<p>I visited Brown recently, and was very impressed by the whole atmosphere. However, I wasn’t able to be there during the actual school year, so I wasn’t able to get a very good sense for the makeup of the student body.</p>
<p>My question is this. I know Brown is reported to be a very liberal, open-minded school, but does anyone have any experience with the “gay scene,” so to speak? I’m not looking for homo domination, so to speak, but ideally I’m looking for an active, involved population. The tour and information session I attended were both led by (or assisted by) gay males, which impressed me, to a certain degree, but the “diversity” represented by the students involved seemed rather forced. Is there really much of a homosexual presence on campus? I thought the fact that the “Sexuality and Society” major exists was rather telling, but I want to get more of a firsthand perspective on the topic (from someone actually involved or just anyone who has any more information than I do).</p>
<p>You are right that the tour program and the info sessions program do make a concerted effort to diversify the groups of students that interact with prospective families--because the prospective families are themselves a diverse bunch. However, that you happened to encounter two gay males was purely coincidence, and I can state with 100% certainty that the tour program does not choose applicants on the basis of their sexual orientation but rather on their personability and their involvements in the Brown community. It's nice if we have tour guides who can speak on behalf of the queer community, but no more so than it is nice if we have guides who can speak on behalf of the theater scene or the Filipino Alliance.</p>
<p>That said, in my experience, I would say there are really two "gay scenes" on campus. On one hand, there are indeed a lot of people who are very involved in building an active queer community, and the LGBTA and its events undoubtedly have a presence on campus. However, because of the diversity of the student body and because the Brown campus is not a heteronormative environment, the gay scene here is perhaps less "loud" and out there than at other schools where there is, for lack of a better phrase, more to prove. Does that make sense? The scene here is, I would say, not necessarily as queer-involved as it is queer-integrated. Though there are those who choose to be a part of an active queer community, it's not nearly everyone, and there is no pressure to either be involved or to just, well, be queer and go about your daily business. :)</p>
<p>There are also a lot of non-queer Brown community members who are involved in and supportive of the queer scene, which is great.</p>
<p>the biggest party/social event at brown is some gay naked party i think, which will be... slightly weird i think.
They have a large active GLBT club that freaked my mother out when she heard about it.</p>
<p>Gay population in most liberal-leaning schools (esp in New England and in many libearl LAC's) will be pretty high; Brown is supposed to be pretty welcoming, though i heard some gay kid got beat up a few months ago supposedly only because he's gay.</p>
<p>From what I understand, Brown is one of the better/best schools for gay students. Only a handful of schools (Vassar, Wesleyan, Sarah Lawnrence, Oberlin) would be better for that, and only slightly so. Yale is also known for being good for gay students. When I did all my visits of schools, Vassar struck me as having a particularly high percentage of gay students but a less politicized student body. Wesleyan has a very active and politicized gay student body, but that might not be something you'd want.</p>
<p>Thanks all for your responses. Sorry for the delay, I've been out of town, but you've definitely reaffirmed my first impressions of Brown. In fact, I think it just jumped to the top of my list! Crossing my fingers for next year for myself and any others who'll be applying.</p>
<p>GLBT may be so big because Brown has a large gay population AND a large population of straight people who are accepting...both can join, to my knowledge.</p>
<p>::compares own application list to bjrwrh's post::</p>
<p>Yale, Brown, Wesleyan, Vassar....</p>
<p>yup, I'm gay.</p>
<p>but seriously, that's great news about brown. one of my ulterior motives about going to college is escaping my conservative wealthy white texan suburb and living openly, as opposed to just mildly openly.</p>
<p>I'm not gay myself, but I am friends with a couple gay guys who have boyfriends, if that helps at all. Its very hard to answer these types of questions as it really depends on the person. Brown is large and diverse enough that all kinds of attitudes towards dating can usually be accomodated. On the other hand, college is usually more promiscuity oriented in general. So compared to the "real" world, I'd say most colleges would lean towards promiscuity.</p>
<p>While I agree with Moat, I would venture to say that there is a smaller percentage of queer students in relationships (among the queer community as a whole) than straight students in relationships (among the straight community as a whole). I don't know that this has anything to do with Brown, but rather to do with the fact that a good many of the queer kids on campus, probably any campus, have come out within recent years or months or even just since they have been at school. Several of my gay friends have talked to me about a desire, after coming out, to sort of "play the field"--not in a promiscuous sense, but just in an exploratory sense, in a getting-to-know-a-side-of-yourself-for-the-first-time sense. Maybe this tends to happen more at Brown than at some other schools because the full range of sexual preferences is pretty readily accepted, allowing more people to do what they feel is right for them, which often means not jumping into a relationship right away in college. However, I cannot say that for certain.<br>
Overall, I think there are a lot of queer students (men in particular) who are interested in just hookups, and that scene definitely exists. But not any more so than the straight just-hookup scene, and there are certainly a lot of gay men and women in relationships at Brown too.</p>