Starting with students admitted to the Class of 2013, Dartmouth officials have worked to attract admitted students who indicated interest in the College's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and allied community, Caroline Kerr, the senior assistant director of admissions and the coordinator of LGBTQA outreach efforts, said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
The Class of 2013's application supplement was the first to include gender identity and the LGBTQA community in the list of areas of personal interest students can indicate they intend to pursue in college, Kerr said.
Pam Misener, the assistant dean of student life in the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, said she composd a welcome e-mail which the admissions office then sent to students who indicated interest in the College's LGTBQA community. The e-mail included information about Gender Sexuality XYZ and encouraged regular decision students to attend Dimensions weekend and its LGBTQA welcome events, Kerr said.
As a result of the initiative, "the '13s are definitely more integrated from the start than perhaps the other classes were, in numbers," GSX co-chair Rigel Cable '10 said in an interview with the Dartmouth.
Compared to the Class of 2013, 50 percent more applicants to the Class of 2014 indicated their interest in participation in LGBTQA issues in college, according to GSX co-chair Anna Roth '13.
"The '14s are getting more content [from informational materials]," Roth said in an interview with the Dartmouth.
Cable and Roth participated in a live "Dartmouth Life" video chat on Feb. 16 produced by the admissions office, which provided information about LGBTQA student life at Dartmouth to prospective students. Dartmouth Life will continue spotlighting topics related to student life, according to the Perspectives from Dartmouth Admissions blog.
The video chat is an example of how the College can now reach people via the Internet who would not travel to visit campus specifically to attend a LGBTQA event, Cable said.
The initiative to formally reach out to potential students interested in LGBT issues was sparked when The Advocate, a national gay and lesbian news magazine, included Dartmouth on its 2006 list of 100 best campuses for LGBTQA students, Kerr said.
At the time, students could self-identify as a particular race or ethnicity, allowing OPAL advisors to reach out to them early in the admissions process, but there was no way to reach out to students who might be interested in LGBTQA issues, Kerr said.
The outreach program was a natural extension of OPAL's LGBTQA programs and its practice of reaching out to first-generation college students and students from certain geographic regions, Kerr said.
The admissions office put together an LGBTQA advisory support group to advise its outreach efforts, Kerr said. The support group includes Misener, several students, faculty members, a staff member from the Office of Residential Life and admissions officers, Kerr said.
Dartmouth's choice to ask students about their interest in participating in the LGBTQA community on campus, rather than asking specifically about an individual's sexual identity, indicates the College's willingness to look beyond labels, according to Jack Miner, associate registrar at Ohio State University and chair of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Caucus of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.
Dartmouth is one of two Ivy League institutions that seek to attract admitted students who indicate an interest in the LGBTQA community. The University of Pennsylvania recently began reaching out to students involved in LGBTQA activities, according to a Feb. 26 article in Inside Higher Ed.
Dartmouth's way of handling the question can help students who feel uncomfortable indicating their sexual identity on a college application if they are not "out" in their home environment, Kerr said.
Campus Pride, a national group working to create safe university environments for LGBTQA students, plans to petition the Common Application to include a voluntary sexual orientation question, Shane Windmeyer, the organization's founder, told Inside Higher Ed in a Feb. 26 article.
Many Dartmouth officials would support the presence of a question about sexual orientation on the Common Application, Misener said.
"[The question] would signal a really good thing, a heightened awareness about identity being much broader," Kerr said.
However, a blank space in which applicants could choose how to phrase their identification of their sexual orientation or about other aspects of their identity such as religion or politics would be better, Kerr said.
