8 LGBTQ+ Ivy League Students Tell Us About Their College Experience

today on the kickback I think it's important to put yourself out there but remember to have self-respect and don't let people put you in a box um if a white girl comes up to you and says like hey girl and and says something like I've always wanted a gay best friend run I literally get out of there like just run pin it and bolt out and then get recruited by the track team shoutout to my best friend's my - gay guy best friend's Mercedes and Jalen you see this I'm a on TV what's up what's up what's up it's your girl Tom and welcome back to the kick back today we have eight students who are part of the lgbtq+ community here to tell us about their experience at an Ivy League if you missed the last episode I am bringing a new element to the cake back called the Colin all you have to do is follow me on instagram at Dominique underscore Cynthia and turn on my story notifications so you can get notified when I post on my story the opportunity for you to be able to call into next week's kick back you get to ask the cast a question shout out your Instagram and your name so make sure to follow me on Instagram to not miss out on that huge opportunity this week's cast joining me at the kickback are born as from Yale University even from Brown University fun T from Princeton University William from Cornell University year Manuel from Harvard University Cecilia from Dartmouth College Jonathan in the University of Pennsylvania and watch this from Columbia University so let's go ahead and head to the kickback hello guys and welcome to the cake back today we're gonna learn a little bit about the LGBTQ experience at the Ivy Leagues and I have these lovely people here with me so to begin I'm gonna have them all introduce themselves starting with Yale hi my name is Lourdes my pronounce she hurt and I'm from New York City I'm a rising junior at Yale studying psychology hey what's up i'm santi um i pronounced ur e in him and his and I am from outside of Manhattan Island clip New Jersey and I study sociology with minors and statistics in Spanish at Princeton hi my name is Aidan I'm a rising junior at Brown studying literary arts in public health and I use he him and bay them pronounce and y'all I'm William I am a rising junior at Cornell studying international agricultural rural development and I am from a little town in Arizona just south of Phoenix hi I'm Cecilia I'm from Winnipeg Canada I just graduated from Dartmouth I use she and they pronouns and I majored in women gender sexuality studies and creative writing I'm on well my pronouns are he/him I'm a rising senior at Harvard studying cognitive neuroscience with a minor in studio arts hello and I'm from San Diego California sorry Columbia I'm Lexus I go to Columbia I'm in East Asian languages and cultures major I'm a rising junior I used they them there's pronouns and I'm from downtown Los Angeles color and my name is Jonathan Scott I am a rising junior studying cognitive neuroscience and I mix up pet and I'm from Miami Florida is he him pronouns so my icebreaker today is if you were cheated any celebrity on a date who would it be and where would you be going what would you guys be doing where would it be all that the way I dreamed about this just came to me I want to go laser tagging would send data I'm in love with her like I was in Deus tan um I feel like she'd be really good at it and the options that she sees this video I'd love to Belize or Thai you need some there we thought this same exact thing at the same exact time thank you I'd be down to go to me to have my sexual awakening to Blaine believe everything I think if he would wear the World Wars jacket I think I would just like immediately die and we could do whatever I don't care where I just need care in the world which I could serenading okay that's full Teenage Dream you know I just wanted to be I deserve I would love I would just love to go out to eat somewhere really nice with cardi B like she knows all the really good restaurants she's got the great tanks and we're just gonna enjoy and have a bomb I gotta go I feel like I can't think of anyone who's like I've been watching so many cartoons this entire quarantine like I can't think of a single real person like I was like Azula and I was like that's not it like that's not the answer each party she throws in that one episode for me I would definitely go with Riley Lane she's a singer she's like not super super popular yet but I would definitely I would I would give her a free photo shoot she deserves that as a date I would want to go to the New York Public Library with Anderson Cooper Anderson Cooper like was with like combination 50% Blaine and 50% watching CNN in 16 minutes with my mom I mean that was it that was the what silk so I would love I mean I don't even heat a black card all he does a library card and we could have a whole afternoon I always told my mom if he wanted somebody younger in the house he didn't have to have a kid but right and support of his family journey I was missing the jaw line mysterious guy also is doing agree if they want they've got my clear view I don't know amazing so to start us off I wanted to bring us back to before we even went to college in kind of the fear knowing that you're part of the LGBTQ community and wondering how going to school was gonna be just any initial fears you had with going to an Ivy age I didn't really have a lot of fear coming in um I think like high school kind of beat the fear at me like I went to Catholic school anything that's gonna go wrong basically already had so I can't get worse in college and I