Community responds to defacing of Rainbow posters

BY ADAM FIX '13
NEWS WRITER

 Last week, several Rainbow Alliance posters, intended to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer awareness, were viciously defaced.

The Rainbow Alliance put up the posters after 10 p.m. Wednesday night.  According to Dean of Students Nancy Thompson, a faculty member first officially reported the incident on Friday morning.  Nine such posters, all reading similar messages, were discovered.  According to Rainbow member Megan Bolger ’11, most found were concentrated on the south side of campus, although not all were clustered in the same area.  No one has yet to claim any responsibility.

Bolger said that the posters were intended to “get people talking about LGBTQ issues on campus, specifically the experiences of gay, bisexual and transgender students on this campus.”  Part of the Day of Silence initiative, the posters formed an effort to spread awareness of what these people endure to the general campus community.

“We wanted to do something that wasn’t so passive,” Nicole Nietlisbach ’13 said.  “Something more proactively informative about the fact that life for LGBTQ students, even on a liberal campus like this, can still be pretty tough.  Whoever took time to write this obviously feels very deeply that being gay is wrong and has a serious problem with it.”

“I didn’t expect people to deface them, but I’m not surprised either,” said Jessie Brown ’12.  “We had emails from people who appreciated our poster campaign when it started, who emailed us after we showed the campus what actually happened and who made posters in response to the vandalized poster.  Bigotry may exist at Hamilton, but it’s encouraging to see people who choose to be open-minded and accepting of others.”

The messages ranged from “Being gay is a sin!” to the “Gay = Hell! — They’re disgusting” poster that was included in an all-campus email on Sunday.  The Rainbow Alliance hosted a colloquium on Tuesday in the Science Center and the Kirner Johnson building to measure student reaction and create more posters in response.  The posters were hung in the Beinecke Student Activities Village, displayed for the entire campus community.

“I was angry and saddened because this message is personal; it’s personally condemning the sexuality I and so many of my friends identify with,” Bolger exclaimed.  However, in response to the poster tagging and the general campus reaction, Bolger concluded that “I was inspired to take more actions against this message and inspired by the way so many members of Rainbow and people on campus came together.”

Chief Diversity Officer Donald Carter stated, “The free expression of all members of our Hamilton College community is an important part of our efforts to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for all.” He asked all students to “stand together with the members of our community that, through their poster campaign, are reaching out to all of us, asking for an open and honest dialogue.”

“We want to get more of the campus plastered with our posters,” Nietlisbach concluded.  “We want to keep sharing our stories.  We also [had]…an organized discussion with the Christian Fellowship about sexuality and religion.  We want to keep a dialogue running on campus about this and other LGBTQ issues and keep educating people on the realities, again both good and bad, of LGBTQ life for Hamilton students.”