It’s the first day of school, you get to class and what do you do?
Maybe see if the cute guy or girl from your AARO or Corral group is there, see if you recognize anyone that might manage to make the class seem more interesting, and hope you didn’t get the professor you’ve heard all the upperclassmen complaining about.
But how many of you look around to make sure you aren’t sitting next to the gay kid? It should be none of you.
Yet the Princeton Review named SMU the 14th most homophobic school, listed as “alternative lifestyle not an alternative,” in the country.
The Princeton Review surveys more than 120,000 students to create the list that includes 368 colleges in several categories.
Sure there are plenty of factors that make this seem not as shocking as it should. We are a school located in the South; Baylor is No. 8 and Texas A&M is No. 12. SMU is a private school, each of the top five schools are private. And SMU is a faith based school, Notre Dame is No. 1, BYU is No. 10 and once again Baylor.
SMU is also listed as the third most conservative campus in the nation. Not really a surprise that those two correlate, A&M was listed as the most conservative. But that doesn’t mean we should say, “it is what it is,” and move on. That means that we, as a student body, need to change a disturbing statistic.
No one is asking you to march in a gay pride parade or hold hands as you walk to class. Just be more understanding of a lifestyle you aren’t a part of.
“We don’t do this to pick on schools. We create this list to raise awareness and help make things better,” Seamus Mullarkey, senior Princeton Review editor said in the Aug. 1 issue of the Dallas Voice. “SMU makes list of top 20 most homophobic schools.”
If you do want to help make a difference and raise awareness there are places to go. Groups like Spectrum are campus organizations designed to do just that.
So whether you are comfortable with helping a group, joining a group or neither, do whatever you can to make SMU a more welcoming campus to people of all lifestyles.