know I was going to like New York City with like a huge queer community and I just kind of basically had my fingers crossed that the school would reflect it and that there would be a lot of other queer people I think my worldview was also just so small that my idea of what resources for queer students it looked like was just so limited to like basic decency that like I figured I would get that once I got to college even though I feel like I didn't really get it in high school um so actually one of my first experiences a Princeton is we had like the preview which is like you know your visitation after you get in and my host was actually non-binary and their name was Eli and Eli became like one of my role models at Princeton I'm gonna force him to watch this immediately after but like they're just amazing and they really inspired me and like you know you always have like I'm almost Latino so like you knows Latino d-man like you kind of just like kind of nervous about how you're gonna like navigate a place like Princeton of all places too so when I had Eli as a host I just felt very welcomed and very loved and they bought me pasta at 2:00 a.m. so you know it was just a great vibe so that like knowing other queer people coming in is really cool and really really helped for me full disclosure I've not come out to my family yet it's not something that I'm necessarily looking to do it in the near future it's just something that what happens it's gonna happen that's why I don't mind being in this video but I came from of their religious very strict household and I moved to college which is all the way across the country so for me personally I feel like it was a little freeing for me to be able to go out and be with like-minded people coming to court though I knew that's gonna be a lot of intelligent people understand you know the struggles behind being queer gay non-binary whatever your case I was excited to go meet those people for once because I couldn't meet them on the regular you know at home I think you'll really very similar experience in that college was always like the way out I was like counting down the days I remember like thinking okay like two more years 13 more months like to go somewhere go away be able to like live my own life and be able to like determine for myself what my day-to-day look like the local and that it was like being getting anyway one of the great things about college is that you have the freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want and I think that freedom was a great thing in terms of not having to live under my house my rules so I think I forgot to mention this my intro but I'm from upstate South Carolina and so I definitely empathize with that sense of like craving a queer exodus or like seeking some kind of elsewhere for my queerness to kind of actualize itself like I didn't really feel like there was any sense of queer community where I came from and I went to a residential like an arts boarding school in South Carolina so like there were obviously queer folks and resources there but otherwise I did not feel like the landscape I came from was accommodating in any way to queer gender or sexual expression so I see like my first experiences at Brown were definitely kind of monumental and showing me like a different way of articulating myself or like without having to be like as anxious as I was about some sort of retribution or like being like yelled at from a car or um you know like physically hurt or something so it was really exciting to like find community even at my like my first night there for like that a dog like visitation thing for admitted students connecting with queer people like a cupcake mixer it was it was really sweet similar to Alexis I also went to Catholic High School I also went to Catholic elementary school middle school so I sent him like a huge portion of my life like just surrounded by people who like like invalidating the lgbtq+ community was just like day-to-day and so I was super excited to go to college especially to go to Yale to a place where like I had heard so many people say was a very welcoming community and as soon as I got there I like had never felt more in touch with like myself and I think that the people I met like a lot of people are saying the best part I feel like I really was able to find community unlike any other place that I ever been I was recruited to play hockey at Dartmouth and so my parents I told him that I was like seeing a girl in high school so like they knew about that and they honestly kind of guessed it before I even knew about myself but um they kind of tried to show their love in like a really protective way that wasn't necessarily like the most healthy like they didn't want me to like express myself or short like show publicly kind of like Who I am because of they were scared of how like institutions would react or like maybe not offer me like certain spots or something like that that was kind of hard but then just getting started I had never even visited I honestly didn't even really know what it was before I got there I had just like committed and showed up it took me a while to find my community but even after like a couple years it yeah I really was able to like find like really good community for me I wasn't out although I also want to a Catholic High School and I wasn't out or I'm trans by the way if anyone wasn't aware that um but so yeah I was I was closeted for like the first basically until this year actually so like you until junior year so like queerness like wasn't something that I was like thinking about or like worried about like how I present it at