LGBT-friendly, but still room to improve

It comes as little surprise to me that UCLA was recently listed
as one of America’s most friendly universities toward
lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals.

With a prominent resource center, a plethora of LGBT-focused
student organizations and a history of progressive political
action, UCLA has all of the trademarks one might expect a
“gay-friendly” campus to boast.

While UCLA is undoubtedly deserving of positive recognition, it
takes more than a checklist of resources to define a campus as
LGBT-friendly.

The recently compiled Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students
is an incredibly valuable tool for students seeking an accepting
campus, but the criteria it uses to assess universities is in need
of improvement.

Factors such as an unscientific nomination process and
oversimplified scoring criteria result in a list that fails to
capture how accepting or homophobic schools truly are.

The guide would do well to more accurately address the attitudes
of campus communities toward LGBT people and to highlight the
average experiences of LGBT students.

UCLA is most impressive for the accepting and supportive
attitudes of its general population towards LGBT issues.

I would consider UCLA to be an exceptionally
“gay-friendly” university because, beyond providing
essential elements of formal LGBT support, our campus has a high
level of quiet and informal advocacy.

Certainly I have heard intermittent uses of derogatory
terminology and even witnessed an occasional discriminatory action
here at UCLA, but on the whole, I would judge our campus to be an
extremely accepting place.

These occasional incidences of homophobic utterances and actions
can be identified and taken as exceptions to the overall positive
atmosphere for LGBT students on campus.

However, like America and most of the world, it has plenty of
room for improvement.

Members of our campus LGBT community continue to push for
various resources such as more gender-neutral bathrooms, more
accepting housing options and even more community-building groups
and resources, all goals which would improve the lives of our LGBT
population.

While our university deserves the opportunity to celebrate all
that it has achieved and provided for its LGBT community, we must
continue to look to the future and consider all of the ways in
which we may yet improve.

Ashley Wise is president of the Student Coalition for
Marriage Equality. She is a third-year communication studies
student.