Today’s Daily Helmsman, the daily campus newspaper of The University of Memphis, ran a headline reading, “Students seek LGTB safe zone”. The article refers to the campus’s GSA (gay straight alliance), known as the “Stonewall Tigers,” a group I joined personally at the beginning of the fall semester, though I have been an inactive member since. However, even then there was much discussion of this “Safe Zone” they speak of. In September, they described it as an area of campus designated for LGTB students to go and feel safe–a resource center of sorts–where they do not feel oppressed or hated by the community. The article in The Helmsman also discusses faculty being educated in how they are to handle LGTB students in the classroom, dealing with discrimination and counseling.
While I do not argue the need to educate people on the ideal ways to treat fellow human beings and how to fight against homophobia and discrimination, this idea of a “safe zone” is ridiculous to me. This seems to me to be an opportunity to separate the LGTB students from the rest of the student population–to corral us almost. This rings to me similar to having separate buses and water fountains for black students to “keep them safe.” I have to call bullshit on this. To give everyone a separate fenced in section of campus based on things as arbitrary as sexuality is horrendous. The image to mind (admittedly, this is a radical image of the proposed agenda) is of a fenced in section of campus with rainbow flags on the gates, homosexuals gathering there to be watched by the rest of the campus like animals in a zoo. “Look! Here we are! Now that we’re all in one spot, you may strike!”
The president and members of the Stonewall Tigers mentioned that posters promoting the group’s activities and fundraisers have been torn down by students. To this, I roll my eyes. I challenge those making these complaints to walk through the halls of Richardson Towers one day. All posters get torn down. While it would be naïve to assume that none of these vandals were expressing homophobia in these acts, I refuse to allow that all of the vandals were. When they are tearing down signs advertising free viewings of PG rated films on campus, are they expressing hatred for movies? Filmmakers? Maybe the rating board? Is that an act of protest? No. Not at all. When these punks tear down signs it’s because they feel destructive. Nothing so dramatic as an intense hatred for homosexuality.
There is a significant gay community on campus and, while again I cannot say that there have never been any problems of discrimination because I’m sure there have been, the general consensus from LGTB students seems to be that they have been unbothered. The University of Memphis seems, at least to me and other LGTB students I’ve met and who were interviewed for the Helmsman’s article, to be a safe campus for LGTB students. It’s a tolerant place. There is no need for this “safe zone” here.
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