school it was more like I felt more like Harvard like let me know that it was okay you know what I mean like that was gonna be okay and that there was community in that yeah basically that I felt safe enough to eventually come out so it seems as though almost I think everyone had a much more positive experience in college than at home which is so good here so now for the students who are applying who are still having like a little bit of fear what advice would you give them for the transition into college or if any experiences you guys have had to help with their transitioning into college I think my biggest piece of advice would be like just because you haven't been showing basic decency in like high school or before doesn't mean like that's the only thing you should be advocating for in college you like deserve more than the bare minimum basically because like I think of my experience at Columbian like I'm so grateful for the people I've met especially like the trans people I've met have just like really been such a community for me and they're amazing without Columbia I don't think I would have had that especially exposure to like a queer community outside of my own campus that being said they also like fall short on a lot of friends especially I think for their trans students and like the first thing I can think of is like housing for example like seeking specific housing needs for trans students is like way more do goat than it ever should be for a long time I was hesitant to like complain about it or like trying to do something about it because I was like okay well this is better than high school because in high school I couldn't even openly identified as trans but then it's sort of like doing that soap reckoning realizing like yes that was you couldn't do that in high school could it be fully self expressed but that doesn't mean that like that's like that's also the bare minimum so just cuz you have that in college doesn't mean you shouldn't also like self-advocate for like the rights you deserve as a cisgendered um and sometimes straight passing game man I obviously like it's always important to rile give you're like a cisgendered gay person you automatically definitely have more per list and a lot of your other folks in the community so I think going in it's very important to keep in mind that like you're not the only one who's struggling and that you must be for everybody in the community like your support must be intersectional um and that's always something that I felt particularly strong about so like if you're just like a gay man and you pack get over that hurdle like you're not really in the clear it just doesn't stop there it just doesn't mean that you should be passive about the inequality that happens on campus um especially for you know your trans and other Clea counterparts there so that's definitely my advice for going in kind of echoing Musante just said like I think that a lot of what he just said I learned in my first year at college that was stuff that I had never had conversations about so my advice would be to to reach out to your like queer upperclassmen and your friends and they're there to support you I found such an incredible support group like through my activities and also look through the lgbtq+ Resource Center at school and just like having these conversations is so important because it can help you acknowledge what privilege you do have and what ways that you can advocate for other members of the lgbtq+ community I feel like at least at Cornell when I was coming to the school I was very like closed off and didn't really want to reach out to the resources but I want to say this so native release residents on our campus mention on every campus I think it's just about fine once I mean necessarily appeal to you because as students even as freshmen when we come in as freshmen there's so many different experiences that we're going through some people are just beginning to start their transition if they're trans identified and some people are just finding out that they're gay or lesbian or whatever LGBTQ plus identify ass but we're not all on the same race when all of you have the things being so it can come in to college with that understanding I think it's definitely a lot easier for you to negotiate work with live with interact with other people that are private community now there may be only different part of the journey to look into what resources the schools have right now because a lot of students are being displaced and a lot of people kind of just like don't have anywhere to go or can't stay at home or don't have a home and I know like at Dartmouth people were kicked out really fast and so there was a whole student union that has grown because of this because the school didn't really do anything to help the students so that's really important to look into what the schools are doing I guess from my experience at Penn so I like straight passing sometimes this white passing man the guy I have the privilege of not needing to use a lot but the one thing doing will say to people that are looking at colleges is like get in contact with people faculty members members of different offices and resources that exists on campus because you never know when you're gonna need them and you never know when you're gonna have a bad day I know that like say I go to Malika me like I'm struggling with this situation I know that we haven't and it can be about anything and I think that's the reality is that like there are people at these universities who their sole purpose is to help you feel comfortable and feel safe and I think that going into college I didn't