BACK TO SCHOOL America’s Top 50 LGBT-Friendly Colleges & Universities BY PAUL SCHINDLER It’s fairly commonplace for students to travel out of state to attend college these days. A distant school may provide the best course of study for a particular interest or it may offer overall excellence not available closer to home. Maybe a school elsewhere in the country ends up being the most affordable option, or it could be a romantic interest that is the draw. Clearly, though, no one should have to leave home simply because an LGBT-friendly higher education opportunity is not close at hand. Campus Pride, a non-profit that works to improve the climate on campuses nationwide, has for the past seven years provided a data resource for students looking to learn more about how individual colleges work to welcome LGBT students (campusprideindex.org). Its 2014 ratings — released last week — are based on information provided by 425 institutions, evaluating them according to their performance in eight areas: incorporating LGBT issues into formal policies; institutional commitment to supporting LGBT students; academic life; student life; housing; campus safety; counseling and health; and recruitment and retention efforts. The benchmarks were established by an advisory board made up of Shane L. Wind-
meyer, Campus Pride’s founder and executive director, Dr. Genny Beeman, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Dr. Susan R. Rankin, a retired education professor at Penn State University. In releasing its newest ratings, Campus Pride named a Top 50 ranking of colleges and universities, a group that includes schools located in 24 of the 50 states. As the accompanying graphic shows, 12 of those states have a greater share of the top 50 than their proportion of the total US population would predict. Most of the best performing states are those where the most significant advances in LGBT rights overall have been achieved. But the top 50 doesn’t tell the whole story. The ratings assign schools anywhere from one to five stars (the best), and while all of the Top 50 earned five stars, not all of the fivestar schools were in the Top 50. Schools in Kansas, Kentucky, and Utah were among the five-star schools that are scattered across the other 24 best performing states as well. At least one college in another 12 states (and the District of Columbia) scored four or fourand-a-half stars — Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, and Virginia. And another four states — Arkansas, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia —
ARIZONA Northern Arizona University
MARYLAND University of Maryland at College Park
NORTH CAROLINA Warren Wilson College
CALIFORNIA Pomona College San Diego State University Stanford University University of California at Berkeley University of California at Los Angeles University of California at Riverside University of California at Santa Barbara University of California at Santa Cruz University of Southern California
MASSACHUSETTS Amherst College Harvard University University of Massachusetts at Amherst
OHIO Oberlin College Ohio State University
MICHIGAN University of Michigan
CONNECTICUT Connecticut College
MINNESOTA Augsburg College Macalester College University of Minnesota at Duluth University of Minnesota at the Twin Cities
FLORIDA University of Central Florida
MISSOURI Washington University
GEORGIA Emory University
NEW HAMPSHIRE Dartmouth College
ILLINOIS Southern Illinois University at Carbondale University of Chicago University of Illinois at Chicago
NEW JERSEY Princeton University Rutgers University
INDIANA Indiana University
NEW YORK Cornell University Ithaca College Syracuse University
have at least one school with ratings of three or three-and-a-half stars — the level at which Campus Pride puts a college on its “honor roll.” Seven states, however, have no school that currently reports pro-LGBT policies that earn them at least three stars — Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming. And it’s worth noting that, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, there are nearly 2,900 four-year colleges and another 1,700 two-year colleges in the US, so there are a lot of schools Campus Pride is not yet hearing from (though some schools which participate in its index don’t authorize their data to be made public as 425 of them do). It’s hard to know exactly what to make of the silence from several thousand higher education institutions on their commitment to LGBT students. “Campus Pride applauds all campuses who have ‘come out’ on the Index, regardless of their rating,” Windmeyer said. “By doing so these campuses are taking active responsibility for their LGBT campus community. The Campus Pride Index grew for the fifth consecutive year, but there are still many, many other colleges and universities who have yet to ‘come out’ for their LGBT students and then take adequate steps to protect and ensure a safe, welcoming learning environment.”
OREGON Oregon State University Portland State University Southern Oregon University University of Oregon PENNSYLVANIA Pennsylvania State University University of Pennsylvania RHODE ISLAND Brown University University of Rhode Island VERMONT University of Vermont WASHINGTON Central Washington University Washington State University University of Washington WISCONSIN University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
LOUISIANA Tulane University
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States with no colleges in the Top 50 (26 states) States with colleges in the top 50, but a number not proportional to population (4 states) States with number of colleges in the top 50 roughly proportional to population (8 states) States with more colleges in the top 50 that their population would suggest (12 states)
STATES WITH PROPORTIONATELY THE GREATEST SHARE OF TOP 50 SCHOOLS Twelve states have a greater proportion of the Top 50 schools than would be expected from their share of the total US. population. The percentage figure in blue to the left of each state is its share of the US population; the red percentage number to the right is its share of the Top 50 schools. The best performing states, shown in dark blue in the map above are California, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington State.
CA 12.1%
| August 21 - September 03, 2014
18%
1.1%
2%
4.1%
LA
6%
1.5%
2%
MN MA
2.1%
NH 6%
1.7%
8%
0.4%
8%
0.3%
NJ 2%
2.8%
4%
VT
RI
OR
1.2% August 21 - September 03, 2014 | www.gaycitynews.com
IL
CT
WA
4%
0.2%
2%
2.2%
6%
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