1766 Magazine, Spring 2011 - The Queer Student Alliance of ...

1766
The
Alumni Magazine
Across the nation, Rutgers
graduates use their expertise in
a variety of fields to help put the
nation’s economy back on its feet
ALSO INSIDE:
n Interview with SAS Dean Doug Greenberg
n Traffic Reporter Heather O’Rourke
n LGBT Activism & Community Building at Rutgers
n Cap & Skull Decades Dinner
n RAA Happenings n Sports Update...and more!
magazine published
by and for the
Rutgers Alumni Association
SPRING 2011

10
Speaking Out:
Forty Years of
LGBT Activism &
Community
Building at Rutgers
BY PETER ASCH RC '06
The struggles of members of the Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT)
Community for full legal and social equality
remains one of the hot-button topics of our
age. For over forty years, Rutgers students
and alumni have been in the vanguard of
that fight. This article, the first in a two-part
series, traces the first thirty years of LGBT
activism and pride at Rutgers University.
T
hrough the late 1960s, most
members of the LGBT community
lived “in the closet,” forced
there by a society that not only demonized
and ostracized them, but also
legally persecuted them. This began to
change on June 28, 1969, when police
raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar catering to
mostly gay men, in New York City's
Greenwich Village, initiating what became
known as the Stonewall Rebellion.
Gay liberation groups, such as the Gay
Liberation Front (GLF) and the
Columbia Homophile League, the first
LGBT student organization, founded at
Columbia University, sprang up across
New York City to steer the tensions found
on the street into community activism.
In December 1969, Rutgers College
Rutgers Alumni Association – 1766 MAGAZINE
sophomore Lionel Cuffie and fifty other
Rutgers undergraduates, with the assistance
of members of the Columbia
Homophile League, founded the Student
Homophile League of Rutgers (SHL), the
first gay-and-lesbian-oriented student
group at Rutgers
University and the
second in the nation.
Cuffie hoped that
the SHL, “would ultimately
aid in the
breakdown of social
and political persecution and discrimination
directed against minority groups.”
The group soon found a home for its
activities in the Rutgers Student Center
on the College Avenue Campus. The SHL
became increasingly active in the early
1970s and quickly gained popularity on
campus and within the local LGBT
community, but its increased visibility
was not without controversy. In May
1970, the SHL and Rutgers College
Programming Board co-sponsored an
exhibition, on loan from the Gallery of
Erotic Art in New York, entitled “The
Homosexual” in the Student Center.
Some material offended several students
and led to a physical confrontation,
negative publicity and complaints from
legislators. University President Mason
Gross successfully fended off these
critics and supported the SHL’s right to
freedom of speech and expression.
As the 1970s progressed, the LGBT
movement grew and diversified. Several
subgroups emerged within SHL, such as

(Left) A crowd gathers for one of the Student Homophile League’s ground-breaking Gay Liberation and Culture conferences in the early 1970s; (Center, Top &
Bottom) LGBT student groups used both cultural events, like coffee houses, and public demonstrations of pride, like the “Blue Jeans Days” to raise awareness
on campus; (Right) In founding the Student Homophile League in 1969, Lionel Cuffie, RC ’72, tapped into both the feelings unleashed by the Stonewall Uprising
and the general ferment generated by the antiwar and Civil Rights movements on the Rutgers campus in the late 1960s.
PHOTOS: SPECIAL COLLECTIONS & UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
the R.U. Fags (a radical action caucus),
the Livingston Gay Men’s Collective and
the SHL Black Caucus. Apart from SHL,
several feminist and/or lesbian groups
were founded, including the University
Coalition of Lesbian Women, the University
Coalition of Lesbian Feminists and
the Lesbian Feminist Coalition. However,
the SHL remained the visible focal point
of the movement on campus and,
during the decade, grew to be one of the
largest student organizations.
The group carried its mission forward
on and off campus through social and
educational programming. The SHL
developed the New Brunswick Gay
Switchboard to provide a helpline and
peer counseling. SHL used its growing
political voice to advocate for equal rights
and the repeal of anti-gay legislation and
to organize five successful, well-attended
conferences on Gay Liberation and
Culture from 1971 to 1975. In 1974, the
SHL partnered with the Graduate School
of Education to hold a “Gay Liberation
and Education” symposium.
As part of its fourth “Conference on
Gay Unity,” the SHL declared April 19,
1974, to be National Gay Day. It quickly
became known as “Blue Jeans Day” after
the SHL, in a Targum ad, encouraged
LGBT students to wear blue jeans as a
sign of pride and to raise consciousness
among the entire student body. A second
Blue Jeans Day, held in April 1976,
was marred when a College Avenue
fraternity hung an effigy from a tree in
front of their house with a sign, “The only
good gay is a dead gay—back to your
closets homos.” This event led to years
of conflict between SHL, which changed
its name to the Rutgers Gay Alliance
(RGA) in 1975, and the fraternity, which
subsided only after the University intervened
in 1979.
In the 1980s, the RGA became
increasingly focused on social issues
affecting the LGBT community. Responding
to the growing national concern over
HIV/AIDS, its members campaigned for
AIDS awareness and activism. During
the 1982-1983 school year, the group
changed its name again to the Rutgers
University Lesbian/Gay Alliance (RUGLA).
The name change, along with increased
participation in the “Take Back the Night”
anti-sexual assault marches, was part of
an initiative to become more active in
feminist and lesbian issues.
RUGLA succeeded in making LGBT
concerns a central focus of the entire
University in 1988 with the creation of
the President's Select Committee for
Lesbian and Gay Concerns. University
President Edward Bloustein established
the committee in response to
RUGLA's petitions and the findings of Dr.
Susan Cavin’s 1987 study The Rutgers
Sexual Orientation Survey, which shed
light on the obstacles and homophobia
faced by members of the LGBT community
on campus. The committee resulted
in numerous institutional changes, including
the establishment of the Office of
Diverse Community Affairs and Lesbian &
Gay Affairs (later LGBT Concerns) in 1992.
In 1990, RUGLA changed its moniker
to BiGLARU and found itself in the center
of a national news story. That year, then
BiGLARU President James Dale, RC ‘93,
was quoted in a newspaper story about
a gay youth and social issues seminar.
Boy Scouts of America officials in the
district where Dale also served as an
Assistant Scoutmaster revoked his BSA
membership after learning that he was
gay. Dale fought his expulsion with assistance
from Professor James Anderson,
continued on page 12
Spring Issue 2011
11

