--- markmeredith2002 wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "anonyff" wrote: > > > > I had some a friend who was about half way through his Masters degree > > at MIU who got kicked off the program and off campus when someone made > > it a point to let the administration know he was gay. This was in the > > late 70s. > > Late 70s? That's surprising. I hadn't heard of any gay purges > pre-bevan rule.
I was too clueless to pick up any gay presence at MIU, so it came as a shock one morning when some anonymous contingent of gay students taped posters to the doors of all the dormitories. (My memory is extremely hazy about all this, so I welcome corrections.) Anyway, the 8-1/2" x 11" handwritten, photocopied papers said, basically, "We're tired of being in the closet and demand recognition." I can tell you, the whole thing made me extremely uncomfortable at the time, and I wasn't alone. (I had the usual hetero "ick factor" response that's come up in this forum.) But to make matters worse, the posters appeared on the day the North Central Accreditation Review Board was coming to campus. (Maybe this was the spring of 1980, because the school got accredited just before I graduated.) It was as if the gays were crying out to the wider world, "We're in prison here. Help!" I could not understand it in the least. I seem to recall, after the whole affair blew over, Bevan said something to the effect that that these people were trying to undermine our accreditation efforts and sabotage the image of the school before the wider world. You have to understand, we were *all about* proselytizing, hence the coats and ties. Anything that distracted from that clean-cut, mainstream image was strictly off the program. So this gay rights plea on the day the school was to be inspected by the outside academic world seemed like an averted catastrophe. (The posters were taken down right away, of course.) I don't know what the status of gays is in the TMO today. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
