One of Loyola's lures to many students is the promise of diversity. Rogers Park constitutes the second most diverse neighborhood in the country, and Loyola, with students and staff making up a variety of religions, races, ethnicities and sexual orientations, reflects that diversity. But as a Jesuit institution, accepting and celebrating all aspects of diversity is not always simple.
Loyola's Jesuit tradition is an important aspect of the campus atmosphere and the school, in many ways, adheres closely to Catholic doctrine. Contraception is not available on campus (an issue of debate in itself), and religious holidays are officially observed. However, on the issue of homosexuality on campus, the school administration seems ready to bend the rules of catechism. Loyola has a large, well-established and, for the most part, accepted gay community. Accomplished gay faculty work in almost every department; there are gay student organizations for undergrad and grad students and events such as the upcoming "Queer Eye for the Loyola Guy/Girl."
Explaining this difference in the school's attitude Rev. Michael Garanzini, S.J., the president of Loyola University, said, "Sexual orientation, like gender, is another fact of our human existence and human nature. A Jesuit Catholic university should not shy away from that exploration."
In the 1950s and '60s, college campuses became the home and battlegrounds of the fight for social justice and equality in race issues, however it may be that a new fight for equal rights, now based on sexual orientation and very often gender, will be fought largely by students as well. At Loyola, that fight has taken several forms.
Besides having student groups like Advocate, Loyola's official Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Queer and Allied (GLBTQA) organization on campus, Loyola has also supported the fight for equality all over Chicago. In 2002, Loyola, along with two other universities, helped sponsor Pride Fest, a nod to national celebrations of Pride Day. Last July people gathered at Loyola for a Catholic AIDS forum, which brought attention to an issue that is a common ground for discussion and cooperation between the gay and straight communities.
But things haven't always been so simple. As recently as the early 1990s Loyola and several other Jesuit institutions faced controversy with the official establishment of a gay community on campus. In 1988, Georgetown settled a suit with the District of Columbia, which included equal rights terms and required the university to allow the establishment of gay student groups on campus, as well as required that the groups be allowed to use school property and be given funding as other organizations were. In the end, the school dropped the suit and many other Jesuit schools, including Loyola, followed their example. In 1990, the first sexual orientation advocacy group, now known as Advocate, was established at Loyola. Prior to that, the school hadn't allowed groups that addressed "sexual orientation" in the charter.
Advocate, a support and organizational student run group is a "safe space for students of any sexuality to come and hang out and feel accepted," president junior Zach Morrison said. The group sponsors events such as Pride Fair, which, according to Morrison, has never faced any public opposition at Loyola, as well as Hate Crime Awareness Week. It also offers confidential support groups with members who have been trained by clinical psychologists.
Overall, both ADVOCATE secretary junior Jonathan Zoia and Morrison said that Loyola has always been an accepting and open environment.
"In the year-and-a-half that I have been here I have never experienced any kind of sexual orientation-related problem," Zoia said.
In fact, the only instance of public opposition to Loyola's GLBTQA community that either officer could remember had occurred last year. A couple members of a local organization called HOME gathered at the gates of campus to pass out flyers that argued among other things that, "being gay is worse than smoking," Morrison said. The school placed a security officer at the scene to prevent the protesters from entering campus and within a few minutes a group of Loyola students gathered to fire their own opinions back and make it clear they weren't welcome.
"Half the kids that were out there weren't in Advocate," Morrison said. "They were just students that wouldn't put up with that kind of ignorance."
However, according to the Office of Student Diversity, occurrences of hate and speech crime still happen at Loyola. "Yes, unfortunately, it does [happen]," Office of Student Diversity Director Kevin Huie said. "We believe that through our diversity education efforts and the firm stance we have on harassment and discrimination that we can be both proactive and reactive in our efforts to combat hate incidents."
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