Sunday afternoon, the GUSA Senate unanimously passed “An ACT to create a Speaker’s Commission on Inclusion and Safety.” In a continuation of the efforts spearheaded by the Safe Transitions Working Group in August of 2012, the bill created a Commission to address issues related to residential safety, nondiscrimination, and mix-ed gender housing options. “Incidents of violence, harassment, discomfort are unacceptably high for LGBTQ freshman in particular,” said Speaker of the Senate Nate Tisa. “Dozens have to switch rooms, and many transfer out of Georgetown every year.”

The Commission will be co-chaired by Speaker Tisa of Village A and Senator Jay Factor of Village B/Nevils, and will be responsible for making recommendations to the administration in order to affectively address issues such as those highlighted in the Working Group’s report which include discrimination against and exclusion of LGBTQ students in student housing.

The Commission will not only focus on issues that affect Georgetown’s LGBTQ community address a wide variety of issues that effect the Georgetown student body as a whole such as instances of relationship and gender violence and mixed gender housing options.

Read the rest of this entry »

All day today, GU Pride is stationed in Red Square with over 300 free “I am” t-shirts and a door for students to walk through in support of LGBTQ issues, or even to come out of the closet. The group set up their yearly installment for National Coming Out Day at 9 a.m. and will be there till the end of the day. This is the second event in a series of October events during “Coming Out Month 2012″ to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning people and allies.

“It’s really a day to celebrate our identity,” President of GU Pride Meghan Ferguson (COL ’15) said.

Each year on National Coming Out Day, the group holds an ‘affection-in.’ “We had eight to ten couples and a whole bunch of other people holding hands, making out, and hugging in Red Square,” she said. “Many people walked by today, ranging from prospective students to professors who will say ‘Happy Coming Out Day, thanks for being out here!’ It’s great to see a lot of support on campus.”

The celebration will end with a barbecue on Leavey Esplanade at 5 p.m. Other events for Outober Month include a lecture with Chairman and President of Export-Import Bank Fred Hochberg, one of the few openly gay senior officials in the Obama administration.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday afternoon, members of the LGBTQ community, as well as friends, family, and University administrators, gathered in Copley Formal Lounge for the third annual Lavender Graduation.

Congressman David Cicilline (LAW ’86), the first openly gay mayor of Providence, R.I., and fourth out member of Congress, delivered the keynote address.

Cicilline, who unseated succeeded longtime Providence mayor Buddy Cianci in 2002 and was elected to Congress in 2010, encouraged graduates to get involved in the wider community.

“I think our community and our country needs partners at every level of government,” he said. “No matter where you find yourself, it’s important to participate in the civic life of this country.”

Student Ellen Greer (SFS ’11) shared her own experiences as a student leader, telling students, ”you owe it to yourselves and to your community to keep LGBT life on this campus great.”

Greer also recalled the strides made by the LGBT community during her time at Georgetown. When she was a freshman, the LGBTQ Center was just getting its start after a violent anti-gay hate crime.

Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, spoke at Georgetown University yesterday about “Beyond DADT Repeal: The Future of the LGBTQ Rights Movement.”

The event, sponsored by the Georgetown University Lecture Fund, Georgetown Pride, and the LGBTQ Resource Center, attracted the attention of the conservative blog Catholic Campus Watch, which pronounced that the lecture “…spells out the sad reality that on many Catholic campuses, especially at Georgetown, perennial Catholic morality is often rejected, and the immoral agenda of the homosexual movement is welcomed.”

Despite Catholic Campus Watch’s opposition—and perhaps in part because of it—Solmonese’s lecture drew a large crowd to Copley Formal Lounge.

Solmonese praised Georgetown’s non-discrimination policy, as well as the LGBTQ Resource Center.

Addressing DADT’s repeal, Solmonese framed the discussion with a question: How can we make sense of LGBT victories when they are clearly long overdue? Reminding the audience of activists’ “empowered, strategic” responses to discriminatory policies, Solmonese argued that actions such as the repeal of DADT and the passage of the Matthew Shepherd Act still count as victories for the community.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Georgetown University College Democrats and College Republicans came together on Wednesday evening to co-host “A Catholic Family Discussion on LGBT Issues”. College Democrats member Hannah Lomax-Vogt, College Republicans member Joe Knowles, National Organization on Marriage spokesperson Maggie Gallagher, and Atlantic Monthly Editor Andrew Sullivan formed the panel moderated by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

The discussion focused primarily on gay marriage rights, with Lomax-Vogt and Sullivan in favor and Knowles and Gallagher opposed.

“I decided that our politics are now so filled with hatred and rancor over taxes and economics that it opens the way for a discussion of a whole range of cultural and moral issues,” Dionne said to open the conversation. “I intend to be a fair and balanced moderator in the actual sense of that phrase [...] on gay marriage I have been on both sides on this issue.” He made clear that he currently sides with Sullivan on the issue.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday night in White-Gravenor, LGBTQ rights advocate Ryan Conrad shared his unconventional opinions about the futility of marriage rights.

“Is [marriage] the battle worth fighting for?” he asked. “I think not.”

As the author and founder of Against Equality, an online critique of “mainstream gay and lesbian politics,” Conrad was invited to campus by GU Pride, the Lecture Fund, the LGBTQ Resource Center, and the Women’s Center as a part of Gender Liberation Week.

“What does marriage do for us?” Conrad said, explaining that marriage would do nothing to help the queer community in terms of health care benefits or monogamy. Marriage, he claimed, is an arbitrary, social institution that is coveted beyond its usefulness.

“The conservative Christian Right and the gay liberal [political] narrative look exactly the same,” he argued.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, Newsweek named Georgetown as the 23rd-most diverse and 24th-most LGBT-friendly school in the country, despite last year’s slew of bias-related incidents against LGBTQ students and allies.

The University of Pennsylvania topped both lists.

To compile the rankings, Newsweek used statistics based on ethnicity, geographic diversity, economic background, gender, and sexual orientation. (The magazine also relied on lists of LGBTQ-friendly campuses published by The Advocate and InsideCollege.com.)

The magazine’s annual list of top colleges also placed Georgetown as one of the nation’s most desirable urban schools, a “school for brainiacs,” and a top “power-broker” college.

h/t GW Hatchet

Catholics for Equality, a not-for-profit group formed in 2010, seeks to foster support for same-sex marriage and other LGBT causes in the Catholic community, specifically targeting students at Catholic colleges and universities.

The surprise? A Georgetown professor helped create the group.

Adjunct professor Joseph Palacios is one of the founding members of Catholics for Equality, and, along with his co-founders, has drawn criticism from the Cardinal Newman Society, a conservative group focused on Catholic higher education.

Read the rest of this entry »

Just like last year, Vox has compiled a guide to “news you can use”, or in other words, an excessively comprehensive review of last year’s important news stories. Today, we cover the crime issues that made headlines.

Sexual assaults

The past three years, there have been a series of sexual assaults following a similar formula: a man enters a home, gets in bed with a female resident, attempts to sexually assault her, and leaves before the woman is able identify the perpetrator. Some students call the assailant the “Georgetown Cuddler”—an unfortunate nickname that we won’t be using anymore—though it very well may be multiple perpetrators.

While no connection has yet been made, the recent sexual assault in Burleith bears similarities to other crimes, including an assault in Copley, an assault at gunpoint on Prospect Street, and an assault on the 3800 block of Calvert Street. In April, student groups held a vigil for victims.

Read the rest of this entry »