realize that and that's the one thing that I tell students that come to campus and I'm giving a tour see these people are employed to make you feel sick to kind of echo a lot of the sentiments that people have expressed like when you at all of these schools but something that's been critical to my experience like being at Brown is that when you like when you go to brown you're not just a member of the queer community at Brown there are like multiple kind of intersecting communities that you become a part of like I'm also a member of the queer community in Providence and so like I know there are fraught relationships between a lot of these schools in the places the localities that they're centered and like Brown has constantly like are continuously defaulted on paying property taxes and fulfilling scholarship promises to students in Providence and as a member of queer communities in both spaces it's important to become an advocate for all the communities that nurture and cradle you and like provide you with spaces for expression and kinship and I think that's another important element of that is realizing that no place is perfect like I definitely had this kind of parody vehicle view of being a queer person in the Northeast after growing up in the southeast forever and it was it has been amazing and I found so much community I mean as a genderqueer person who kind of came who came to that realization about my gender presentation while I was at Brown and who was variably experimented with my gender presentation I have not always received the most positive response people have used slurs against me on the street both on campus and off and that was kind of shocking to me at first like one time I was my partner line expert we were saying goodbye on the street near the library and people passed us and yelled like stop kissing me said the f-word and I was kind of just completely jarred by that because that was not something that I associated at all with you know the front row to the campus of brown being a part of a community an Ivy League is about advocating for each other in creating kind of joyous and radiant ways of being in queer parks to each other people for me honestly one of my biggest regrets of college was not transitioning earlier just because like once I did like I just I mean obviously my uh my own like I feel happier and more myself but also just like big community like anniversa acceptance that i got like i feel like really lucky to have gotten that and had to have had honestly like a really good experience with transitioning but i think that also like i know that that that's not everyone's experienced to and so like and of course everyone goes in their own timelines but for me like I honestly wish that I had transition sooner just collect like I kind of like missed out on from like getting the opportunity to be Who I am in college I'm really honestly thankful like of the experience that I did have and even like with how it like stuff like Lexus product with housing is super Valley to uh it depends like a Harvard it depends on like which dorm you get placed in but for me I like I was living with two guys like ever since we were allowed to like do housing like I never had any issues with like gender anything I didn't even say it was trans I just like they didn't ask any questions about like housing so but I know it's like deftly not the experience at every college and even like at Harvard within different houses like the processes for like co-ed housing is different so my next question a lot of you brought up resources you can find on the campus I wanted to know if we can just go across the board if everyone can give resources I don't just like say the name or experiences you've had about the resources on campus I think specifically I pen one thing I I say and it could sound like a tagline is that sometimes there's just too many resources we have like six cultural resource centers and that includes the Penn Women's Center LGBT Center like a Filipina Markku for the American community and black community and then we have hatches the pan Asian American house and then there's more.they green fill in our cultural center so all these six centers like over obviously intersect and it creates this really great network of like support within each of those centers there's like 50 clubs so it's just like really great to see that students are able to like come together and find what they're interested in what they want to accomplish what they want to advocate for and enjoy organizations or create organizations that have those missions but then also have access to support from like faculty members whether they're professors are just full-time staff that are fully able to you know answer those questions and address those concerns so at Columbia we we have we don't have resource centers which a lot of schools are describing we have one office the Office of Multicultural Affairs and then within them there are like you could call them departments like suit in the color at Columbia lgbtq+ at Columbia but I'm hesitance calling the departments because they're typically run but I like one person so it's more like you have that person you go to LGBTQ at Columbia the person who runs that her name is Vanessa and she's awesome and I love her she's great and like the resources that it can provide are great like we have these things called like family trees basically where you can like get a mentor like who shares your identity and there's family trees for a lot of different things but they provided a lot of resources the only thing is like because it's like run by one person with like also