Middlebury tagged with anti-gay graffiti
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By LISA D. CONNELL Herald Staff - Published: April 19, 2007
MIDDLEBURY — Eight months after national magazine The Advocate named Middlebury College one of the top 100 campuses for gay and lesbian students, homophobic graffiti was found sprayed along the hallway of a campus dorm. It's not the first time derogatory messages targeting gay students have appeared on campus.
School administrators believe a student scrawled the anti-gay messages on the wall of Ross Commons dorm over spring break, between March 23 and April 2.
College Dean Tim Spears described the messages.
"They were pretty vile," Spears said during a telephone interview. "It targeted a particular person who is not a student."
College President Ronald D. Liebowitz notified the college community quickly after the graffiti was discovered.
"Although I would have preferred to send this e-mail while the college was in session and everyone on campus, I believe that the timing of events and the importance of this message warranted a swift response," Liebowitz wrote. "We are a strong, open and resilient community, but we cannot tolerate actions that threaten the safety of community members and target individuals because of their differences.
"We should also remember that the Ross incident, however egregious, is connected by attitude to other recent expressions of homophobia on this campus. I implore us all to reject such hurtful behavior when we encounter it, and to respect the variety of opinions, backgrounds and perspectives that contribute to the college's intellectual and cultural vitality."
When classes resumed the first week of April, students living in Ross met with school staff. A week later, April 11, school officials held a campus-wide meeting to talk about the incident.
School officials are conducting an investigation, but the town's police department is not involved. Spears did not provide further details about a possible suspect. The school's custodial staff removed the graffiti after documenting it.
Tenured professor Kevin Moss noted in an e-mail that discrimination continues. Moss, an instructor for Russian and women's and gender studies, is also a co-advisor of the Middlebury Open Queer Alliance.
On April 13, a gay student's door was targeted with a saying linking religion and homosexuality.
"I've had such things scrawled on my door in the past or gay posters defaced or torn down," Moss wrote. "These homophobic incidents are not all that uncommon at Middlebury, but this is the first time we've had an all-student message or a 'town meeting' to discuss homophobia on campus."
The town meeting on campus demonstrates the school's concern over what is considered hate speech, but also may show the college has more work to do.
"We shouldn't be reacting to one incident. We should be talking and acting proactively so incidents like this don't happen even in the most minor form," Shirley Ramirez, dean for institutional diversity, said when reached by telephone. "So when things happen, that's not the only time these things are discussed."
Ramirez suggested there would be fewer homophobic incidents if such behavior and attitudes were examined early on. Working out tensions and differences among students are necessary so that everyone on campus feels safe and an equal member of the community.
Guy Kettelhack, a 1973 Middlebury graduate, believes the college should return to an earlier practice that appeared to promote acceptance of gay and lesbian students by other undergraduates.
In the late '80s and through the '90s, gay alumni were invited to come back to campus and address issues of differing sexuality and what the college's Web site refers to as "My Midd Experience."
The seminars "tended to peter out because it just wasn't that big a problem anymore," Kettelhack said.
Homophobic messages in some circles may be a reaction to recent social changes in American culture, Moss said.
What the campus might truly be need to discuss, Kettelhack wrote, is sexuality in general.
"I'd like to suggest, as a gay alumnus, that in addition to fostering entirely laudable discussion about the legal and moral implications of these latest outbursts of homophobia at Middlebury College, you might also want to think of opening the door to talking about underlying issues of sexuality — the bewilderments that I think particularly bedevil men and women in the 18- to 22-year-old realm — which are, I believe, largely at the root of homophobic reaction and expression," Kettelhack responded online to an article in the campus newspaper.
"I'm not sure how this invitation to open up about such a private and charged topic can be institutionalized, but the need for it — and the need for compassion in dealing with it — ought, I think, to be addressed as completely as possible. Don't forget that homophobia is a fear."
Contact Lisa Connell at lisa.connell@rutlandherald.com.
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