TO THE EDITOR:
A recent article published in The Daily Tar Heel painted an erroneously rosy picture of LGBT students’ experience at UNC. Firstly, I’d like to mention that the already questionable title of said article — “With friends, LGBT students find social scene easy to navigate.” This leaves out the ever-important Q in what should be the acronym LGBTQ or, better yet, LGBTQ*.
The following sentence in particular stood out to me when reading the article: “Hodge says the advice they would give incoming LGBT freshman is not very different from advice they would give anyone coming to school.” Although I admire the presumably good intentions behind this statement, I strongly disagree. LGBTQ* students are destined to have a very different experience than our straight, cisgender peers in college as in the rest of life.
Of course, a different experience calls for different advice. What follows is my best effort at giving it. The queer community, here and elsewhere, needs you. Your acceptance into the oldest public university of our nation has arrived at a timely moment in history: the American South stands at a crossroads, and you are poised to determine its direction.
If you choose to enter the struggle for equality, know that our community’s efforts are bolstered by the momentum of a long, hard and prideful battle for civil rights.
We can continue to harness this energy to propel forward. But if we allow ourselves to be mired by complacency and blind optimism, we will stagnate. For our fight is not yet won. Hope is essential, but we must temper our hope with careful criticism.
Brady Gilliam
Junior
Anthropology and comparative literature
