internal integrity, as the to-the-letter Marxist Mensheviks did in Russia.

The problem is this is Lenin. Russian Communism did not turn out well, and many might argue that it was a problem of execution rather than one of basic values. The integrity of a movement may in fact be elemental for it to succeed.

The advantage of our current situation is that, where Lenin could either wait for the workers to rise or spur revolution himself, a movement toward same-sex marriage can operate with both internal integrity and external engagement; it can maintain faithful means while focusing intensely on its end goal. The Right Side of History, I mean to say, adds a valuable second element to LGBT advocacy by bringing an attitude of intense goal-orientation. That orientation toward ends must be integrated with and driven by individuals actively engaged with the LGBT community; its means must match its ends. But again, this particular movement has this advantage: It can do both.

Senior David Dresner, co-founder of the “Right Side of History.” (Sam Guzik | Student Life)

Pat Carr | MCT Campus

Several weeks ago, senior David Dresner approached a military recruitment table at a University career fair, announced that he was gay and asked for an application. He was promptly denied.

The moment was not an extraordinary one.

Campus career fairs contradict the University’s non-discrimination policy by allowing the United States military, which will not enlist openly gay men and women, to recruit on campus. The University career fairs generally host employers that have non-discriminatory hiring policies akin to those of the University’s.

But because the University receives federal funding, it is required by law to allow military recruiters on campus, even though the military’s policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” bars openly gay people from enlisting in the armed forces.

Law students are already aware of the University’s conflicting obligation to allow recruiters on campus, as they are notified by letter every time military representatives attend a law school career fair. Now, thanks to the “Right Side of History” LGBT rights campaign, undergraduate students will soon be receiving similar notifications.

Dresner, co-founder of the “Right Side of History,” is spearheading a movement to bring similar notification letters to all undergraduate students. The “Right Side of History” seeks equality for the LGBT community by engaging straight youth. Dresner recently met with representatives from the Olin Business School, who agreed to send out the letters to business students.

“[They] were incredibly supportive, enthusiastic and gave me ways to move forward,” Dresner, an Olin student, said of the business school representatives.

Mark Brostoff, dean and director of the business school’s Weston Career Center, says he believes the letters will make clear that the University does not support the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Brostoff, an openly gay man, served in the U.S. navy from 1982-2002, before and after congress implemented “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Since he left the military, Brostoff has been nationally recognized for his work with LGBT career development.

“[The letters are] an acknowledgment that military recruiting on campus is not aligned with our school’s non-discrimination policies and that we recognize this as a matter of law that we do not condone,” Brostoff wrote in an e-mail to Student Life.

Senior Michael Freedman, a member of the “Right Side of History” campaign, says he thinks notification letters will help raise awareness on campus about society’s discrimination against gays and lesbians.

“I think [a letter] sends the message that discrimination is something real and is still happening now,” Freedman said. “I think oftentimes we mistakenly think of discrimination as a thing of the past. Hopefully, the letter will cause some straight students who maybe haven’t thought about the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy or discrimination against LGBT people to think,” Freedman said.

History: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and military recruiters on campus

News of the notification letters comes just days after President Obama announced that he is committed to ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Obama’s pledge, made at a benefit on Saturday for the LGBT rights group Human Rights Campaign (HRC), comes more than 15 years after the military’s policy went into effect.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was enacted under the Clinton administration in 1993. In response, many schools refused to allow military recruiters on their campuses. Congress, in turn, responded with the Solomon Amendment, a 1995 law that permits Congress to cut federal funding from any university that does not allow military recruiters.

“[The Solomon Amendment] was this poison pill that schools were forced to swallow,” said Davin Rosborough, former president of OUTLaw, the law school’s LGBT activist group.

Following the Solomon Amendment, law schools across the country started sending notification letters to their students.

Rosborough says he understands the University is abiding by the Solomon Amendment but emphasizes that the University is not obliged to follow it.

“I think many of us understand the choice that the University made but we should remember it’s still a choice, although the University’s hand was forced,” Rosborough said.

Drafting the letter

Freedman is currently working with the deans of the business school to draft this letter. Set to be sent out before the next business school career fair, the final letter must be approved by Dean of the business school Mahendra Gupta.

The Right Side of History is currently working with Mark Smith, director of the Washington University Career Center, the National Society of Black Engineers and deans from each of the University’s individual schools to get other career fairs on campus to issue similar letters. .