Campus mourns death of sophomore Andrew Pillow Page 4
Letter to the Editor: Chaplain’s Office supports students Page 8
Spotlight: Katie Stengel Page 12
Glow in the dark ice cream now in stores Page 17
OLD GOLD&BLACK WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY
VOL. 97, NO. 13
T H U R S DAY, N OV E M B E R 21 , 2 01 3 “Cover s the campus like the magnolias”
oldgoldandblack.com
LGBTQ students still face hurdles Wake Forest has a long way to go before LGBTQ students feel accepted and are able to talk about their struggles on campus BY HILARY BURNS Editor-in-chief burnsh0@wfu.edu This August the Princeton Review ranked Wake Forest University as the seventh least LGBT-friendly university in the country. The ranking sparked outrage throughout the community, leading many students and alumni to speak out through social media. But however enraged certain members of the community were, the ranking may have more truth to it than some would like to admit. Many LGBTQ students at the university feel that the ranking is not completely out of line. “Let’s just say that there is a reason Wake got this ranking,” freshman Shane Lutz said. Lutz said he thinks Wake Forest has a long way to go before LGBTQ students feel accepted here. Junior Gracie Harrington agreed that the university has much progress to make. She said that Wake Forest is an accepting place compared to many private Southern institutions, but not as accepting as other top-25 universities. “The Wake Forest student body has a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of policy, which is evident by the fact that the LGBTQ community on campus is rather underground,” Harrington said. Harrington came out as bisexual last spring during a Shorty’s Open Mic night. At first she was overwhelmed with love and support from the community. Over time, however, Harrington said this support turned to negativity. “As a community, Wake Forest needs to focus on education regarding the LGBTQ community and open discussion,” Harrington said. “Many students come to Wake Forest from families where homosexuality is labeled as sinful and unnatural. It is important that Wake Forest educates its students on the many different walks of life.”
Director of the LGBTQ Center, Angela Mazaris said that she has seen an increase in acceptance of the LGBTQ community in recent years. When she first arrived at the university two and a half years ago there were only “hushed conversations in private places,” about LGBTQ issues. These conversations are now a much more common occurrence on campus. Despite this progress, Mazaris said Wake Forest still must push forward to become a place where all people can feel accepted. “We look like a really wonderful, diverse and inclusive place and I think we are in a lot of ways, but I think a lot of students come here and think we are further along than we are. That can be really uncomfortable,” Mazaris said. This was the case for Shane Lutz. He said he was optimistic about coming to Wake Forest as a gay student. However, when he arrived he was disappointed to find that the university tends to “bury bad things when they happen on campus.” “If it was me I would’ve taken the ‘rot in hell’ sign [that students vandalized] and put it in the middle of the lower quad and said ‘look what you have done’,” Lutz said, referring to the sign outside of the LGBTQ Center that was vandalized in September. Many people attribute this lack of acceptance to the idea that Wake is a conservative, private school with a large presence of Greek Life. “I think that one of our biggest challenges here is that people perceive Wake as a conservative place and I don’t know that is completely true,” Mazaris said. “I wonder if this conservatism is a story we keep telling ourselves. Are we perpetuating this?” Mazaris said that although there are many students within the Greek community who are committed to LGBTQ inclusion, there are also students who experience real challenges around their ability to be out as gay in their fraternity or sorority. “I heard a really heartbreaking story,” Mazaris said. “There was a student here who wanted to join a fraternity who was openly gay, and was friends with members of the organization. They took him aside and said ‘we really like you but we can’t take you
See LGBTQ, Page 6
Photo illustration by Molly Dutmers/Old Gold & Black
Need-aware policy preserves opportunity for diversity Four years after the controversial decision to examine applicants’ financial need, the campus seems unchanged in its level of diversity BY MORGAN SCHICK Staff Writer schimo13@wfu.edu Four years after the controversial decision to consider financial need in the student application process, the university’s student makeup seems unchanged, despite early
concerns regarding the impact it would have on the socioeconomic diversity of the campus. At the time, the administration vowed that the policy was enacted so that admitted students would not feel pressured to take out loans just to attend a school that they could not afford. “We want to keep Wake Forest affordable and accessible to students from a diversity of backgrounds but unfortunately our financial aid resources are not limitless,” said Martha Allman, dean of admissions. “We do not feel that admitting more needy students than we have funds to support and expecting them to incur huge debt burdens to
cover the cost of Wake Forest education is the ethical thing to do.” The policy initially raised concerns that the university would consequently lose the presence of middle class students. Concerns arose that this would allow university to begin accepting more high-income students with lower grades instead of more qualified students unable to afford the steep, and still rising, tuition costs. “I don’t know if the decision to become need aware has had a positive effect on the university,” said junior Ekta
See Need-aware, Page 5