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Learning from Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill: The importance of queer spaces and education

Lucia Wetherill

Assistant Opinion Editor

On Jan. 27, I opened my phone and immediately felt my stomach sink. The Parental Rights in Education bill, more commonly known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, had just been passed in Florida’s House Education and Employment Committee on Jan. 21, and was now moving through Florida’s legislature.

If made law, the bill would ban Florida educators from talking about LGBTQ+ topics. The bill itself states that educators “may not encourage classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” The bill also contains some concerning language regarding parent notification policies, which implies that educators will not be permitted to withhold information about a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity from parents.

For students who have already begun to question their identity, these constraints are incredibly dangerous. Removing the freedom to seek out school counselors and teachers as confidants will limit (or completely eliminate) the support that these children receive. By eliminating schools as a safe place to question their identity, the bill forces students to grapple with their emotions alone and isolates them from peers and mentors.

A further cause for concern is that this bill bans any true education about sexuality or gender identity at all. It completely removes the vocabulary needed for current and future exploration. Without hearing about LGBTQ+ identities, many students will be completely unable to understand or articulate their feelings, both as children and later as young adults. Thus, it’s essential that all schools — from elementary schools to universities like Princeton — maintain safe spaces for exploration and prioritize queer education.

My own journey with sexuality has been long and complicated. Even in a largely safe family and school environment, and even though I began questioning far earlier, I didn’t come out until my senior year of high school. I can only explain this delay by stating that grappling with one’s sexuality is hard. It involves a deprogramming of heteronormative standards and ideals, the loss of the ease that comes with conforming to those standards, and the ever-challenging issue of labeling. Furthermore, as I learned over the course of my senior year, discovering one’s sexuality is not a one-and-done deal. It takes time to deprogram and think introspectively, and many of my friends in the queer community (myself included) are continuously questioning and exploring.

I say all of this to stress the importance of conversation and education. As I explored my identity and eventually came out, I was able to draw on the vocabulary and education I’d received to define my emotions. I had to seek additional resources, but I had the basics, and that was enough to begin. The process of questioning one’s identity is a hard and vulnerable process, and without that baseline understanding of sexuality and gender identity, as well as the knowledge that I could question my identity safely, it would have taken me much longer.

It’s absolutely crucial that schools create safe places for this kind of exploration and that they provide students with the basic vocabulary needed to begin one’s journey. Princeton is no exception. Indeed, in many ways, Princeton now has an obligation to compensate for this bill and others like it. For many, college is the first place that provides enough freedom to consider sexuality and gender identity. Away from their home communities, living and learning with people from various backgrounds, some students find themselves finally acknowledging and understanding long-held feelings and questions about sexuality.

Thus, as Florida moves backward, it’s important for Princeton to move forward, by pushing for campus to be a safe space for all students to be queer and explore sexuality. This includes work on the part of the administration — AJ Lonski ’23’s recent op-ed about his experiences on Princeton’s wrestling team revealed that there is a clear need to address and work against homophobia present on campus, especially on athletic teams.

The Gender + Sexuality Resource Center (GSRC) does create a number of events and information sessions to increase queer visibility, but its reach is limited to those who express interest in the first place. Thus, the university must support the GSRC in disseminating information, perhaps by better integrating queer education into the First Year Residential Experience (FYRE) sessions, advisee group meetings, or mandatory discussion sessions for other groups. Furthermore, Princeton must investigate instances of homophobia (such as the instances outlined in Lonski’s article) and truly listen to the LGBTQ+ community’s needs and demands regarding homophobia on campus.

Yet creating a safe place to be queer also includes work on the part of the students — including those who are a part of the queer community. To foster a safe community means to create a space in which it’s okay to not have all the answers, or to be unsure of your sexuality. It means supporting students as they question and come out, not pressuring anyone to label themselves, and especially for already-out students, it means helping to guide and educate friends. For those not a part of the community, it means being open to learning and practicing tolerance and acceptance.

