‘There is an unspoken assumption is that everyone is cisgender’
Activists at Harvard have claimed that the school is a “toxic space” for LGBT students, with some complaining that the Ivy League university underfunds and under-promotes the LGBT graduate student organization there.
Graduate students at Harvard “have long sought more help and resources from University administrators, with little luck,” The Harvard Crimson reports.
“Specifically, students say the Harvard lacks paid staff, events, and advising targeted to BGLTQ-identifying graduate students — and fails to keep up with peer Ivy League institutions who do offer these services.”
In the past students have asked the university for more funding and promotion, going so far as to publish an open letter “describing problems they said they faced in Cambridge including ‘homophobia and transphobia,’ ‘implicit bias,’ and ‘attrition’.”
“Across Harvard there is an unspoken assumption is that everyone is cisgender and fits into the gender binary, which means that departments often fail to integrate students who do not. We understand anecdotally that a disproportionate number of students who have left their programs are queer, female, minorities, or some combination thereof,” that letter read, according to The Crimson:
The letter made several asks of GSAS administrators, chief among them the installation of a Dudley fellow to serve BGLTQ students. Dudley House — which assists both graduate students and undergraduates — employs 26 graduate fellows in fields including “athletics,” “arts,” and “food literacy” to organize events for Harvard affiliates interested in their dedicated areas.
Though Dudley hired two diversity fellows last semester, it has never employed a fellow focused on BGLTQ issues. A Harvard spokesperson did not directly respond to a question asking whether GSAS plans to hire a BGLTQ-focused fellow.
LGBTQ@GSAS leaders emailed Dudley House Faculty Deans James M. Hogle and Doreen M. Hogle in April, renewing their call for the Hogles to add a fellow for BGLTQ students. They cited the event [a student] staffed without pay as one of the reasons Dudley needs to pay someone to focus on challenges confronted by BGLTQ graduate students.
In a defense of the school’s conduct regarding LGBT students, a Harvard spokesman said that, in addition to the new diversity fellows, the school has “organized workshops on diversity and inclusion and launched an outreach campaign to student affinity groups.”
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