sometimes the support of other people they can't really like do everything for you so like you'll go through like 15 different departments before you get to the end and everyone basically tells you like that's not our job and then you're sort of in this limbo like oh who's job is it um but our clubs I think are really cool oh my experience has been like people meaning your peers and your friends and like also adults or real adults are like also your resources I think we have really cool clubs I'm a big fan of crowd colors I always feel very safe and like nurtured when I'm there I also found a lot of community through the clubs similar to what people are saying like there's a bunch of different cultural centers and things like that there's something for everyone but specifically the lgbtq+ Research Center we call it the office and it's kind of I was really immediately drawn to it when I came to Yale because I had never had a space like that and then from there I was introduced to a bunch of other clubs like the Caloris which is specifically for queer people who are alive next and I think that sort of navigating those resources can be tricky it for at first but one thing that definitely helped was that I was willing to kind of throw myself into it and I think that that's important because it can scary at first to enter an environment where there are so many people there who are there to help you but definitely definitely take advantage of it everyone has their own journey with navigating resources at their university but definitely it's something worth giving a try something worth tapping into Lourdes that it's really really what you make of the resources that you have on campus Princeton has the beauty and the curse of being one of the smaller size I think Dartmouth is the smallest but I think for instance right after so we don't have like very intersection of groups like queer Latin extras like number one I think it's cool but Princeton doesn't have that because we barely have plan X people to begin with um so but we do have a generic LGBTQ Center um I don't particularly use it but I know people that I've used it I've gotten a lot out of it um how I made my community with my queer community was mostly um we have eating clubs um and somehow can be toxic some of them can be very um white and very like you know just problematic overall but there are some that do attract queer communities um so it doesn't really have to be like a resource on campus anyone but there are social groups that are inherently very um it has a very big queer presence and that's where I found mine um and I think that's really really special on its own and there's also Carly field server C Center I sound like an ad but yeah um for Cornell I know if we get past a lot cuz we have almost most of the most students and I at least but we also have a huge amount of resources we have the LGBTQ Center which is in 6006 Tilson and in that building there's three floors and each one is a different Center getting geared towards a different identity of people so we have I believe the Asian American Center a multi cultural center and the LGBTQ Center in that same building we also have several organizations depending on which facet of LGBTQ youth fall under um you might have mosaic which is mainly for minorities of color and LGBTQ communities and then something cool I think we really I don't know if any other campuses have but we do have an loving house which was just opened up which is and residential just for lgbtq+ residents and I think something really beautiful about it is you can sign up for that housing space and your parents don't have any obligation to know so if you haven't come out to your family or something and you want to be put in that space léo feel comfortable you know telling your parents you might want to go meet them something else you can do that and follow that whole application without their consent because it's your residency also at Harvard we have like a diversity and inclusion space I guess that has like different offices in it it's in the basement of a freshman dorm but like one of the offices in there is called the office like queer office like I'm not actually sure that's the official name but that's what everyone calls it and then they have interns called Quinn turns and I personally like haven't really used it very much but um like I'm friends with a couple Quinn turns and like that's a it's a pretty solid resource like starting point I think and then Esther in terms of clubs we have like I know that there's one called shade which is like for queer people of color specifically and then we also have like a quick group me a queer Latin X group me the most helpful resource for me though specifically as a trans person there's a group called transcend that's like underneath the counseling and mental health services like through the University Health Services which is like a whole different story but they also have like group counseling type things so like that's specifically a trans group and it's ran by one of the mental health providers and he is incredible he's like been the biggest resource for me they also connect you to like primary care doctors if you would like to medically transition I would like definitely recommend if you if you're going to Harvard and you're trans to definitely check out transcen because they can hook you up with a lot of resources on the medical side and also just committee sides like Shanti was saying Dartmouth is the smallest IV so like pretty much everybody kind of knows each other I guess it's kind of weird but it's like a really big high school we have opal