Recently, Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. became an accidental metaphor for the lives of many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students. In August, The Princeton Review named it the most gay-friendly school in America, and then less than a month later, someone scrawled homophobic graffiti on one of its student’s cars.
Most campuses endure hate crimes, but the timing of these events clarifies that even in the safest places, LGTBQ students can have challenging day-to-day lives. And now, one new book is aiming to address the full breadth of their experiences outside the classroom.
Published in September by The Princeton Review, The Gay and Lesbian Guide to College Life bills itself as “a comprehensive resource” for LGBTQ students and their allies. Unlike most college guides, the book isn’t trying to rank anything, so there are no lists of faculty-to-student ratios or even statistics about universities with the most openly gay professors.
Instead, there are chapters with names like “Dealing With Homo/Bi/Transphobia On Campus (and Off.)”
John Baez, one of the guide’s three co-authors, says, “We intentionally went for a very mainstream, practical perspective. I think the book has the potential to guide students through situations that perhaps they’ve never found advice on before.”
Importantly, the authors — who also include Jennifer Howd, Baez’s partner in the media group Punkmouse, and Rachel Pepper, coordinator of lesbian and gay studies at Yale University — are careful to address situations at many types of schools, be they urban or rural, large or small.
