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I went to a small Catholic College. At the time, I thought I chose the school because of its Catholic background, because it would be in line with my Catholic ideals. Then I got there, and things were not as I expected. All that is besides the point I suppose, because as I grew up, I grew away from Catholicism. Nonetheless, the time I spent there was precious, and sometimes controversial.

In my time at St. Joe, I served on the Student Senate. Doesn’t mean much in the real world, but it had actual power to shape the policy of the college. A former roomate of mine, Chris, was gay. He was also the Senate President. The college did not provide, in the handbook, protection of students under the anti-discrimination policy for homosexual students. One of Chris’s goals, as president, was to add sexual-orientation to the list of “traits” that a person could not be disriminated against. The Senate took little time to push this through, and in a matter of a couple of months, the Senate had approved this measure.

However, there was still a matter of getting the change through the Board of Trustee’s who were more than midly opposed to the idea. In fact, they almost sank the ship Chris was sailing. But in the end, it was added to the book. I was saddened by the conduct of the Board of Trustees then, and I’m saddened by them, the College administration, the Diocese of Lafeyette, and the regional CPPS directors, conduct now.

David D. has a full write up on the current controversy concerning sexual-orientation based anti-discrimination efforts at the college on his post, Silencing Information.

As an excerpt:

That’s right, if one works for Saint Joseph’s College, the administration can at any time fire that person because of his/her sexual orientation. Another part of the discrimination at SJC is that any student-run group at SJC that deals with gender issues will be denied funding. That isn’t the real controversy! Many in the faculty and among the students see the Neanderthal like policy for what it is and have started the process of changing the policy. The policy change was brought up in the Student-Life committee and voted to proceed. After the vote, the non-tenured faculty who brought up the issue were called into an administrator’s office and told it would be better if they withdrew their suggestion and keep quiet about such issues lest they be fired.

Read the rest.