which is the office of pluralism and leadership that's kind of the main building for pride in spring term and the spring we have transformed in the spring which is like a drag show which is really awesome and people like students can perform and then also they get like professional like drag queens to come perform which is so dope and then Opel has like you there like queer advisors that you can talk to and you can get like funding like I know one of my friends does a queer brunch and so you can get funding for a lot of stuff at Dartmouth and so that was kind of just like I think it was just sent out to one of the group means like there's we communicate through a lot of group Muse William was mentioning how I think you know it's called the loving house so we have something like that to use called triangle house and that's where that's like a house that specifically like where people can live in one of the things I would say to be aware of like when you go to college is like the funding opportunities there are a lot of opportunities for funding for things that you just like don't like you wouldn't even think of and just to contact these resources just so you can see if there's like you can get money to literally like I said like go have brunch with your friends you know like I Brown we have I would say the two like biggest queer social in resource based organizations are the queer Alliance and Zeta Delta's I so the queer Alliance is in our Student Center and they have they offer a lot of different like social and educational programming resources like mixers at the beginning of the year for first year and transfer students and they have a queer prom every spring because not everybody gets to have kind of their their prom experience and their queer experience at the same time during high school so that's always really fun but then they also have queer of color reading group and there's a confidential discussion group for queer and questioning students of color so they do a lot of really important programming there and then more much more on the social end is Zeta deltas I which is the LGBTQ code for turnit II that I previously mentioned but it's a really excellent resource we don't it's the closest thing we have to like a triangle or loving house because it is it is a dorm it's residential there's a lot of community building but it's also a really like safe and inclusive space for socialization and for partying because not all party spaces on campus social spaces are very accommodating of queer folks and there are also opportunities for funding like Cecilia was saying like next year I want a petition to get funds to start a drag troupe on campus and like create a drag dialog effectively between Brown and Providence because Providence has a really thriving drag scene but there's not really a lot of interplay I guess my experience at Penn and probably other other Ivy's and cities like there's a there's a good community that exists inside each campus and I think there's a greater there community in these cities that are that the universities are inside of so like New York City Philadelphia like all those makes bigger big cities in general like they all have their communities and I think that's a great example socially was considering like drag and other things that exist I think Philly for example has like a really great gay scene gay bars I remember like going to my first gay bar having my first gay outing in a city and I just like that's so different than what exists on campus and I think that like if you're struggling to find a community in your campus see outside of your campus see what exists in the cities that you live in I would second that cuz like we also have something like loving and triangle called cue house um I'm not a fan like a lot of people have had really mixed experiences with it some people love it others like a really uncomfortable wide space but like we're also in New York City so like if you're looking for a queer party like you don't have to look hard and like it's gonna throw shout out for alibi and Harlem this is the only black go into like gay bar in Harlem and it's great but like there's there's so much out there and like I don't know what it's like for other cities but I would say like with the right resources if you find the right resources transportation in Manhattan can be like affordable enough that like there are places you can go to like seek that community there queer people everywhere I like I feel like I go weeks without seeing straight people I also do theater so Oh but like the community is so much larger than people think it is I just what about a second Lexington saying about the communities and how they are very large but also I don't know if any of you guys have been to Ithaca where Cornell is located it's gonna bake that hill that's not much else on the hill except for Cornell and Ithaca College so we do have maybe one gay bar in the city which does not get a lot of action and I don't have a thing so I can't go there yet I'm not 21 oh but within the campus there are a lot of different like tight-knit communities and some that are wider and there's even communities like we have this thing called the rainbow which is an order that throws try to throw game queer parties at least once like a semester so they're there you just have to find them that's like a perfect transition into my next question which was about socialites being on your campus which all you kind of like touched upon but yeah if you can talk about if you feel as though you are accepted by the other students and how your party scene is in the dating culture within the