New Group Comes Out

BGLTSA criticized for offensive National Coming Out Day posters

Last week, in the midst of the National Coming Out Day festivities, a new student group emerged on campus, offering an alternative to the so-called "sensationalist" tactics of the long-standing Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters Alliance (BGLTSA). The new group launched its efforts with a postering campaign inviting students to join "a new straight-gay alliance." We welcome this new organization to the campus landscape.

The BGLTSA has long been a largely positive force on campus. It has sponsored programming essential to the cause of gay rights and has surely been an indispensable support network for countless students. However, like any student group, it has not escaped its share of problems. Last year, the stability of its leadership was marred by an election scandal. More seriously, it has increasingly been criticized for its failure to represent the full-breadth of its constituency in its use of aggressive and explicit advertising which has made some members feel excluded from the organization.

This approach was best captured by the Coming Out Day posters graphically celebrating various sexual practices. While we do not favor censoring postering on campus, we feel that these sexually explicit posters were inappropriate for an open campus that families and children wander through, and may have been counterproductive to causes the BGLTSA wishes to advance. It is clear that the strategy leaves many gay students feeling alienated from the BGLTSA and we are glad that a new group has stepped up to fill those students' needs.

Of course, we hope that recent events do not represent the beginnings of an internecine war within factions of the gay community. Hopefully, the BGLTSA and this new "straight-gay alliance" can work together cooperatively, or at least arrive at some modus vivendi. In the meantime, we welcome this new addition to the family of student groups and look forward to its work on campus. And, perhaps more urgently, we look forward to some announcement of its name.

DISSENT

Freedom of Expression

It is fairly hypocritical that the staff chooses to criticize the BGLTSA for using the same First Amendment right that The Crimson depends on everyday (Monday through Friday, holidays excluded). While The Crimson may purport to hold to certain standards of decency, these standards are, as we well know, are completely subjective. Intellectual communities thrive on free discourse, especially the kind of discourse which challenges our subjective ideas of decency. Outside visitors come to admire Harvard not just for its brick buildings and carefully tended lawns, but also for the vibrancy of the intellectual community which those buildings house. To criticize a group which has contributed to that intellectual vitality through sparking debate is not only backwards and intellectually stifling, but it undermines the very purpose for which Harvard exists, to bring people together to learn from and challenge one another.

Freedom of Expression

--Lauren E. Baer '02,

Meredith B. Osborn '02,

Alan E. Wirzbicki '01