Editor's Note: Through the Looking Glass is The Mirror's newest feature. We welcome submissions from all members of the community, both past and present, who wish to write about defining experiences, moments or relationships during their time at Dartmouth. Please submit articles of 800-1,000 words to the.dartmouth@dartmouth.edu
When I decided to come to Dartmouth, my conservative southern family thought I was coming to the world's bastion of liberalism, which is ironic given our school's reputation and history as the most conservative Ivy. I arrived in Hanover with the notion that Dartmouth was a crazy place where anything goes, a place where anyone and anything would be accepted. For the most part, my first year served to reinforce that message. Students leading First-Year Trips spoke about being themselves and finding their place, deans emphasized the College's principle of community and my upperclassman friends constantly reminded me that I was attending school at the greatest place on earth.
My freshman year was fairly standard. I met a lot of friendly people, joined a few extracurricular activities and felt slightly overwhelmed with classes. But somewhere between the bonfire and First-Year Family Weekend, I started to believe all those trip leaders, administrators and mentors. I started to believe that I just may be in a place where people truly value one another just for being themselves.
With Dartmouth fully on a pedestal of infallibility, I finally felt comfortable being myself. So despite growing up in a homophobic environment, I came to terms with my sexual orientation and came out as an openly gay man.
After telling friends about my sexual orientation, it felt like I pressed "reset" on my life. I felt an incredible sense of relief because I was no longer in a place of self-loathing and fear, but rather in a beautiful New England town where bad things like homophobia couldn't touch me.
And for a while, I was right.
I went through Dartmouth exactly like I had before coming out. I did the same extracurricular activities and kept the same schedule. My friends treated me exactly the same as before coming out, and I encountered none of the overt homophobic slurs tossed around in my hometown. I met many older students who were out at Dartmouth and had found their place, whether that was in student groups, on a sports team or in a Greek house.
I began my sophomore fall with much more confidence about being openly gay at Dartmouth. Being back in Hanover among other openly gay people gave me a sense of confidence that I would be just fine. When intolerance or bigotry was brought up in a class discussion, it seemed so far away from my own experience, so abstract. Of course I understood that homophobia, like racism, classism or any other -ism, exists out there in the world. But when it has never happened to you, it's hard to fully comprehend.
Last year, however, I was walking home late one evening, when a group of young alums stopped to ask me if they could play pong. I told them that I was not affiliated, so I couldn't help them out with getting on table.
"Oh, is that because you're gay?" one woman asked. "Because you look like you are."
"Uh, no, that is not the reason," I said, feeling all color drain from my face. As I walked away from the group, one of them turned around and yelled, "FAGGOT!" and threw a plastic water bottle in my direction. I froze. All that academic discussion of intolerance and I had not a clue of how to react. Do I shrug it off? They're alums and probably drunk after all, but that did not excuse it. Calling Safety & Security seemed a little extreme, and chucking the water bottle back at them seemed childish.
So I stood there, probably for a solid 10 minutes. I was not upset that I had been called a faggot, but that this incident had happened at my supposedly safe haven of Dartmouth, a place where I naively believed this sort of unfiltered bigotry wouldn't ever happen to me.
Dartmouth as an institution has evolved over the years, and as people were quick to point out this fall when homophobic comments were scrawled on the window of the gender-neutral floor in Fahey-McLane, incidents of overt homophobia and anti-gay violence are few and far between.
Call me jaded, or maybe just more aware, but homophobia is still alive and well just manifested in a different way. Yelling slurs at people and vandalizing windows are both universally unacceptable acts in a community like Dartmouth, so inbred discomfort and disdain with LGBT people is more subtle. It is present in our language, our attitudes and our unfiltered thoughts.
I've heard the word "gay" as a synonym for "stupid" or "dumb" too many times to count, and while I've come to understand that it is not said with malicious intent, each time a Dartmouth student uses the word "gay" in this way, it only serves to reinforce, however subtly, that gay people are not completely welcome here. Even in jest, with every utterance of a homophobic slur, I am lurched backward into the same feelings of self-loathing and discomfort with my own identity that characterized my time before coming out.
Last year, when I helped with First-Year Trips, I was talking with a group of fellow upperclassmen when some older students walked past us and yelled at us to move out of their way.
"I can't believe how rude they just were," one of my friends shouted. "What fags!"
Again, I froze. Not even in the context of the Trips program, one of the more inclusive parts of our Dartmouth experience, were people immune from insensitivity, however unintentional. What's more, this time it was not a random alumnus, but a friend.
Like any incident similar to this, I harbor absolutely no resentment toward the individual who says the word "fag" without realizing it, or those who, out of habit, use the word "gay" when they mean to say "dumb." When people do that, they are rarely making a conscious attack on the LGBT people in the room. They are just products of their own environment.
When I first came out at Dartmouth, it seemed like the most accepting place in the world to be gay. We received the highest college rating from Campus Pride last year and, at least in my experience, overt incidents of prejudice are rare.
But don't let this fool you. Homophobia has changed and evolved, just as our school has changed and evolved. I deluded myself into thinking that feeling comfortable coming out and having supportive friends was a sure sign Dartmouth was an accepting place. And while I have befriended some incredible people who have always been there for me, I have realized that my choice to come out at Dartmouth or even the very existence of LGBT students in our community does not mean that homophobia has been conquered on this campus.
It is still alive and well here at Dartmouth. It just looks different.
