After 40 Years, CQA Still Seeks Equality

In 1967, the concept of gay liberation which would become the driving force of future decades of activism was born—on Columbia’s campus.

The innovator, a Columbia student who went by the pseudonym Stephen Donaldson, created a support network for gay students that challenged established notions of homosexuality. He founded the country’s first organization for gay college students, Columbia’s Student Homophile League, which still exists 40 years later as the Columbia Queer Alliance.

The group has changed with the times, in name as well as form, to meet the changing needs of Columbia’s students and the changing face of gay activism. In the seventies, the group became Gay People at Columbia. After the University became co-ed, the name changed again to Gay and Lesbian People at Columbia, settling on the name Columbia Queer Alliance in the 1990s.

“It’s very telling in the progression of how we understand LGBT identity,” CQA President Peter Gallotta said of the word queer, “it’s amazing how inclusive it is. And it’s a radical term—there’s a strong connotation of radical politics.” Radicalism is certainly not new to the group.

“It was really revolutionary,” David Eisenbach, Columbia history professor and author of Gay Power: An American Revolution, a historical account of gay activism in New York City, said of the SHL’s founding. “They were the first organization to advocate what would be known as gay liberation—they wanted to get every gay person on campus to come out.”

Eisenbach’s book argues that much of the SHL’s influence grew out of the media attention it attracted. After Columbia granted it a charter in April of 1967, a sympathetic New York Times reporter found the story in Spectator and turned the group into front-page news.

Within a week, media outlets across the country had honed in, with coverage ranging from favorable or neutral to the Gainesville Sun’s “Student Group Seeks Rights for Deviants.”

Donaldson made use of the media attention surrounding the SHL to publicly challenge common stereotypes of homosexuality and to build a new sort of homophile movement—within months, there were homophile leagues at many universities across the country.

Some of Donaldson’s activities with the SHL will seem quite familiar to Columbia students today. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to arrange for incoming freshmen to receive information countering biases against homosexuality, and to provide information about support networks on campus for gay students. He and other SHL members also picketed a medical school panel discussion about homosexuality that exclusively featured speakers who considered homosexuality a disease.

Similarly, today’s CQA works to create community and safe space for LGBT people on Columbia’s campus.

“Columbia doesn’t always prepare students for life in the city,” Gallotta said. “It’s not always a comfortable space.”

The CQA recently reinstated a tradition which began in the nineties, of hosting dances on the first Friday of every month. A decade ago, they were among the only events LGBT youth under 21 could attend. People from all over the city would form a line that at times stretched from Earl Hall to the 116th Street subway station just to get in.

The CQA also creates forums for discussion of issues important to their constituency. In response to recent attacks targeting queer youth across the country, they will host a panel discussion this evening.

Columbia is certainly not the same place it was when the SHL was founded, and Gallotta described the campus as primarily comfortable and safe. Still, he and other CQA members emphasized that LGBT students still face problems at Columbia.

Bryan Reid, social chair of the CQA, cited the University’s inability to provide suitable housing for transgender students within its gender-specific system. Gallotta lauded the Office of Multicultural Affairs, but pointed to its lack of resources as a problem, saying that he hoped the University would keep the promises it made following last semester’s hunger strike.

“Some of the things we were fighting for at the beginning of this process,” Reid said of the group’s 40-year history, “we’re still fighting for now.”

jonathan.basile@columbiaspectator.com