As future leaders, we should see this bill in Florida as a sign to work towards more comprehensive and progressive education and legislation. But for now, as current students, we should see it as a sign to improve the queer experience on our own campus.

Lucia Wetherill is a first-year from Newtown, Pa. She can be reached at lw2158@princeton.edu.

IZZY JACOBSON / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Kristopher Oliveira speaks at the GSRC launch.

Why won’t anyone teach me math?

Abigail Rabieh

Columnist

Last July, I decided I wanted to take math in college. My heart was set on it. Did I have any desire to major in math? Absolutely not. Did I need a math class to fulfill a requirement? Nope, I wanted to be a history major. But I enjoyed math in high school, and I wanted to continue to explore the field. I had previously taken classes up to linear algebra, so I selected MAT 202 from the Math Department website.

I took math because I desired to learn. One would think a student like me would thrive in this class, especially at a university that prides itself on enabling students “to pursue multiple interests rigorously and deeply,” as President Eisgruber says on the University website. Unfortunately, it is difficult for students pursuing humanities and social science degrees to explore classes within STEM departments due to the inaccessibility of introductory courses.

Though I passed MAT 202 class just fine, my experience in it was miserable. The way the course was run did not at all set up students to succeed — or even learn math. For example, though we were provided with practice problems to prepare for our exams, we were never given solutions. My class consistently begged my professor for these, yet all he could say was that not providing them was departmental policy, and it was out of his control.

This begs the question: what interest does a department have in making it impossible to study? Study materials are given so that students can learn the course material and prepare adequately for the exam. Solution sets are part of this: to properly learn, one needs to be able to identify their mistakes and understand why they are wrong. By not supporting students who are making an effort to study, it becomes both extremely difficult to learn material, and demoralizing to even try. This struggle was reflected in our exam averages, which were, respectively, in the 50s, the 60s, and the 30s.

I am far from the only person who felt this way about my class. MAT 202 has an abysmal rating of 2.71 on princetoncourses.com during the spring 2020-2021 semester. The evaluations on the Office of the Registrar’s website are no better. Students described the course as “disheartening” and said they “lost a lot of respect for the Math department after taking this course.” The advice that came up again and again in many reviews was: “Don’t take this class unless you have to.”

MAT 202 is not a course that math majors typically take, but rather for underclassmen who are majoring in engineering or sciences. Because of this, the priority of the class should be teaching students as much as possible about math so that they will remember and utilize the discipline in classes and majors that are not focused on that realm — something that would be equally interesting, if not as useful, for humanities majors. Is this not what introductory classes are all about? Princeton promises students a “liberal arts education,” and defines that as an education offering “expansive intellectual grounding in all kinds of humanistic inquiry.”

Yet as a humanities student, it feels extremely difficult to explore STEM fields. I wanted to learn some introductory physics in college because I had an awful experience with it in high school, but I’ve been dissuaded my experience in math — not to mention that the most recent average rating of the four introductory physics courses (PHY 101, 102, 103, 104) is a 3.2, and the comments repeatedly have told me to only take this class if I have to.

We are often told of engineering or STEM students exploring the humanities to their heart’s content, but I feel that we rarely hear of students in the humanities being encouraged to take scientific or quantitative classes. The University website assures readers that “Students who elect to major in the natural sciences or engineering, for example, also take classes in history, languages, philosophy, [and] the arts,” but I don’t see any inspiration for those of us who really want to learn math, or physics, or chemistry, but just don’t want to focus on it for 4 years.

On face value, 100 and 200 level classes appear approachable for students who simply want an introduction to a field. I wanted to learn linear algebra! I had the correct prerequisite knowledge to do it. So why didn’t the math department encourage me in this pursuit?

I understand that professors and departments have an obligation to teach a certain amount of material and maintain a certain pace, but there are ways to teach that focus more on developing an understanding of a field rather than beating down students’ self-confidence and making problems so hard that learning at all is difficult. I would think that departments want students to fall in love with their subjects. But though I entered the semester with a love for math, I left with the certainty that I would never take a math class again, and a lack of desire to explore other scientific fields for fear that I would have a similar experience.