FILE - Italian Arcigay gay rights association activists hold banners and flags during a demonstration in front of The Vatican, in this Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009 file photo. (AP Photo/Sandro Pace, file)

Choosing a college is a huge first step in many people’s adult lives, with countless elements such as location, cost, and reputation factoring into a decision that will shape the rest of a person’s future. The set of questions that students ask themselves during this process will vary from person to person, but LGBTQ+ college students tend to have one extra question to ask when choosing a college: am I going to be safe and welcome on campus?

According to a 2022 report from UCLA’s Williams Institute, 22% of LGBTQ+ people chose an institution to attend based on their desire to find an environment that was more welcoming than their home.

LGBTQ+ is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, and more. College campuses can be especially unique environments for LGBTQ+ students, and the manner in which colleges address LGBTQ+ student life greatly impacts the success and overall well being of those students.

The three largest issues affecting LGBTQ+ student life in college are visibility, inclusion, and overall safety. The effects that these factors have on LGBTQ+ college students vary greatly from school to school, and research has shown that college can be a trying time for LGBTQ+ students.

Even with the perception of colleges as more liberal and accepting places, students from many different backgrounds struggle to be themselves on college campuses across the country. In an article by Carlos Flores and Angela Sheely-Moore entitled “Relational‐Cultural Theory-Based Interventions With LGBTQ College Students” they quote a 2010 study, stating, “researchers have deemed the campus climate a hostile one for LGBTQ college students, characterized by prejudice, bias, discrimination, and harassment.”

One important distinction to make in this conversation is the difference between the college campus and the college town community. Depending on the area, campus and community can be entirely separate or opposing environments, especially for students from minority groups like LGBTQ+ students. When I spoke to Dr. Jennifer Hildebrand, Associate Professor in the History Department; Director of Curriculum, General Education, and Interdisciplinary Studies, she referred to the dichotomy as “town vs. gown,” which suggested to me that while this campus-community relationship is not unique to SUNY Fredonia, the relationship between communities and the colleges they house has long been a subject of contention.

To say “not all colleges” might sound cliché, but the varied nature of higher learning institutions across the United States cannot be ignored. In countless colleges across the country, the environment and attitudes of the community are more closely reflected in the campus experience.

For Matthew McClellan’s article entitled “LGBTQ College Students’ Lived Experiences and Perceptions of Support on a Conservative Campus” (2023) for the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, a survey was conducted of LGBTQ+ students attending a conservative medium-sized California university. The community surrounding the campus was described as both conservative and religious, which may seem jarring at first, considering California’s reputation as a liberal state.

McClellan details the experiences of these students as well as some of his own experiences as a professor at this university. The students tell their accounts of experiences with professors which were either covertly or overtly anti-LGBTQ+ and made them feel uncomfortable in their identity as an LGBTQ+ college student. However, the students also brought up the solace they found in other professors who participated in the campus’ Safe Zone program. Because the program is optional at this university, the faculty who brandished the Safe Zone stickers had not only shown the drive to support their LGBTQ+ students, but also taken part in the proper training to establish a safe space for those students.

To relate this more to my own life, I considered how this concept applied to my college. One large example is the Safe Zone program, which SUNY Fredonia also participates in. As an LGBTQ+ student, I remember a few times that I went to a professor’s office and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the little rainbow sticker on their door. However, Fredonia also has other programs to support its LGBTQ+ students specifically.

In my interview with David White, the director of the Intercultural Center at SUNY Fredonia, he referred to the Intercultural center as “an ally and a safe space” for LGBTQ+ youth. The Intercultural Center also works with other on-campus organizations to provide programming and events supporting LGBTQ+ students.

For example, you’ll see plenty of drag shows on campus, but they rarely happen in the community. The few that I’ve seen around the Fredonia area have been put on by BJ’s, a bar which draws a primarily younger audience made up mostly of college students anyways.

There was recent interest in bringing drag to the Fredonia-Dunkirk community outside of the college. According to an article published on Oct. 23 for the Dunkirk Observer, a drag show set to be put on at Dunkirk High School was postponed due to an issue with the organizers not following proper event planning procedures. While this is not as exciting as a headline about the drag show being canceled due to severe pushback from the community, the drag show did still experience some level of pushback from parents and community members alike. In the article, the OBSERVER states that at least five people contacted the newspaper about covering the drag show.

