In a letter delivered to Chancellor John Silber yesterday, 514 students and staff from the Boston University School of Law condemned Silber’s “intolerable display of bigotry” in closing the BU Academy’s Gay-Straight Alliance in early September.
The letter questions BU’s claim that the University is an institution which “greatly values diversity” and implies the students will withhold future donations to BU to show their dissatisfaction with Silber’s actions.
The letter was crafted primarily by five students who helped gather the other signatures in about one week by soliciting LAW students in the school’s lobby and assorted classes, according to the effort’s leader, Danielle Drissel. The group of five, who did not pen the letter on behalf of any specific LAW organization, includes Neil Minahan, president of the school’s gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender club, Outlaw.
“We are future lawyers and future Boston University alumni,” the letter reads. “In the years to come, we will choose which organizations we wish to support with our energy as well as our income. We will mentor young people and help them decide which university to attend for an undergraduate, graduate or professional education. The elimination of the GSA will greatly influence our actions in these matters.”
Though the letter says the LAW community is writing to “vigorously protest the summary elimination” of the GSA, it does not call on Silber to reinstate the group.
“What we included in the letter was based on what we perceived the likely response to be,” said Drissel, a 2003 LAW student. “Silber has not historically changed his stances based on community outcry. Knowing the realities of the situation, we wanted to focus on objection to what happened and the values of the GSA as a resource.”
The LAW student effort is the first major group action at BU in response to Silber’s comments and actions in early September. Former BU physical education teacher Eric Lindemer resigned in mid-September, citing objection to Silber’s comments and actions.
The letter’s signatories include mostly students, though several administrative staff members are also included. The 514 signatures work out to approximately 43 percent of the school’s 1,190 students, according to Drissel.
No faculty signatures are included because the letter was supposed to be “a statement from law students,” according to another of the effort’s coordinators, Kim McGinnis. The letter was intended mainly to be a major LAW student response to Silber’s actions.
“What we really were hoping to get across was that members of the LAW community can’t condone Silber’s behavior,” Drissel said. “He’s not speaking for us. BU is a community that celebrates tolerance and celebrates diversity.
“By excluding the GSA from the BU Academy, he really harms the university,” she said later. “He is excluding one of the most vulnerable communities and that harms us all.”
The effort was also intended to raise awareness of Silber’s comments and actions within the LAW community, Drissel said. Though many students did not know about Silber’s actions, Drissel said it was not hard to get students to sign the letter after they were informed of the situation.
“As soon as the issue was explained, people were very supportive,” she said.
The group solicited and was offered advice from many faculty and staff, including the school’s Dean Ronald Cass who gave the group advice on properly approaching and dealing with the media, according to Drissel.
The group has no real expectations for Silber’s response to the letter, Drissel and McGinnis both said.
“Of course, we want him to see the light and say ‘Oh yeah — same sex partners should get insurance and gay people should be accepted in positive ways,'” McGinnis said. “But we don’t have any expectations of what will really happen.”
Drissel said she began the effort after reading about Silber’s closure of the Academy’s GSA in The Boston Globe. That afternoon, she emailed other LAW students she thought would be interested in responding, she said.
“I read The Boston Globe and got upset,” she said. “[Silber] seemed to be targeting a vulnerable population and targeting an organization that serves a valuable function.”
Minahan said he felt a personal responsibility to speak out and take action in response to the Academy GSA’s closure, both as a gay student and as Outlaw’s president.
“Silber has created a very unpleasant atmosphere for gay students throughout the university,” he said. “His words affect the greater gay and lesbian community as well. It’s upsetting to hear the president who speaks for the university say things that are personally offensive and troubling and create that kind of uncomfortable and unsettling atmosphere.”
McGinnis, a 2004 LAW student who has been openly gay for nearly 20 years, said she joined the effort because she objected to Silber’s actions and could identify with the Academy’s gay students.
“I knew I was gay when I was in high school and I had no support system,” she said. “I know how awful it is to be an outcast in high school.”
Though Drissel attributed the relatively quiet campus response to modern societal convention, McGinnis characterized student response as “surprisingly muted.” She said she was especially surprised by undergraduate GLBT group Spectrum’s lack of major action. But both Drissel and Minahan said those who know about Silber’s words and actions have expressed their distaste relatively uniformly.
“I think those who know about it are generally concerned about it, not only with the closing of the group, but also the way he’s gone about flaunting it,” Minahan said.
Drissel said the group tomorrow plans to inform LAW students they have delivered the letter to Silber. They have planned a meeting Thursday to plot out their next actions, she said.
Outlaw is planning to first start building alliances with BU’s other GLBT groups before setting their next actions.