Perspectives

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Campus Pride releases 2014 Top 50 List of LGBT-friendly Colleges & Universities

Campus Pride announced today the annual Campus Pride 2014 Top 50 LGBT-Friendly Colleges & Universities. The listing highlights the positive efforts to improve safety and academic life for LGBT students as well as the top institutions leading the way.

“More than ever colleges today want to be viewed as LGBT-friendly and a welcoming place for all students. LGBT students and their safety impacts the recruitment efforts of the entire campus,” said Windmeyer. “Upper-level administrators are now understanding how LGBT-friendliness is key to future institutional success. This Top 50 list is proof.”

This is the first year Campus Pride has released a list of the fifty “Best of the Best.” In years past, Campus Pride has only featured a “Top 25 List.” The listing is based on the final responses to the Campus Pride Index, a national benchmarking tool which self-assesses LGBT-friendly policies, programs and practices. The tool is free of charge and can be found online at www.CampusPrideIndex.org.

“For six years in a row, Campus Pride has seen an increase in the number of campuses coming out as LGBT-friendly and making notable improvements to LGBT academic life, so we decided to honor 50 campuses with our national distinction,” said Shane Windmeyer, Executive Director of Campus Pride and the creator of the Campus Pride Index. “Today the Campus Pride Index has over 425 campuses featured online and for the first time ever we have 56 campuses who achieved the highest 5 stars overall rating, the largest number to date.”

Unlike the Princeton Review LGBT rankings, the Campus Pride Index is based in research on policy, program and practice and is conducted “for and by” LGBT experts in the field of higher education. Annually campuses update and use the Campus Pride benchmarking tool to improve LGBT life on campus. For the third year in a row, over 80% of participating colleges improved their ratings from the previous year. In addition, the number of campuses located in the South increased this year, as did the number of religiously-affiliated campuses and Minority Serving Institutions.

According to Windmeyer, “there is a lot to be learned” from the Top 50 campuses on this listing. Many of these campuses are specifically addressing recruitment and academic retention efforts for LGBT students as well as concerns for transgender student safety. The Top 50 also geographically mirrors more progressive areas of the country where there has been a history of LGBT support and advocacy.

“While this Top 50 list demonstrates the positive progress to support LGBT students within higher education, we must also commit ourselves to the campuses not on the list — in rural areas, Southern states and other types of campuses like two year colleges, Historically Black Colleges & Universities and religious-affiliated campuses – where pioneering LGBT work to create a safe learning environment is still a real struggle,” Windmeyer said.

According to Campus Pride, a college had to achieve 5 stars overall in order to be in the Top 50 this year as well as have the highest percentages across the eight LGBT-friendly benchmarks for policy, program and practice. The listing this year includes colleges with student populations from 1600 to over 50,000, public and private schools alike. Each college listed on the Top 50 has a profile page with more details about the campus ratings online. The Top 50 list is in alphabetical order, as follows:
Amherst College
Augsburg College
Brown University
Central Washington University
Connecticut College
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Emory University
Harvard University
Indiana University
Ithaca College
Macalester College
Northern Arizona University
Oberlin College
Oregon State University
Pomona College
Portland State University
Princeton University
Rutgers University
San Diego State University
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Southern Oregon University
Stanford University
Syracuse University
The Ohio State University
The Pennsylvania State University
Tulane University
University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Riverside
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Cruz
University of Central Florida
University of Chicago
University of Illinois at Chicago
University of Maryland, College Park
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota – Duluth
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
University of Oregon
University of Pennsylvania
University of Rhode Island
University of Southern California
University of Vermont
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee
Warren Wilson College
Washington State University
Washington University in St. Louis

Please click to learn more about each campus from the Campus Pride Index.

Campus Pride is the leading national educational organization for LGBTQ and ally college students and campus groups building future leaders and safer, more LGBTQ-friendly colleges and universities. The organization provides resources and services to thousands of college students and nearly 1400 campuses annually. Learn more online at CampusPride.org.

 

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Arizona State Football Player Chip Sarafin Comes Out As Gay

 

Arizona State football player Edward “Chip” Sarafin has publicly come out as gay. The redshirt senior made his announcement in an interview with Compete magazine. The 6’6″, 320-pound backup offensive lineman is believed to be the first active college football player at a Division I program to publicly come out as gay, according to Outsports.

Like openly gay NFL rookie Michael Sam, Sarafin came out to his teammates before the public. Sarafin revealed to the magazine that he began telling his teammates that he was gay last spring. Unlike Sam, who came out publicly after finishing his final season at the University of Missouri, Sarafin has a full college football season ahead of him after his announcement.

“It was really personal for me and it benefited my peace of mind greatly,” Sarafin told Joshua Wyrick of Compete, an Arizona-based gay sports magazine, for the article that appeared in its August issue.

A non-scholarship athlete, Sarafin has been a member of the Sun Devils football team for four years but yet to appear in a game, reports AZCentral.com. He has already received his undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and is pursuing a master’s degree.

“We are a brotherhood that is not defined by cultural and personal differences, but rather an individual’s commitment to the Sun Devil Way,” Arizona State coach Todd Graham said in a statement obtained by CBS Sports. “Chip is a fifth-year senior and a Scholar Baller, a graduate and a master’s student. His commitment to service is unmatched and it is clear he is on his way to leading a successful life after his playing career, a goal that I have for every student-athlete. Diversity and acceptance are two of the pillars of our program, and his has full support from his teammates and the coaching staff.”

Sam, who became the first openly gay player selected in the NFL draft in May and is trying to earn a roster spot with St. Louis Rams, was prominent among those expressing support for Sarafin’s decision to come out:

In April, Derrick Gordon, then a sophomore starter for the University of Massachusetts men’s basketball team, publicly announced that he was gay. Gordon became the first active openly gay male NCAA Division 1 basketball player.

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Glenn Burke, Baseball’s Gay ‘Pioneer,’ To Be Honored By MLB

 

It’s been 19 years since Glenn Burke died. But he’s finally receiving recognition for becoming the first former Major League Baseball player to come out as gay.

Burke will be honored as a gay pioneer for the sport before the All-Star Game in Minneapolis on Tuesday, The New York Times reports.

“He was a pioneer, and should be recognized,” Pat Courtney, an MLB spokesman told the publication.

Burke, who got his start with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1976 before being traded to the Oakland A’s, became the first professional baseball player to come out, discussing his sexuality in an interview with Inside Sports in 1982. At the time, Burke was not playing professionally; he had quit the majors at 27, primarily because of animosity in the locker room.

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glenn burke

“Prejudice drove me out of baseball sooner than I should have,” Burke told the Times in 1994, a year before his death due to AIDS-related causes.

Now, 20 years later, the MLB is bringing Glenn back into the spotlight ahead of a major announcement the league is reportedly set to make about homophobia in baseball. The league is also set to publicize a new position for Billy Bean, the former MLB player who followed in Burke’s footsteps and came out in 1999.

The decision to posthumously honor Glenn as a gay pioneer is the latest step the MLB has taken to help develop an atmosphere of tolerance in the sport. Last year, the league unveiled a new policy to protect athletes against harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation.

With MLB’s recent efforts, and the majority view of its players that the league is ready for an openly gay player, it seems that professional baseball may be ready for its Michael Sam.

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