Baylor student groups back unofficial LGBT group's latest bid for charter

Waco tribune | Rhiannon Saegert | Oct. 24, 2020

Baylor University’s unofficial LGBTQ student group has reapplied for official student group status, this time with the backing of the Student Senate and student NAACP chapter.

Gamma Alpha Upsilon is the newest name for the unofficial LGBTQ student group at Baylor University. Last semester, a faculty member started anonymously lending the group a lecture hall to serve as a designated meeting space, one of the things the group cannot get from the university unless it recognizes them as an official student group. GAY Vice President Jake Picker said the group has applied for a charter every semester for the past 10 years, and the university has always declined.

“They decline and don’t really say anything to us about why they declined,” Picker said. “But we’re really hoping this semester, things will be different.”

In the past, university officials have said the Gamma Alpha Upsilon organization runs afoul of Baylor’s statement on human sexuality, found in the student policies and procedures, which states students are expected to not participate in “advocacy groups which promote understandings of sexuality that are contrary to biblical teaching.”

Picker, who was a member of GAY last semester, said he is more hopeful this year in light of support from Baylor’s Student Senate and Baylor NAACP, along with the United States Supreme Court’s recent ruling that LGBTQ people are protected under the 1964 Civil Right Act.

He said the group continues to grow each semester.

Veronica Penales, who identifies as queer, co-authored the Student Senate’s “No Crying on Sundays” resolution in support of GAY with Addison Knight, Bethel Tesfai and Marisol Villarreal. Penales said the resolution, which passed 33 to 14, is an appeal to the Baylor Board of Regents.

“It is essentially an addition of a nondiscriminatory clause to the Baylor student activities policy of chartering student organizations,” Penales said. “Our ultimate goal with that was to charter the unofficial LGBT group on campus.”

Villarreal said she and Tesfai ran on a diversity platform, and she was “crushed” when a similar diversity and inclusion bill did not pass last semester.

The measure’s title refers to a line by Mary Lambert in the song “Same Love” by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Lambert also sings the refrain, “Love is patient. Love is kind.”

“To me this bill is very important,” Villarreal said. “I did it for my friends and family who are in the community and I wanted to make sure future Baylor bears that come to campus are fully represented.”

The bill references a petition that circulated last semester calling for the university to recognize the group. It received more than 3,000 signatures from alumni and faculty and coincided with the formation of the group BU Bears for All. Penales launched a second petition specifically for current students after the measure passed.

“This is strictly for the current Baylor student body so that the regents know that Baylor students are backing this,” Penales said. “If they support the students like they say they will, hopefully some change will happen.”

Baylor NAACP also voiced support for Gamma Alpha Upsilon in a statement. President Lexi Bogney said her chapter includes LGBTQ members and allies, but their reasons for supporting the group are broader.

“While the NAACP may focus on race-based discrimination, we don’t tolerate discrimination at all,” Bogney said. “For this organization to not be able to be chartered because they have beliefs that may contradict Baylor’s values, it still contradicts Baylor’s statement as a whole.”

Bogney said the university’s statements of support for LGBTQ students contradict official actions.

GAY officers met with the Board of Regents last semester to discuss their experience on campus, and Baylor President Linda Livingstone announced the university’s intentions to better support LGBTQ students in a statement in August.

In a statement, the university said officials appreciate the Student Senate’s role in representing Baylor students, but pointed out the resolution is nonbinding and the final decision lies with administration and the regents.

“Both previously have made a strong public commitment to provide a loving and caring community for Baylor’s LGBTQ+ students,” according to the statement. “This commitment remains unchanged today, as it is embodied in Baylor’s mission that calls us to educate students within a caring community.”

The statement outlines the resources available to LGBTQ students, including the Title IX Office, Bias Response Team, Chaplain’s Office and Spiritual Life, and the Counseling Center. It also cites the university’s decision to allow the group to meet in the borrowed classroom over the past year.

Emerging Voices | Baylor Loves LGBTQ+ Students – To a Point

Ethics Daily | Madeline Sneed | July 11, 2019

The Baylor University community is divided over inclusion for LGBTQ+ students on campus.

