In many ways, Carrie Wicks’ experience at Kent State has so far resembled her older sister Angela’s.

Both chose the university for its liberal reputation. Both became involved in campus activism from their first years at the institution.

And both came out while in college.

For Wicks, junior sociology major from the tiny Sandusky County town of Woodville, the latter came with a reassuring amount of support from fellow students.

“My friends were like, ‘bout time,’” she says. “I didn’t feel uncomfortable talking to them.”

That’s a typical scenario at Kent State, though, she says. With such a big campus and large network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, coming out of the closet often means walking straight into the arms of a room full of friends.

It’s a telling aspect of a university’s character — students can largely come out without fear of being judged, she says, and they can find common ground with others.

But Wicks’ story reveals a question commonly overlooked when assessing a university: Just how gay-friendly is this campus?

At Kent State, Wicks says, there’s room for improvement.

At first glance there’s the good, she says: The sheer size of Pride!Kent — about 150 members — is indicative of a voice for that student population.

But there’s also the bad: Some students still have bigoted views, she says. The university does not offer domestic partner benefits to employees, and unlike students, she says, faculty members can have a tough time coming out.

‘Michelle’ becomes ‘Michael’
For many gay faculty members at Kent State, the environment is anything but welcoming, says Dianne Kerr, associate professor and program coordinator for health education. And because of it, she says, some hide their orientations.

“I’d like to think we’ve come a long way on this campus, but I don’t think we have,” Kerr says.

Much of how a faculty member is treated depends on his or her department, she says. Some are respectful of gay colleagues. Others are not. She knows of colleagues who have come out of the closet only to receive negative responses from fellow faculty.

“That just makes you want to close up more and hide more,” Kerr says.

Others conceal parts of their personal lives, she says. Some change the pronoun or name used to describe their partners — “he” becomes “she,” and “Michelle” becomes “Michael.”

But coming out can be the biggest issue.

“It’s damn scary,” says one Kent State faculty member, who wishes to be identified as Joe to protect his privacy. He has not come out to students and has told only some of his colleagues he is gay. He says he never knows how anyone will react.

“Most have been supportive,” he says. “However, the people who haven’t been supportive — it’s painful.

“For every three people you share this with, there’s one who says, ‘Are you going to kiss me?’ or ‘Why did you tell me that?’”

It’s that chance of a negative reaction that makes him nervous.

Joe says he frequently, and subconsciously, switches pronouns when talking about his partner. He calls it “queer code switching.”

“I do that in class all the time,” he says.

And there’s also the wedding band on his finger.

“I’m not going to not wear my wedding band,” he says. “I consider myself married. When people look at that wedding band and say, ‘How nice,’ I say, ‘Oh, thank you very much.’”

Molly Merryman, assistant professor and chair of Kent State’s LGBT Faculty Concerns Committee, says Joe is not alone.

“At Kent State I can say the majority of faculty that are LGBT faculty are closeted,” she says.

And it’s done out of fear for how they’ll be treated, Kerr says.

Kerr says she knew a young staff member who recently left the university because she felt the atmosphere wasn’t welcoming to LGBT staff members.

“You lose talented people,” she says. “Honestly, we can’t afford that in Ohio. We have such a brain drain already.”

While Merryman has no quantitative information, she estimates based on anecdotal evidence that two openly gay faculty members leave Kent State every year.

Merryman says she once tried to organize an LGBT committee for staff members similar to the Faculty Concerns Committee. It never got off the ground, she says, because only four people came to the initial meeting. But about 25 people called her later saying, “Glad you’re doing this, but I can’t come,” she says.

They were afraid their names would get out, she says.

Gay-friendly? Or just gay-tolerant?
It’s a little after 7 p.m. on a Thursday night as Pride!Kent board members file into their tiny office in the Lost Leaders Lounge of the Student Center. In about an hour, the rest of Pride!Kent will come together for its full weekly meeting.

There’s a lot to be planned. Within a month is Coming Out Week, and there’s also the upcoming Halloween Ball and Safe Zone training.

Fifty to 100 people typically attend Pride!Kent meetings, which makes it one of Kent State’s larger student organizations.

Tonight’s mass meeting is on the smaller side, about 50 in attendance, board members say. And as 8 p.m. approaches, Room 317 in the Student Center starts getting crowded.

Across the hall, group members get together in a smoking lounge to mingle with friends.

