Hello,
I am a rising senior and I am interested in applying to BC. My main concern however is how friendly and tolerant is BC to the LGBT Community? Does the school provide any LGBT resources? I’ve heard some not so good things, but I’d love hear all types of opinions.
Dear endoftheline : It is completely unfair to say that you have “heard some not so good things” and then expect the Boston College community to defend themselves. In fact, the community is extremely welcoming to the LGBT community and provides an immersive cultural in line with men and women for others. Some basic research would help you turn up that additional information and support available at Boston College.
Now, exactly what did you hear? More importantly, what was your source?
Boston College is all about critical thinking and academic challenge in the Jesuit tradition. If these questions make you uncomfortable to disclose any additional information, I can guarantee you that Boston College will not be the right school for you, but it will have nothing to do with sexual orientation.
I would like to apologize to the Boston College community and anyone else I offended with my ill informed, judgmental post. A little research would have completely answered my question and revealed that Boston College does provide plenty of resources for their LGBT students and is accepting of that community. My thoughtless post was not caused by BC’s Jesuit tradition but instead by my lack of research and unreliable sources. I deserve nothing go
I was just at orientation and Father Tony gave a speech about the Orlando victims and how we have to be tolerant of others, and we also got an email from campus ministry about differences are to be celebrated and how horrific the shooting was, so there is definitely no discrimination, I feel.
At the same time, I feel like it is important to acknowledge what it is like to be a person from the outside looking in and to be someone in that particular demographic group. I am not saying BC is or is not intolerant because I have no direct experience with BC, but somtimes when I have noticed when people say things like “I think diversity is really great here” or “I feel like minorities feel really welcome, I have many friends that are minorities!” or something along the same lines, people within the group may feel slightly differently because they may have had a more nuanced experience, something that the general public may not be aware of if they haven’t walked those shoes. Just trying to put that out there as something to think about. That said, I don’t think you should base your entire decision off of rumors and it would be great to hear what others have to say.
I think some of you are being a little unfair to the original poster. Boston College does have a somewhat murky history about treatment of their LGBT population. Here is an article from Boston Magazine as recently as last year:
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/04/30/boston-college-lgbtq/
Two powerful quotes:
“Without the support of institutional policies, there will continue to be students on this campus who think it is acceptable to use derogatory and homophobic slurs; student groups will continue to be unfairly limited because of their affiliation with the LGBTQ community; alumni will continue to reflect on Boston College as a university that caused pain and does not practice what it preaches; students will continue to fear reactions from their roommates, classmates, professors and peers; students will continue to be afraid to be who they are.”
or this one:
“At the beginning of my freshman year, I went on a retreat, the purpose of which was to help adjust to college life, where I talked about being gay,” Chamberlain says. “In the weeks after coming back I constantly overheard other students discussing and mocking my sexuality, brazenly pointing at me, or staring in open-mouthed confusion. It culminated in a hall mate staring me in the eye while he told my neighbor that he ‘lived next to a ■■■■■■.’ I felt incredibly isolated and did not know of any resources or administrators to turn to for guidance.”
BC is pretty often listed on Princeton Review’s Least LGBT friendly schools ranking, have op-eds written somewhat regularly by students suggesting they do not have the right support (http://bcgavel.com/2015/05/03/opinion-boston-college-does-not-care-enough-about-the-glbtq-community/), and had an issue where people graffitied homophobic slurs and trashed the LGBT groups office at the law school (http://www.businessinsider.com/boston-college-anti-gay-graffiti-2013-1).
I do think that a LGBT student could have a perfectly awesome time at BC with supportive friends and professors, but it is definitely not leading the way in terms of colleges and universities in terms of creating a supporting and inclusive place.
When I left BC in 2015, one of the major topics of discussion regarding the lack of a center dedicated specifically for LGBTQ students. Instead, LGBTQ resources are found under the umbrella of the “Women’s Center” at BC, which some find inappropriate. From my experience, the Women’s Center is actually really fantastic, and happy to provide resources to anyone regardless of gender, but I’m also not LGBTQ and can’t speak for those students. What I recommend for anyone looking at schools including BC is to try to find the school’s newspaper(s) and search around a bit. You’ll get a way better, broader perspective on the actual issues on campus via articles, opinion columns, etc. Obviously some newspapers will be skewed, but reading responses in this thread from people who aren’t actually current students at BC, aren’t LGBTQ, etc. is not going to give you a good idea of what the current climate is on campus.
The self proclaimed independent newspaper on campus is The Heights (http://bcheights.com/). The Torch is BC’s Catholic newspaper (http://www.thetorchbc.com/), and the progressive paper is The Gavel (http://bcgavel.com/). There are probably others I can’t remember as well. BC is not a perfect school that is perfectly inclusive of everyone, like most (if not all) colleges. There are great things on campus like the “Support Love” campaign (you’ll see people wearing these shirts all the time), but the LGBTQ students I knew were pretty open about feeling that there were sometimes problems at BC. I can’t speak to how much that impacted their experience, but it’s there. If you’re seriously considering BC and really worried about this, take the time to search LGBT/LGBTQ in these papers and read what students are writing about these issues.
BC doesn’t have a great track record as it may seem. I got accepted to BC and was all about attending until I read the numerous articles and reports of BC’s lack of support. For those who don’t really care about this, I’m sure you’d have no problem with it. However, as an international student who’s country condemns and calls LGBT people monsters and hazards to society, being free to explore who I am is very important to me. If being in an LGBT haven is very important for you, I suggest you choose a school that has a more clean track record of its treatment of LGBT students. Thus though I absolutely love BC, I’m not going to waste my limited time to be out and happy in a school that may or may not treat me equally.
If you look at the LGBT struggles in the last 5 or 6 decades, you will see how complicated the situation is. The two institutions that have had to walk the finest line have probably been the US military and the Catholic Church. Originally, both groups officially condemned alternative sexuality, as did society as a whole.
But as time went by, attitudes changed. Originally, oppressed sexual groups just wanted to be spared active persecution…Phrases like " what people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms is their business" were common. Over the decades, that plea for tolerance has morphed into demands for active support and even endorsement. And that is the difficult situation the military & Catholic church find themselves in. Neither institution seems to be interested in actively discriminating against most alternative lifestyles. That is good enough for some people; others want an unqualified endorsement. I would imagine BC’s administration isn’t the slightest bit interested in what happens behind closed doors, but given the official church position, they are probably unable to put their official deal if approval on some lifestyles, even if their personal sympathies lie in that direction.
No. I am a current gay student at BC, and I do not feel that it has the right support. My high school had better support. If you are reading this, I recommend looking at another school. It does not allow a LGBT club. It does however have Pride Peers, a gay support group. It also has a section of the student government dedicated to LGBT interests.