By Anna Hovey
The University of Maryland earned a spot on Campus Pride’s top 30 LGBTQ-friendly colleges and universities list just three days after anti-LGBTQ messages were reported in an on-campus residence hall.
Campus Pride, an LGBTQ advocacy non-profit, awarded the university 5 out of 5 stars for its work on creating a safer and more tolerant community for LGBTQ students. According to a press release from “UMD Right Now,” this distinction was earned for efforts such as the #TransTerps campaign, which works toward inclusivity for transgender students, and the Lavender Leadership Certificate, a leadership development workshop for LGBT students and their allies.
Ellie Litwack, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, said that landing a spot on the list draws more LGBTQ people to campus and helps foster a sense of community among them.
Litwick said that as a member of the LGBT community, she is pleased with the university’s response to the bias incident.
“The hate bias response team is really working actively on this,” she said. “It is very apparent that people within the university care a lot about making sure it’s a safe environment.”
Litwack added that Campus Pride’s list is about policies, not about actions. On this basis, she said the university still deserves the distinction.
“By these metrics, UMD is doing really well,” Litwack said. “But succeeding in terms of policy does not absolve us from the need to work on campus culture as well.”
She said more professors should share their pronouns with students to help normalize gender queerness on campus.
A page on the university’s LGBT Equity Center website explains the importance of mentioning pronouns and how to do it properly on business cards, emails and name badges. The university also has a “Pronouns Pronouncement Day,” which helps normalize sharing pronouns.
Dr. Luke Jensen, the director of the LGBT Equity Center at this university, agreed that Campus Pride’s list is about policies, procedures and programs— not campus climate issues.
On this basis, he said he feels that the university deserves the distinction. However, were there a list for positive attitudes toward the LGBTQ community on campuses, he doesn’t think the school would make it.
“These issues don’t exist in isolation on our campus,” Jensen said. “It’s a reflection of what’s going on… in our culture right now. I do not remember a time when we’ve had more incidents and more difficulties around issues of sexual orientation and gender identity at the beginning of the semester than this year.”
Jensen said this is a critical time for the university, and it’s essential to use this opportunity to take policies a step further.
“We would be well-advised to ask demographic questions around sexual orientation and gender identity on our application…,” he said. “We would also have a better way of identifying these students and tracking their progress.”
Jensen acknowledged that addressing these issues can be complicated but believes the university is capable of fixing them.
“It’s about equity, diversity and inclusion,” he said. “And it’s not just about LGBT identities, it’s about a full range of identities that are marginalized. If you start addressing it in a larger sense, you’re going to lift up all those identities.”
Maria Aragon, a senior film studies and English major, is the president of UMD’s Pride Alliance. They said the university has a ways to go before it is fully protecting the rights of the campus LGBT community.
“UMD is applauded for doing the bare minimum for our LGBT students,” Aragon said in an email. “Compared to other schools around the country, we are lucky to have some of the resources we have, but the fight for justice and visibility is far from being over.”
Still, this university is still more accepting of LGBT students than the others Nicholas Kach applied to. The sophomore civil engineering major said he was introduced to advisors who were members of the community during orientation, as well as an LGBTQ+ friendly, gender-neutral “fratrority.”
“One of the top reasons that I went to UMD was because of its acceptance of the LGBTQ community,” he said. “No matter where you go, there are going to be some people who are ignorant to the acceptance of other people…I don’t think that should take away from the standing that we have.”
Kach said that students need to be aware of any hateful speech on campus, whether it’s directed toward the LGBT community or not.