Maria C. Gonzalez, associate professor of English at the University of Houston, has been teaching there for over 30 years. In 2010, she helped found the school's LGBTQ resource center. The center’s goal was to provide resources for queer and trans students and their allies, as well as opportunities for them to get to know one another. Gonzalez speaks fondly of the ice cream social the organization held at the beginning of each year. The center was especially needed in Texas, a state where multiple bills already restrict what can be taught about LGBTQ+ history and culture in schools. But recently, the university announced it would be shutting down the center, on August 31.
“It was a place where LGBTQ students could go and gather,” Gonzalez tells Teen Vogue. “It was also a place where you could get information on LGBTQ issues. They loaned books, they had videos, they had individuals you could speak to on all kinds of specifics. For example," she continues, "if you’re in the middle of transitioning and you don’t want to go by your deadname in class, you need to find out how to get the university to call you by your preferred name and get through the bureaucracy of an institution — especially if you don’t have those legal documents in place yet.”
In addition to shuttering its LGBTQ center, the University of Houston is disbanding its center for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). These decisions were made as a result of Texas Senate Bill 17, which bans DEI offices at public colleges and universities in the state. The bill defines these as “an office, division, or other unit of an institution of higher education established for the purpose of,” among other things, “conducting trainings, programs, or activities designed or implemented in reference to race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.” Because gender was not named explicitly under the bill, Gonzalez explains, the university’s women’s center is allowed to continue.
Amid a renewed crusade against LGBTQ+ rights and DEI by state legislatures, academic and social resources for queer and gender-marginalized students are dwindling in Texas and nationwide. Last year, the Wyoming Senate proposed a budget amendment in an effort to stop funding for the University of Wyoming’s Gender and Women’s Studies program.
“While the amendment didn’t pass in the House, similar bills are expected to emerge around the country,” says Jesse Hagopian, a teacher with the Zinn Education Project. These policy changes will have an immeasurable impact on young people, many of whom might be moving away from conservative home lives and hoping for a chance to come into themselves in a liberal academic environment.
The closure of the University of Houston’s LGBTQ center is particularly upsetting for Gonzalez because the center was serving as a community space. “If you’re LGBTQ and you’re a freshman, you’re more than overwhelmed,” she says. “The center gave people a chance to begin the process of creating community, making some connections, and getting involved with a student organization.”
Students in Florida, a state that has instituted a law against teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation, were also dealt a blow when the New College of Florida recently voted to abolish its Gender Studies program. In an op-ed for City Journal, Christopher Rufo, a conservative appointed to the New College’s board of trustees by Governor Ron DeSantis, outlined three reasons the program had been disbanded: First, he argued, members of the board have a right to “close down academic programs in public universities that do not align with the mandate of the taxpayers who generally support them”; second, there is “strong precedent” for doing away with “academic departments that stray from their scholarly mission in favor of ideological activism”; and thirdly, the Gender Studies program was misaligned with the mission of the college because it is “explicitly opposed to the classical conceptions of the true, the good, and the beautiful.”
Beyond this one program, Rufo and the rest of the new DeSantis-approved board have been making sweeping changes at the institution. Several faculty members have left in recent months, including former director of data science Aaron Hillegass, who called DeSantis’s appointment of six new conservative members to the college’s board — they quickly voted to replace the college’s president — a form of “fascism” in his April resignation letter, and assistant professor of philosophy and environmental science Nicolas Delon, who earlier this year not only left his tenured position at New College, he moved away from Florida.
At least 36 faculty members have left New College since January. According to Rufo, the professors hired in their stead "are interested in pursuing the great human questions rather than maintaining a stifling, left-wing echo chamber.”
Amy Reid, the director of the Gender Studies program at New College and a member of the college’s board of trustees, tells Teen Vogue that the dissolution of her program was the culmination of many steps to remove resources for queer and gender-marginalized people on campus. Since January of this year, the college has disbanded its diversity, equity, and inclusion office and fired the dean of diversity. Says Reid, “These are all policies that make New College an increasingly uncomfortable place for faculty and students, whether we are LGBTQ or allies."
At the board meeting where it was decided that her program would be discontinued, Reid made a speech against the decision: “We, the faculty, New College, the institution, and we on this board have a responsibility to continue to offer the courses necessary for students who want to complete AOCs [Areas of Concentration] in Gender Studies, including several members of the incoming 2023 class.”
Reid says she felt disrespected by what she perceived as a lack of engagement with her ideas from some of her fellow board members. “Despite the fact that I’m the only person sitting at that table with any expertise in the field of gender studies,” she adds, “they declined to listen to me.”
Attacks on queer and trans students at schools like New College and the University of Houston can have surprising effects on LGBTQ+ young people across the country. Even if other states do not have the same policies, explains Harper Keenan, a professor of Gender and Sexuality in Education at the University of British Columbia, these mandates can contribute to a false perception that homophobia and transphobia are more popular ideologies than they actually are. For example, a May Gallup poll found that 64% of Americans believe gay and lesbian relations are “morally acceptable,” versus 33% who say they’re “morally wrong.” This data also shows that support for same-sex marriage has significantly risen, to 71%, up from 27% support in 1996.
“Witnessing the institutional abandonment of LGBTQ+ communities has been devastating,” says Keenan via email. “In many places, the fragile gains that have been made through decades of struggle by queer and trans organizers have been quickly destroyed in response to baseless fearmongering. This sends a clear message to queer and trans young people in the US and elsewhere that people in positions of authority see their lives as merely a political football in culture wars that are being manufactured as a distraction from very real social and economic issues like the climate crisis and poverty. Schools play a central role in ensuring that LGBTQ+ people have communities that provide equal access to health care, employment, and all dimensions of public life.”
Even as schools remove formal resources for LGBTQ+ students, Gonzales is hopeful they will continue to find ways to meet and build community. “Other student organizations are still allowed to do programming, invite speakers, or hold events,” she says. “More people need to get involved with our cause. If you already are, great, do more of it. If you aren’t, how can you contribute? A silver lining here is that, to a certain extent, we had gotten a bit lazy, because whenever there was an issue we thought, The resource center will take care of it. But now it’s all of our responsibility to take care of things.”
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