Integrating the Gay and Straight

NEW HAVEN--The scene: Atticus, one of those bookstore-cafes where chic people gather over cappacino and Kant. Matthew J. Reich, in his white and gray shirt, thin silver tie, and gray pin-stripe pants, looks as if he has just stepped off the pages of GQ. He blends in nicely with the wet slate-gray of the New Haven sidewalk outside.

He is talking about what he calls "the freshman walk."

"They walk by and then back, look in, and run to the door, hoping no one saw."

The freshpeople, as they are called at Yale, have perfected this walk in order to avoid being seen entering a meeting of one of Yale's many homosexual student organizations, some of which are weekly support groups, others, political.

Students differ on how thoroughly homosexuality is integrated into the Yale social scene, but agree that it is relatively easy to be openly gay at the New Haven school. On a recent weekend, as rain soaked the Gothic campus, many students discussed their experiences within the social fabric of Yale.

Reich, the co-coordinator of the Gay and Lesbian Cooperative, the umbrella organization for such groups as the Yalesbians and the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Unsure meetings, is willing--even eager--to discuss his life as a gay student at Yale.

In recent weeks the gay population at Yale has been put in the spotlight, as The Wall Street Journal published an article in August stating that the university is gaining a reputation as a gay school. Almost everyone on the New Haven campus, including administrators and gay and straight students, disagrees, saying The Journal's figure of one in four students being gay is more than double the accurate count.

"One side of me says that would be wonderful," Reich, a senior, says of the 25 percent statistic. "There's another side that says I live in a homophobic society, and it would not be good for Yale. It would be detrimental for the gay community because we would be attacked."

Reich says he was homophobic when he entered Yale in the fall of 1984. "I was terribly homophobic to the point that it was obvious I must be gay." During his freshman year the Pennsylvania native was second in command in Yale's Party of the Right, a conservative extremist political organization. In April of his freshman year, he came out.

Now Reich is one of the most active students on campus, writing and directing plays, announcing sports games, teaching high school students SAT prep courses, giving campus tours, taking seven courses this semester, and sleeping two to three hours a night.

Occasionally a student or a parent on a Yale tour asks him if there is a preponderance of homosexual students, he says. "If you're not ready for different ideas, political thought, if you're not ready for different ideologies, then you're not ready for Yale. In fact, you're not ready for college," he tells them.

For the most part, Reich says, Yale is open and accepting of homosexual students, and the monthly Gay and Lesbian Co-op-sponsored dances are the best attended parties on campus, attracting both gay and straight students. But being gay at Yale is not without problems, he says.

"Many will say it's chic to be gay at Yale," he says. "I certainly dismiss that. I'm not winning any popularity contests, certainly not for my sexuality."

A couple of hours later on a Friday night, after Reich has gone to see "The Color Purple" with a friend, the scene has changed.

Now it's a typical college happy hour in the common room of Davenport, one of Yale's residential colleges. Davenport is the schizophrenic college, with fake Gothic architecture on the street side and fake Georgian architecture on the courtyard side. A bell tower rises from the spires.

The furniture is pushed back along the walls, and the oriental rugs are rolled up. About 60 people are dancing to the driving beat of the Gargoyles, a Yale band. All the beer is gone.

The band plays a couple more songs, and the lights go up. As some students try to restore the large room to its normal state, others hang out and talk.

"I suspect there is a larger community [of gay students], but I don't really see it that much," says Douglas G. Chang, a senior from Palo Alto, Ca. He says one of his freshman roommates came out in the spring of their first year.

Many of the other students also say they have friends who are gay. The vast majority of Yale students, they say, are tolerant of the vocal homosexual community. Yet in the next breath one of the students at the party says it's easy to recognize a gay student: He or she probably majors in comparative literature and wears black.

The cold, damp New Haven night passes. The morning doesn't look or feel much different.

The final scene is Patricia's, a diner a couple of blocks from campus. Next door is the Holiday Inn, in front of which disgruntled workers are picketing, trying to win a contract. In the busy diner, students grab a quick brunch before heading for the Yale-Brown football game, and New Haven residents sit at the counter warming up with a cup of coffee.

Sarah E. Chinn and Kris L. Franklin, both wearing funky earrings dangling below their short stylish haircuts, are sitting at the table. "Two eggs and toast. How?" Chinn asks Franklin with a smile.

"Overeasy," replies Franklin.

"That's it. We're broken up," Chinn jokes in her British accent.

The two women, now juniors, have been together since their freshman year, when Chinn says she came to terms with her sexuality. The two met during Gay and Lesbian Awareness Days (GLAD) week in the spring of their freshman year and started going out immediately afterwards. Now Chinn is co-coordinator of the Gay and Lesbian Co-op, and Franklin is co-coordinator of Yalesbians.

"You need a group of people, you need an organized thing, especially when you first come out," says Franklin, adding that she came out while still in high school in a small town in Florida, where she says she felt very alone.

Chinn and Franklin, who live off-campus with two other women, one of whom is straight, say that gay jokes are not common in public at Yale, but within students' own groups of friends degrading homosexuals is more acceptable.

"There is homophobia at Yale, as there is everywhere," says Chinn, a member of the rugby team. "Each peer group has different standards of what's acceptable and what isn't. In general, people are more respectful."

"Maybe if I'd gone somewhere else, I wouldn't have come out until I was 45," she says. The strong support groups for homosexuals and the relatively open atmosphere make being gay easier, she adds.

Says Franklin, "You can come out because of the courage of the people who came out before you."

But they say harassment is common. "They stare. They threaten. They comment," Franklin says.

Most situations are harmless, they say. One evening this term they say they were on Old Campus--where freshmen live--and kissed each other goodbye, prompting stares and gasps among a group of freshmen.

Said Chinn to the gawking freshmen: "It's really okay. We're only dykes."

"People feel like we're public property and they have the right to say anything," says Franklin. And occasionally, they say, the harassment takes violent forms, like the time a group of men surrounded Chinn on the street, shouting and blocking her way.

Although they live off-campus, Chinn and Franklin say they feel a part of the Yale undergraduate social scene, attending campus parties and having a mixed group of friends.

At the end of the two-hour brunch, the gray clouds have not lifted. Smiling, Franklin and Chinn walk down the street toward the shopping mall, arm in arm, and then, hand in hand.