queer communities on campus again re-emphasize that I'm a street passing cisgendered male it's definitely I have obviously a lot more privilege um which was made my transition definitely um much easier um obviously like when you have roommates my fun fact my freshman year roommate was also gay and it was it was so much fun like that's my boy it was like roundabouts I had histories we were immediately homeys and then that was like boom like you already feel accepted by your roommate was also gay so it was kind of like this Co acceptance that felt really really empowering so on obviously when I venture out to campus I'm always like really really bubbly and just like it was really easy to get on a lot of people so I felt like my sexuality never really held me back what did hold me back though was being a Brown middle class man at Princeton so I felt like I was always pretty accepted and when once you find like you know your girls like your squad like you know it always feels really really good and it feels like if you have a really good foundation they're always gonna be there like obviously like pick up the slap and you're feeling really blue go back and what he's saying it's really important we need to find that crew shout out to my best friend's my two gang his friends Mercedes and Jalen you see this I'm a on TV no but um I feel like it's very important luckily I was able to have the program that we have at Cornell called the pre freshman summer program so it was about um I would say about 200 minority students that were came on campus this summer before freshman year and I was able to meet some clear people of color in that program but even after that going to events you know making yourself seen into things like how you live your life and how you want to live your life and how you want to be seen but personally I'm a fairly flashy person so I attract so queer attention because that's just a energy that I give off but I know it might be different depending on who you are I'm only recently becoming a more flashy person if you will so like for me finding that social scene was very much like they're my main activity which is theater which is like obvious oh but I think that - what Santi was saying like that that intersectionality and like how you navigate an IV really does affect your social scene so like a lot of my most of my like queer friends I've made have been through theatre but like that's also really predominantly white space and like the social scene doesn't always feel super welcoming it can also be a predominantly sis face and then that compounded with being a predominately white space like makes it very like like you're just trying to like Shawn like I didn't have a drink in like someone Miss genders you and like they're drunk they don't really pay attention and it's like you kind of have to try and get you out of your head about if you want to have a good time but like social disappointing that you have to do that but there are also so many spaces where like that just doesn't happen there's just so many intersectional Club I think that there will always be like a social space you can find and like and then speaking to what William and Santiago are both saying like once you find your group of friends like it feels like you can take on the world it feels like you have like people who have your back like my transferences position on binary friends like they know who they are watching this I love them so much like they're literally everything to me it's worth it to put yourself out there if you can because that's how you find those people who you relate to and then like the world just like feels a lot brighter after that going off of that like about putting herself out there that was a very hard lesson for me to learn but super important at first I just kind of was like oh well I'm going to be that boy who discovers organic deodorant and gets in an open relationship and reads Foucault and like is a queer superstar like day one and and has like a million beautiful vibrant queer friends right off the bat and obviously that do not occur and so I I think like say to Delta zai that fraternity mentioned I would highly recommend going to a party there if you are a queer freshman it was an outlet a place to kind of socialize clearly where I was not afraid to experiment with drag or with like feminine presentation I met somebody there whose roommate freshman year was a senior in public health and I talked to him and he connected me to a professor who I took a class with about LGBTQ public health issues whose TA is now my research mentor so like from going to one party okay I mean it took like a year and a half to all happen but from going to one party or like putting myself out there socially I mean it made me uncomfortable at first but going there I ended up with the research job that I have now my freshman year going into college I ran for class president and that was like a really good experience for me like being a rich scholar because a student at an Ivy League which is primarily upper-class students being a gay man like all these different and conflicting identities I having to address students that were a much greater provision to also understand my position the privilege I had and try to help as many people as I can and I think the concept of like throwing yourself out there is really scary and like I think do it in whatever way that you feel comfortable and sometimes yes you do have to feel uncomfortable and it does take a certain meet but for me like knowing a lot of people about having like two friends or like the way that I have made it through college and like it