Two petitions have come out of the conflict: one favors preserving Baylor’s nonaffirming stance of LGBTQ student groups with 110 signatures; the other asks Baylor to recognize LGBTQ student groups and to allow them to meet on campus with more than 3,200 signatures.

In response to the outpouring of support from the Baylor community for LGBTQ students, the Texas Tribune reported that Lori Fogleman, assistant vice president for media and public relations, said “the 3,200 signatures represent about 2% of the school’s students, faculty, staff and living alumni.”

The 110 signatures were given neither a percentage nor a dismissive comment.

KWTX-TV reported that Baylor issued an official statement regarding Baylor’s nonaffirming policies for LGBTQ+ students, which said Baylor is “focused on how we love and care for all our students so they have a healthy, safe and nurturing learning environment” and that they “believe this can be done both inside and outside of officially recognized student organizations.”

Baylor’s Statement on Human Sexuality reads, in part, “Temptations to deviate from this [biblical] norm include both heterosexual sex outside of marriage and homosexual behavior. It is thus expected that Baylor students will not participate in advocacy groups which promote understandings of sexuality that are contrary to biblical teaching.”

Essentially, Baylor believes they can support and love LGBTQ+ students while separating them from student life.

With this response, Baylor is saying to their queer students, “We love you – to a point. We would love you more if you could clone yourselves to be like us, think like us, love like us. We will love you as long as you don’t seek community. We will love you from a distance. We will love you if we cannot see you.”

As I interpret it, the love of Christ does not have conditions. As it stands now, Baylor is presenting love to their queer students with an asterisk.

In a personal essay I published with The Salve, I detailed how harmful the nonaffirming policies were for me as a closeted lesbian at Baylor.

The most damaging part of such policies? They made me feel like I was incapable of loving and being loved.

The most important commandments of Christ – to love God and love others – seemed fundamentally impossible to me because institutions like Baylor made me feel like I was broken. Like I was undeserving. Like I could never be enough.

Their commitment to tradition, to being perceived as righteous, made me feel like everything in me was wrong.

I’ve grown a lot since I left Baylor. I’ve had to learn to be brave, to be vulnerable, to stop hiding a fundamental part of who I am.

Yet, in so many ways, I learned how to love at Baylor. So much of who I am is because of the community at the university: the people, the classes, the place.

But a key part of me, the part wired for romantic love, could never come out of hiding there. The policies in place instilled in me a deep sense of shame for how I was born. For how I was created to love.

When I look back at my memories of Baylor, they are tinted with a perpetual shadow of shame, anger and darkness knowing that I wasn’t allowed to be fully myself. That, in the name of Jesus, I was not fully loved because I was different.

To hear Baylor say they want to love their LGBTQ+ students while preventing them from creating their own student groups is almost laughable. Love cannot live alongside such rejection.

It’s impossible to love someone when you’re not listening to them. And Baylor LGBTQ+ students are speaking very clearly: They want to be seen, to be given official community status on their campus.

But Baylor isn’t listening. When they say that LGBTQ+ students can have their own separate committees and groups outside of campus life, they are isolating those students.

It is a “separate but equal” policy – an expressed equal love for all students that keeps LGBTQ+ groups separate through lack of recognition – grounded in discrimination.

How can Baylor hope to break through to that next plane of achievement, the one that is so dependent upon their students growing, discovering and prospering at their university, if they don’t allow all of their students to be seen and loved and supported?

Baylor may insist on moving forward with their “separate but equal” stance when it comes to their LGBTQ+ students.

If they do, they are sending a clear message: It is more important to be traditional than it is to be loving. To protect policies instead of people. To promote conformity instead of accepting individuality.

I cannot think of anything less in keeping with the teachings of Jesus Christ, who listened to, wept with and healed those on the outskirts of society.

His message has always been about love, compassion, softness, listening; changing when it’s easier to stay the same, abandoning wealth when it feels necessary to maintain funding, and waking up when it’s so much more comfortable to stay sleeping.

If Baylor loses sight of this calling, they have lost sight of Christ.