Queer at Oberlin

Colleges and Universities A-Z Oberlin College
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<p>I'm a rising high school senior and voice major hopeful getting ready to start auditions/applications. Oberlin's pretty high on my list -- what music major wouldn't put it up there?? -- and I've been able to find out pretty much everything I want to know about music and the double degree program from the web site and the Oberlin Blogs, but I still don't know a whole lot about the social scene.</p>

<p>I'm from a pretty small town in the Midwest and I don't know any gay guys who are out at school, including myself (people think I'm weird enough for the opera thing). I know this isn't the case at Oberlin. I mean, you can tell that much when people start posting things like "Is Oberlin Hell on Earth for Straight Females?", but aside from the fact that it exists, I don't know a whole lot about what Oberlin's queer "scene" is like. I doubt anything I hear could dissuade me from auditioning, but I'm really curious.</p>

<p>What kinds of student groups are there for LGBT students, and how active are they? Are there many gay-themed parties? Is it more common for guys to date or hook up? And a personal question: how gay is my intended major? Vocal performance and opera has a reputation for having a lot of gay men, and I want to know if that's true at Oberlin.</p>

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<p>M’kay. Sorry to let this sit unanswered for so long - I was trying to figure out what, exactly, to say. I guess the queer scene at Oberlin is a microcosm of the school in general: small, quirky, and occasionally frustrating, but still much better than most other places.</p>

<p>There are lots of queer students here; I’ve heard estimates ranging from thirty to sixty percent of campus as some flavor of LGBQ. Most of us come to Oberlin from high schools where very few students were out, so it’s obviously a refreshing change. Being out is a non-issue, and most folks find friends who are queer without really trying. As a consequence, the queer community isn’t super organized, since you don’t really need to join clubs or go to events to find support or like-minded friends. That said, there are several LGBTQ groups on campus – Lambda Union, Trans Advocacy Group, Queer Jews, Zami (for queer people of color) – that hold events and support meetings, and are a good way to meet people. The Multicultural Resource Center has an LGBTQ Community Coordinator and hosts social events.</p>

<p>Hook-ups are more common than relationships, but there’s hardly a dearth of people who want to date. Finding a dating pool can be weird, though hardly just for queer students: take 2,800 people and subtract the ones who are already taken, who are of the wrong gender and/or sex, who are not attracted to your gender/sex, who have nothing in common with you, and your roommate… There’s not a lot of casual dating – probably because the student body is so small that by the time you ask someone out, you usually know them pretty well and are ready to skip ahead into a more serious relationship (the “Oberlin marriage”).</p>

<p>If you’re like most people, you’ll spend anywhere from three months to three years cursing the dating scene, and then meet the perfect person and promptly forget what the problem was. It was amazing for me to get to campus and meet real live queer folks who were actually couples – in high school that just didn’t exist, especially for guys.</p>

<p>As for vocal performance… well, both of the male voice majors I’ve met were queer :wink: That’s a tiny and probably unrepresentative sample, but there are plenty of queer connies. You won’t lack for company.</p>

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<p>Thanks, this is really helpful! Like I said, I’m not used to being around other gay people, so I just wanted to get an idea of how it works, you know? My high school doesn’t even have a GSA, and even if it did I think most people would be too afraid to join it.</p>

<p>The thing about my major was that I don’t want to be known as “the gay tenor” or anything wherever I end up at school, so that’s a relief.</p>

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<p>Glad it helped! You definitely won’t stand out for being gay. If you end up at Oberlin I’d recommend going to some of the MRC / Lambda socials, especially at the beginning of the year… but you’ll have no trouble meeting other queer folks just by being around. It is so much better than high school, hands down :)</p>

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<p>wait, does that mean that I’d stand out or being straight?</p>

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<p>No. As Shennie just wrote on another thread:</p>

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