At times throughout my career at SUNY Fredonia, I found myself baffled by the more conservative mindset of the community. While the college isn’t the only thing that could bring people to the area, it is one of the largest sources of jobs for the area. I’ve discovered through my research that the campus’ more liberal political leanings are not a secret, despite its location in a more rural area. It could even be said that SUNY Fredonia specializes in majors that some might associate with the LGBTQ+ community, as the School of Music is one of the largest and most prominent departments of the college.

Associating certain college majors with LGBTQ+ identities can be a slippery slope into stereotype territory, but there is some evidence to suggest that the link between college majors and LGBTQ+ identity is not a mere coincidence. In TehQuin Forbes’ article “Queer-free majors?: LGBTQ+ college students’ accounts of chilly and warm academic disciplines” (2022) in the Journal of LGBT Youth, he writes, “I contend that this process might also be developed in college, especially if queer students are drawn to majors like sociology and psychology which require intensive research training, individual paper writing, and exercising a critical societal lens. Yet, little empirical work has questioned how queer students wind up in their eventual majors which ostensibly prepares them for certain life trajectories.”

The study done by Forbes found no direct correlation between gender and/or sexuality and college major, so the commentary from Forbes is not meant to serve as a factual observation about the LGBTQ+ community. Rather, I reference the study as food for thought, so that one might put themselves in the shoes of an LGBTQ+ college student for a minute and force themself to think about why a student might choose a major that seems more queer-friendly or more likely to contain fellow LGBTQ+ students to bond with.

In order to get a better understanding of the Fredonia experience outside of my own life, I spoke to other members of the SUNY Fredonia community who actively interact or participate in the LGBTQ+ community on campus. In my interview with Amanda Keppel, a senior majoring in Communications Disorders and Sciences and English who is also the President of PRIDE Alliance, they spoke of the role of PRIDE Alliance in the lives of LGBTQ+ students. They believe the purpose of PRIDE Alliance is, “to create a community of other queer people so that they can share experiences, get to know other queer people, have a place where they can be queer without those external factors weighing them down, and just a place to be.”

In the interviews I conducted, many of the responses to my questions regarding the Fredonia-Dunkirk area were more positive than I had expected them to be, even if some of the people I interviewed did have their moments of hesitation and caveats to mention about the community’s reception of LGBTQ+ students. In my experience, I’ve never felt very welcomed by this community in general, whether it be because of my queer identity or not, but I also know that my experience is only one out of hundreds of thousands of students who have passed through the community of Fredonia, coming only for a matter of years before leaving.

Keppel summed up how I personally felt about Fredonia quite well when they said, “I don’t interact a whole lot with the outside community, and I don’t think that’s because I’m queer, I think that’s more so because it’s college versus community. Not like they’re in a battle but they’re two separate things.”

On a grander scale, this topic has much larger effects than just differing opinions and experiences, as the mental health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ students affects their futures drastically. According to a 2018 study cited in Flores and Sheely-Moore’s article, “LGBTQ college students are 4 to 6 times more likely than non-LGBTQ college students to exhibit suicidal ideation.” To be in a place of learning meant to be all about planning your future, the idea of not wanting that future anymore is devastating and terrifying.

The road to improvement won’t be an easy one, but luckily, strides are being made at SUNY Fredonia to move the campus in a more positive direction for all students, including LGBTQ+ students. Dr. Hildebrand said of the future for SUNY Fredonia in its efforts for LGBTQ+ students, “I think that what we should do is focus on offering up the services and programming that we can so that it is there for those who want to take advantage of it… I think that we [at SUNY Fredonia] continue to communicate as openly as we can about what we do so that people who want to find us can.”

While the road to progress may be long and arduous, the path toward a better college environment for LGBTQ+ students seems to be a clear one. To bring back the three factors from earlier, having colleges focus on visibility, inclusion, and safety would be a great first step. These factors don’t exclusively apply to LGBTQ+ students, either. Hopefully, in dedicating themselves to making college life better for LGBTQ+ students, colleges will develop the tools and programs that they need to better cater to their students on the whole, making college life even more enjoyable for all students in the long run.

Lauren Jenkins is a December 2023 graduate of SUNY Fredonia’s Music Industry program.