Can anybody give me some insight about the gay life at Rice? Is the community generally accepting? Is there a solid dating pool? Is the Q&A club active? Thanks!
Rice is very LGBT accepting, that isn’t a concern.
The reality is though it is small, so that makes the gay population is even smaller, so you might find the queer dating pool limited.
Houston has a big and active gay scene centered around the Montrose area. While I was at Rice I went to Southbeach several times (which is a large 18 and up gay club).
First, Rice is very, very accepting, and that goes for everything. There’s an active and supportive LGBT community here. You’ll never have to worry about people judging you. I can’t speak as much for the dating pool – people fall into relationships quickly, so you have to go for it if you want someone. We are a small school, so that means the LGBT community is rather close but also rather limited. Don’t worry, though. There are other sources of dates.
Q&A is alive and well. (Fun fact: it was started by former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who now teaches at Rice.) There are a lot of queer-focused events, like pizza parties, a queer crawl (basically a party that moves around campus), and performances. The Queer Resource Center is also super active and super helpful. My one critique for Rice’s queer life is that it’s extremely white, which is strange given that we’re such a diverse campus.