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BY ROSA KIM

In print | October 25, 2007

This week, Swarthmore’s Coming Out Week Planning Committee, comprised of members representing the Swarthmore Queer Union, Queer Students of Color, None of the Above, Small Group and the Queer-Straight Alliance, organized a week devoted to addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues on campus.

National Coming Out day was Oct. 11, the Thursday before fall break. Members of the LGBT communities, along with their allies, celebrated the annual awareness day for coming out and dialogue about LGBT issues.

Maria Kelly ’10, a member of COLORS and board member of SQU, said one of the purposes of Coming Out Week is to acknowledge queer issues and the queer community on campus.

Dean of Students Jim Larimore said while Coming Out Week holds different meanings for different individuals on a personal level, it is also a matter of concern for the campus community in addition to the groups involved.

“For the campus as a whole, Coming Out Week represents a time for us to be especially conscious of the varied experiences, interests, perspectives, concerns and accomplishments of GLBTQ students, faculty and staff,” Larimore said in an e-mail.

“For a community so committed to inclusiveness, this is a time for us to recognize both the positive aspects of our community and to be attentive to the unfinished work that remains to ensure fairness and equality of opportunity for all members of our community.”

Kelly said that this week is also an opportunity to address issues that are usually not openly discussed.

“For me, I feel like Coming Out Week is really about celebrating queerness on campus and making people more aware of queer issues,” she said. “Obviously, Swarthmore comes across as a very safe space and a very understanding place. And I think it is, but even here, these issues are put to the side a little bit more than they need to be.”

Kelly said she has had conversations with students who have experienced various degrees of heteronormativity in classes. “I’ve heard people talk about in particular the language department and some of the more heteronormative work exercises that they do. Like, ’what’s your ideal male?’ Just little things like that, I think that to talk about these issues more is really important because it’s not necessarily that people are avoiding them at all times, it’s that they’re not even really aware of the fact that they are being heteronormative in some cases,” she said.

Following the chalkings done on Sunday night, the opening event for this year’s Coming Out Week was “Queer at Swat: There is no such thing as a stupid question” panel where upperclassmen who identify as bisexual, transgender, queer or pansexual, representing a range of social and cultural identities answered questions from the campus community.

Tatiana Cozzarelli ’08, Intercultural Center Intern for the Swarthmore Queer Union and a member of Queer Students of Color said that the planning committee decided to open with the student panel to give members of the campus community a forum to ask questions that they might not otherwise feel comfortable asking.

She said the politics behind chalkings in Coming Out Week connect members of Swarthmore’s LGBT community to different queer and feminist movements that have traditionally used shocking and anonymous images and words to call attention to their causes.

Kelly said chalking is a way to create queer visibility on campus. “I think they’re really meant to be a celebration of queer identity. Part of it is a way to reach out to the Swarthmore campus in a way that’s different from other events of Coming Out Week,” she said.

Although the event is campus-wide, for many members of the LGBT community, the chalkings represent individual expressions of queer identity. “I think it depends on the individual,” Kelly said. “Because I know there are lots of chalkers who I’ve talked to who are just like, ‘I just want my chalkings to be happy and about love and I just really want to express that.’ And all the power to them to do that.”

“And there are others whom I’ve spoken to who expressed [that] there can’t be a change in the way people think without exposing them to something different they would never think of. But I really do think it’s about the individual chalker and their choice to make about what they want to do with their drawings or written expressions,” Kelly said.

During last year’s Coming Out Week, the campus community had various strong reactions to the content of some of the chalkings. The controversies surrounding the chalkings were addressed in a campus-wide open discussion following Coming Out Week.

As a result and partly in response to last year’s incidences, this year, the planning committee took the reactions of the Swat Survivors community into consideration to implement changes to the location of some of the more explicit chalkings for this year’s Coming Out Week.

“We specifically realized that some of the chalkings have been and can be triggering for survivors and very upsetting. And in order to respect that and try to be considerate of that, we did try to tell people to think about that in their chalkings and try not to put chalkings that might be upsetting for certain individuals in front of unavoidable locations,” she said.

Chalkers were encouraged to keep sexually explicit drawings on Magill Walk and in the Kohlberg courtyard. “We felt like those were very central locations on campus that aren’t hidden away somewhere but also can be avoided,” Kelly said.

Kelly said that a letter was sent to members of Swat Survivors informing them of the committee’s decision so that these locations could be avoided.

Nicole Belanger ‘08, Co-facilitator of Swat Survivors, said members of the group appreciated the committee’s and the individual chalkers’ consideration of the survivors’ experiences.

“From my point, I think that it is incredibly positive that a group on campus changed the way that they are doing an activity in order to make things more supportive, less triggering for survivors … I think that’s really incredible and really empathetic and just so helpful,” Belanger said. “I think that this is a really great start on a way to balance what the goals of the Coming Out chalkings are with also being understanding of the fact that it was triggering for people.”

There are, however, members of the Swarthmore community who question the effectiveness of some of the more explicit chalkings.

“At least in terms of the chalkings which is the biggest expression that I’ve seen so far of Coming Out Week, I think it’s really negative,” Soren Larson ‘11 said. "I thought the chalkings especially on Magill Walk were really offensive. I didn’t think that it was necessary for the organization that put on this week to have such pornographic images on a pathway that many prospective students walk on."

“I know that if I were a prospective student and I was with my parents I know that that would really turn me off to Swarthmore,” Larson continued. “My friends and I’ve been talking about this a lot. I remember near Kohlberg, I think under the trees between Kohlberg and [the Lang Performing Arts Center], it said something like, ‘just because you wear a sticker, doesn’t make you an ally.’ And I thought that if the purpose of Coming Out Week is to raise awareness and make people more sympathetic to the cause, I don’t understand how placing such messages like that and such pornographic images is going to garner any support,” he said.

“If their goal is to make people talk, they certainly achieved it, but I think it really caused, at least in my friends and I, a negative response … I know that I would not support pornographic images that are heterosexual, for that matter,” Larson said.

Kelly said she hopes Coming Out Week will encourage people to think about queer issues and open dialogue within the community. “It’s a time where I feel like I’m able to see those people who strongly identify as allies and even people who want to be and become better allies and I think that’s another important aspect of Coming Out Week — seeing allies on campus and everyone trying to work together,” she said.

Cozzarelli said one of the impacts of these events is that it is more difficult to ignore queer issues during Coming Out Week, compared to the rest of the year. “One of my biggest hopes is for people who don’t normally come to events about queer issues come and come with an open mind and that they get something from it,” Cozzarelli said.

Cozzarelli also felt that the week serves to promote bonding amongst the queer community.

“I think just that at some point, this week sparks in someone a thought that they’ll continue to develop in their time at Swarthmore,” Cozarelli said.

Larimore said that although he perceives Swarthmore as a generally accepting place, he also recognizes that not all members of the campus community experience it as uniformly safe.

“While I think that we need to recognize the many people, past and present, who have made Swarthmore a queer friendly or queer safe environment, I think that we also need to recognize that we should not be complacent because the campus is more open and safe than other places,” he said in an e-mail. “e need to have higher aspirations than that, and we need to recognize that there is work that remains to be done here as well.”

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