A&M's Gay Community Marks 25 Years Out, Proud
By Vimal Patel
From the
Bryan-College Station EagleLarry Hickman saved recordings of threatening messages left on the Aggie-run referral service for gay students. And he still has a cardboard box of documents related to Texas A&M students' gay-rights struggle.
He kept it all, in part, because one day, he thought, he'd talk about those years again.
He will this week, after traveling from Illinois — where he is a philosophy professor — to Texas A&M, the university he left 17 years ago.
He's 67, but he speaks passionately about the events that, after a nearly decade-long struggle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, led to the Texas A&M gay student group he advised receiving official recognition.
This week, A&M groups will celebrate the 25-year anniversary of the end of that battle, which began with a denial of recognition from then-chief student administrator John J. Koldus and ended with the nation's highest court refusing to take the case and allowing a lower court's ruling to stand.
Hickman has lost touch with the students he mentored. He doesn't remember much about them these days, he said, because they were typical college students, different in just one way: they were gay. He remembers the hardship some faced. There was Patricia, whose landlord kicked her out when she found out she was a plaintiff in the suit.
"There were kids who did not have the support they needed to be healthy students," Hickman said. "I can't tell you how many Aggie students I met who were paranoid. They felt displaced, isolated and not part of the community because of the bigotry."
The battle had waged for several years when Hickman volunteered to become adviser to the group in the early 1980s, about three years before the case reached the nation's highest court. He wasn't gay -- though at the time, he never made any comments about his sexuality: "Let them jump to any conclusion they want," he remembers thinking -- but he had gay friends.
Perhaps as important as any reason in his decision: "I had just got tenure that year."
Hostile Environment
Many Aggies were riled up following the filing of the lawsuit.
"Aggies are not queers," read a banner that hung from a third-floor window of Hart Hall in March 1977. "We don't want the Twelfth Man to be a homosexual!!!" stated a letter from former students in the campus newspaper, The Battalion. "Because he doesn't like queers!" explained a spokesman for a legislator who introduced a bill that would make it illegal for administrators to recognize gay-student organizations.
Gay Student Services, an off-campus group, had filed a request to be recognized to Koldus, the vice president for student affairs, in April 1976. The administrator denied the application, asserting two basic arguments. One, given that homosexual acts in Texas were illegal at the time, it would be inappropriate for Texas A&M to support a group likely to "incite, promote and result" in gay acts. And two, the stated purposes and goals of the university were not consistent with those of the student group.
The next year, the A&M System Board of Regents weighed in with a clear stance opposing a gay student group.
"So-called 'gay' activities run diabolically counter to the traditions and standards of Texas A&M University," a board resolution from a March 22, 1977, meeting stated, according to court documents (the board perhaps meant diametrically instead of diabolically).
"And the Board of Regents is determined to defend the suit filed against it by three students seeking 'gay' recognition and, if necessary, to proceed in every legal way to prohibit any group with such goals from organizing or operating on this or any other campus for which this Board is responsible."
A lower court ruled in favor of Texas A&M. But the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, supported the students, stating in an August 1984 ruling, "We think it clear from the facts that TAMU refused officially to recognize GSS based upon the homosexual content of the group's ideas."
On April 1, 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, rejected Texas A&M's appeal, solidifying the appellate court's decision and giving birth to the first gay student group.
Koldus, who lives in College Station, could not be reached for this story. Organizers wanted him to speak at this week's celebration, but he declined. In a handwritten letter that's on file at Cushing Memorial Library, he said he wasn't confident in his memory of the events.
"My heart says thanks but my brain says no," Koldus wrote.
Hickman, remembered affectionately by some as a highly effective rabble-rouser, had clashed with Koldus on other occasions. He said he's sure Koldus is a "very nice person."
"But I think his job was to do what the administration and former students wanted," Hickman said.
A Strong Community
Today, Texas A&M has a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center, one of only about 150 at universities nationwide. And it has a vibrant program called Aggie Allies, a network of about 800 people who have agreed to be resources for members of the GLBT population as they navigate their way through the university.
"I believe that when individuals that are part of a marginalized population are in an environment that is almost the extreme for their marginalization," said Lowell Kane, the center's director, "it actually in many ways enforces community development."
A cloth with a pink triangle hangs in the resource center. It was the symbol Nazis used to identify gays. In the next room, on Wednesday, a couple of students hung out near a 53-inch TV, a DVD collection and library. It's a "safe zone," they call it, where they can relax around others who won't judge them.
Riley Bryan, president of the student group GLBT Aggies, sat on a couch there. During his sophomore year, he was outed by cadets he had confided in. He remembers upperclassmen telling him he was never to directly look at them again.
The fifth-year senior, from Guymon, Okla., a town of about 10,000, came to Texas A&M because of his love of the Aggie Band. He said he has no regrets about joining the Corps, which he said gave him friends and a "completely unique experience." And now, he said, he's found his place on campus, and his comfort zone.
"I'm the happiest I've ever been on campus," he said.
Tom Spellman also was in the Corps. The Class of 1986 Aggie now works in computing information services. He also confided in someone that he was gay. After a falling-out, he said, the person told Spellman's dad, the commandant, and "everyone at the [Dixie] Chicken."
Spellman did the only thing he thought feasible for a cadet in the 1980s: "I lied through my teeth. I wasn't prepared to come out yet."
Today, he meets his partner of 23 years every day for lunch on steps near Cushing Memorial Library. Michael Jackson, who met Spellman while both were A&M students, works at the library.
Aggieland is changing, they said.
"More of the young kids don't care," Jackson said. "They go to school with people who are gay. They have family who are openly gay. They can put a face on it. There are positive portrayals in books and movies."
Still, in all these years, they've never felt comfortable enough to walk hand-in-hand on campus.
A Retrospective
The two-day conference -- dubbed "It's Time ... " -- kicks off Wednesday at the Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building with the Queer of Color symposium. It will feature an academic discussion exploring the intersection between race, ethnicity and sexual orientation by top scholars in the field, organizers said.
The second day of the program, organized by the GLBT Professional Network, will be called "25 Years Later: LGBT in Higher Education." It begins at 9 a.m. with welcoming remarks by Texas A&M President R. Bowen Loftin.
Christine Stanley, Texas A&M's vice president for diversity, will deliver the keynote introduction. Interim Provost Karan Watson, the university's top academic official, is scheduled to be on a 3:30 p.m. panel called "Future."
Kane said it's meaningful that top-level officials are attending the conference.
"I think it represents that there is a firm commitment we are now seeing," the 27-year-old said. "In the past, many people would talk the talk, but here, we're seeing A&M walk the walk. We are seeing our top administrators taking an active role in conferences dealing with diversity and equity issues. It's a new time."
Hickman, who left Texas A&M in 1993 to become director of the Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where he is today, will be on a 10:30 a.m. panel titled "Past."
He attracted statewide media interest surrounding A&M's treatment of gays, women and minorities. But he said his activism sprang from deep affection for the university. His wife and her family are Aggies, and he spent 19 years in Aggieland as a faculty member teaching philosophy.
"I'm very hopeful that A&M is moving rapidly in the right direction," he said. "It's a great university, and it has the potential to be even greater."
Published on Monday, March 29, 2010
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