“There’s a big difference between gay-tolerant and gay-friendly,” Pride!Kent member Jae Lerer says as he sits at a round table in the lounge and talks in between puffs. “If we were gay-friendly, we’d have domestic partner benefits and an LGBT resource center. We wouldn’t have to protest. We wouldn’t be seen as ‘the angry homosexual.’”

And Pride!Kent has protested. In November 2005 the group sat in on a Board of Trustees meeting to demand domestic partner benefits for faculty and staff. As part of the protest, Pride!Kent members sat in the public section of the meeting room with Duct tape over their mouths.

And if Kent State were truly gay-friendly, Lerer adds, the university would be attracting more gay students and faculty, not losing them. Because of groups such as Pride!Kent, he says, it’s typically easier for gay students to be accepted than it is for faculty.

“Generally I haven’t seen any anti-gay stuff,” says Craig Snell, Pride!Kent board member and second-year business major. “I don’t hang out with anyone who’s not gay-friendly, so I really don’t experience any of that.”

Greg Jarvie, dean of students and student ombudsman, says about twice a year LGBT students come to his office to discuss some form of harassment.

It’s usually about something offensive written on a wall or an inappropriate phone call, he says. And it’s usually difficult to locate any “suspect” involved.

In regard to harassment, Jarvie says, Kent State isn’t any different from other universities.

“There’s always issues. I don’t care what campus you’re on,” he says.

And it’s the kind of thing “the university always needs to take its own temperature” on, he says.

But if Kent State were to be tested, what grade would it receive?

Measuring gay point averages
On a scale of 1 to 10, Wicks gives Kent State a 5.

“Maybe a 6,” Kerr says. “I don’t know, that may even be generous.”

Joe gives it a C.

Different ratings, but the same sentiment — Kent State is average, they say.

Residence Services does an exceptional job of training resident assistants, Kerr says, and the DeWeese Health Center does a good job of handling LGBT health issues.

Steve Michael, Kent State’s vice provost for diversity and academic initiatives, says an “absence of negative factors and presence of positive factors” means “categorically, yes, Kent State is gay-friendly.”

The number of harassment complaints from members of the gay community is comparatively low, he says, and people are generally accepting of LGBT students and faculty. According to the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, of the 32 complaints and consultations made, a small percentage of them were based on sexual orientation.

“There are campuses where if you express yourself as gay, they will come after you,” he says. “Fortunately, I don’t think Kent State has become that kind of campus.”

Then there’s the positive: There is visible leadership on campus from members of the gay community.

Several members of the university administration are openly gay, Michael says.

“And that’s about as high as you can go,” he says.

As far as faculty members who are afraid to come out or feel they are discriminated against, there’s no law regulating friendship, he says, but there is protection against discrimination in the workplace.

And if that happens, faculty members “have the law to back them up,” he says.

“If they take it to Affirmative Action, we will take it seriously,” Michael says. “If you don’t have confidence in the university, you can go to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.

“That is why we have Affirmative Action and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. If you don’t know your rights, anyone can abuse them without consequence.”

For students, having a gay-friendly campus is crucial because, as Merryman says, timing is everything.

“For many LGBT students, college is either a time of coming out or a time of (being) fully accepted,” she says. “It can be permanently damaging to not have that process be allowed.

“There’s a lot of identity issues that are still being processed. If something negative happens — if it’s not handled properly — you’re getting the message that society doesn’t care about you.”

Comparing GPAs
At the beginning of fall semester, a different kind of college guide was stacked on bookstore shelves.

Not about financial aid or the top 100 research programs, it profiles the “100 best campuses” for gay students.

“The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students” is nearly 400 pages of information on what it considers the best programs, services and student organizations universities across the United States offer. It calculates all of this into what the book calls a “Gay Point Average.”

Among the top 20 colleges featured in the book is Ohio State. Kent State is not included.

Ryan Fournier, president of Ohio State’s Undergraduate Student Government, says the guide is on target. Ohio State is a gay-friendly place, he says.

“It’s almost a non-issue,” the 21-year-old Sylvania native says, “which is reassuring to students like myself who identify as LGBT.”

Fournier looks at his own life as evidence of that. This past year he was elected student government president — the first openly gay student to do so at Ohio State, and the first at a Big Ten school since 1978.

“The student body at Ohio State was able to look past that,” he says.