12
LGBT from page 11
then Associate Dean of the School of
Communication, Information and Library
Studies, the American Civil Liberties
Union and the Lambda Legal Defense
Fund. After years of courtroom battles,
in Boy Scouts of America et al. v. Dale
(2000), the United States Supreme
Court ruled in favor of the Boy Scouts'
right to exclude members on the basis
[In 2000], the LGBT
community at Rutgers could
look back with pride on three
decades of raising awareness
and battling prejudice—
stitching a Scarlet stripe onto the
Rainbow Flag in the process—
but they did not stop there.
of sexual orientation. Despite this disappointment,
BiGLARU and other LGBT
groups flourished on the Rutgers
campuses throughout the decade.
The Office of Diverse Community
Affairs and LGBT Concerns, under
Dr. Cheryl Clarke, GSNB '74, SSW '80,
GSNB '00, a longtime member of and
advocate for the Rutgers LGBT community,
became an important center for
both the movement and University. The
Office hosted a yearly Queer Reception
for all interested campus groups,
alumni/ae associations and members of
Rutgers Alumni Association – 1766 MAGAZINE
the community. Through the Office, the
University provided resources for LGBT
students and organizations. Student
organizations active during the 1990s
across the University celebrated the
diversity of the movement, including:
BIGLARU, Lesbian and Bisexual Women
in Action (LABIA), the Rutgers Union of
Gay and Bisexual Men (RUGBI), The
Latina/o and People of Color Lesbian/
Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Union of
Rutgers University (LLEGO!), Council of
Organizations United to Combat Homophobia
(RCAB), the Rainbow Community
Action Board (COUCH) and the
Alliance of Queer Graduate Students. In
Newark, the Gay and Lesbian Association
(GALA) and, in Camden, the Lambda
Alliance and the Lesbian and Gay Law
School Association were also thriving
student organizations.
The 1999-2000 academic year marked
the thirtieth anniversary of lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender activism on the
campus. In celebration, the Office of
Diverse Community Affairs and LGBT
Concerns organized a year-long slate of
cultural events on all three campuses.
The LGBT community at Rutgers could
look back with pride on three decades of
raising awareness and battling prejudice—
stitching a Scarlet stripe onto the Rainbow
Flag in the process—but they did not stop
there. Join us next issue for more on the
recent history of the LGBT movement “on
the Banks” and the impact Rutgers
alumni have had on the LGBT movement
beyond the University.
New
Undergraduate
Program Takes
Aim at
Intolerance
In September 2010, the University
launched Project Civility, sponsored
by the Offices of Student
Affairs and Undergraduate Education
at Rutgers-New Brunswick.
The project, founded by Senior
Dean of Students Mark Schuster and
Director of the Byrne Family First-
Year Seminars Dr. Kathleen Hull,
promotes understanding and seeks
to decrease enmity among the multicultural
and diverse Rutgers community.
A series of lectures and other
campus events have been planned
that focus on promoting social
responsibility and ethics among the
student population.
The two-year endeavor also
seeks to utilize small acts of kindness
between individuals to foster a constructive
atmosphere on campus for
students to bridge their differences.
For more information, check out the
Project Civility website:
http://projectcivility.rutgers.edu
We would like to thank Associate
Rutgers University Archivist
Erika Gorder whose catalog for the
2000 exhibition "Celebrating the
Tradition: 30 Year of Queer Activism
at Rutgers" served as the primary
source for this article.

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