<p>I was wondering if anyone could comment on the quality of life for LGBT students at Cornell. </p>
<p>I already know that it's a very accepting place, and I've read over the website, but I was looking for personal experiences if possible.</p>
<p>I’m not a current student at Cornell but my girlfriend is. When I went to the Diversity Overnight Program, I walked around a couple of residence halls. There were various bulletins with flyers all over them; some for myriad lgbt groups or even things like: Exploring the Orgasm and sexuality groups. I was even open about my sexuality (albeit not proclaiming it all over the place), and was treated no less of an equal around the people I met. It’s very open.</p>
<p>I don’t know if that told you anything, but it was just my small experience.</p>
<p>Thanks, that helped. :)</p>
<p>The openly gay community here, while small, is active.</p>
<p>I have not encountered any hate crimes or discrimination in my personal life.
If you want to be a participant in the LGBT community, they are always looking for people in Haven and the other LGBT groups (there are even LGBT groups in Engineering, a traditionally heterosexual male dominated group).</p>
<p>If you don’t want to participate actively, there are still programs and events put on that are fun to go to every now and then (Drag Bingo, Filthy Gorgeous, etc).</p>
<p>Most of the people here, however, are still in the closet. But I won’t get into that.</p>
<p>I signed up as a straight ally for one of the LBGT groups during Club Fest…couldn’t make it to the meetings, but I get all of their emails and they seem to plan a lot of fun events/have lots of open discussions. I have several gay friends so it’s an important issue to me, but overall Cornell seems to be a very accepting place. A girl across the hall from me has her girlfriend over from Bing a lot, and I don’t think it’s ever been a problem for her.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info!</p>
<p>Chendrix, you said the community is a bit small and that a lot of people are closeted. Would you say there are still opportunities for dating? While I’m obviously looking for an accepting environment, I’d also like the community to have a critical mass.</p>
<p>Of course there are opportunities for dating.
While the community is small it is still considerable in size. We have 20,000 students here, so even a small percentage of that number is large absolutely.</p>
<p>If you look past Cornell, there are lots of open gays at Ithaca College, in the city of Ithaca, and some of the close surrounding towns/cities.</p>