The guide also includes whether a university has domestic partner benefits for its employees.

The debate for partner benefits at Kent State has been around since the early 1990s. The main reason behind the push for benefits is to provide health insurance coverage for partners.

The Undergraduate Student Senate, Graduate Student Senate and Faculty Senate have all passed resolutions supporting benefits, but the administration holds that Kent State cannot offer partner benefits because of Issue 1, a constitutional amendment that prevents the university from offering the benefits.

Issue 1, of the November 2004 election, is now Article 15, Section 11 of the Ohio Constitution. It specifies a marriage is only valid and recognized between a man and a woman, and it also states unmarried individuals cannot receive a legal status equal to marriage.

“Kent State is gay-friendly to the extent that Ohio is gay-friendly,” Michael says. “The university’s stance has always been that the domestic partner benefits will be adopted when it becomes legally permissible in Ohio to do so.”

Miami University offers partner benefits, and last year, Ohio Rep. Tom Brinkman Jr., a Republican from Cincinnati, sued Miami for its domestic partner benefit program because he said it goes against the marriage amendment.

Kent State President Lestor Lefton has said he believes it would be a waste of university resources to fight such a lawsuit here.

But Merryman maintains the university must provide such benefits.

“There needs to be supportive policies and a structure that allows people to exist,” she says.

So is Kent State gay-friendly? Merryman says the answer is simple — “No.”

It’s a factor
It’s about 9 a.m., and Wicks, a resident assistant in Kent State’s Wright Hall, is on duty. The door is open.

Her room, a bit more spacious than those occupied by her residents, is decorated with photos of friends.

As an RA, Wicks says she’s seen the good and bad: successful diversity training and bigoted residents.

Kent State is gay-friendly, she says, but it could be more gay-friendly.

What makes a campus a gay-friendly campus is first and foremost a question of its atmosphere — “that overall vibe that students feel accepted,” she says.

And when deciding on what university to attend, Wicks says that was the first question that came to her mind.

Ryan Loew is a senior newspaper journalism major. This is his third story for The Burr.

Students from Kent State’s gay organizations speak out

Delta Lambda Phi
Delta Lambda Phi is a national gay fraternity that aims to unite LGBT students and promote LGBT acceptance.

“For the most part, I believe that Kent State has a safe environment for gay students,” says Cory Molner, president of Delta Lambda Phi and junior theater major. “Generally, gay students are accepted, except for the occasional snide comments from individuals.

“I haven’t personally heard any direct negative comments toward myself, but I have overheard remarks from one individual to another.”

Molner says he finds Kent State to be an easy place to come out.

“When I was a freshman living in one of the Freshmen Experience dorms, I was comfortable being the only gay student in the dorm and being out,” he says. “Much more comfortable than I was in high school.”

PRIDE!Kent
PRIDE!Kent, an organization of LGBT students and allies, hosts events such as HIV testing, Coming Out Week and proms aimed at the gay community.

Molner says he tries to attend PRIDE!Kent’s annual Coming Out Week every year.

“Last year the week ended with a performance by (gay comedian) Margaret Cho,” he says. “I thought it was a really well put on event.”

PRIDE!Kent is not affiliated with any political party and is non-profit, says Christopher Taylor, last year’s PRIDE!Kent president and senior nursing major.

“PRIDE!Kent focuses on issues and is a social cultural organization, not a political organization,” he says. “PRIDE!Kent does, however, focus on political activity.”

Fusion magazine
Fusion is a student-run magazine aimed at the LGBT community, says Jackie Mantey, Fusion editor and junior magazine journalism major.

“First, it offers a voice for LGBT students to speak and share stories,” she says. “Second, it offers information for them and lets them learn about their community.”

Mantey says she thinks the magazine helps address problems in the university community.

“We want to address sexual minority issues,” she says. “We feel there’s more to it than black and white — there are various sexual identities on campus. We raise awareness about sexual identity but not just an awareness. We try to create an open mind.”

LGBT Studies
Kent State offers a LGBT Studies minor, one of the first universities in Ohio to do so, says Richard Berrong, LGBT professor and co-coordinator of the program.

“(The LGBT Studies minor) was created so that students with interests on the topic could get something other then just a bunch of courses on their transcripts,” Berrong says.

Berrong says he tells LGBT students acceptance is something that comes from within.

“That’s something the students have to initiate,” he says.

—Ted Hamilton