doesn't I don't have like my girls I have like my one-girl and like I'm okay to marry if you're watching this I love you but like I'm totally content with having one really great lifetime friend and having acquaintances that I've met throughout the entirety of my college experience but having just like the quality over the quantity was a really great lesson that I learned I think it's important to put yourself out there but remember to have self-respect and don't let people put you in a box um if a white girl comes up to you and says like hey girl and and says something like I've always wanted a gay best friend run on literally get out of there like just run in it and both out and then get recruited by the track team you know you have to be really really selective and have self respect and don't let people put in that box because you've bit like you know like a type of friend that they want to have that's really weird um and so just keep in mind people love get connected with people that love you for you you know because of what you appear to be well sometimes silence myself when I'm like misgendered because like I don't want to be disrespectful but like you should stand up for yourself like you're allowed to like have that voice and like like be very clear about who you are and not let people like step over you like at that point not putting yourself out there you're just being a doormat my like roommate and best friend is a straight man and like we've been roommates in sophomore year when I identified as a woman it wasn't even out for him but he like was so accepting and honestly that's like the experience that I've had like in other spaces since like I wasn't openly queer like I ended up like having a lot of straight pins like sis straight friends um in the beginning of college and honestly I'm just I'm really glad like that I felt like accepted by them like completely again like that's not everyone's experience like I just like made some really great friends and I make super thankful for them in terms of like feeling accepted in like the broader like Harvard community I feel really really accepted especially like a lot next community is super welcoming like parties and stuff my main social circle which like educated me so much and surrounded me with these unbelievable like like queer people who showed me so much love every single day I found this in acapella which is tiny for anthem but I don't know if you guys know but like at Yale like acapella is like a really big deal there are like 14 different acapella groups and each one is like super diff and like has their own there's like rivalries it's a lot but my a capella group yell out of blue like that was my first ever like social circle that I entered and from there I made like my best friends and then I was like introduced to the queer community at Yale and I think that that was incredibly valuable to me as well so it's also important to recognize like there are these like specific spaces that are like you know delineated for the peer community but you're also you know your people are everywhere they're not just going to be at these places and finding those people within circles that also intersect with like things that you really care about like singing or theater like that stuff is super important and was like really really monumental in my adjustment to college and really coming to know who I was Dartmouth is kind of like a mix then between Princeton and Cornell because like unlike it's not on top of a hill it's in a valley in the middle of nowhere it would be great to have that experience of having a city that you could kind of like go to honestly it would really be necessary a lot of times and you can't really leave campus unless you have a car or our friends with somebody with a car there are also a lot of great things about Dartmouth and the social scene one thing that's a little like suffocating sometimes is because we don't have a city it's basically just Greek life as our source of social interactions I guess I think my freshman year I went to France with like a lot of my straight friends and I just like never entered a fraud again after like the first year I don't know there there is a lot of effort to make alternative social scenes from like the frat sorority but like learnis was saying so I'm an acapella group too and I am in a gender inclusive acapella group that has a mission of spreading social justice through song and we're the only acapella group with a mission that is I still like going on right now are still you know happening I kind of joined them by chance because I don't know this might be like kind of a long story so I gotta like cut it down but anyway we have these things called trips at the start of the year where you get put on this like little group of like seven people and you go do some like something in the wilderness and people like make friends like that right away and so I made friends with this girl who's we're actually now dating which is kind of crazy but this is about for you that was four years ago but um we became best friends like before college started like the week before college started and then she convinced me to audition for acapella with her and we got into the same acapella group and then that has been like a really great that group even though like it's it there's a lot of queer people in the group and a lot of people of color but it's not it's nice to have a community that everyone it's kind of like a like mindedness even if you don't share an identities and you know that people will have your back and people will fight for you and has quite a number there's like Disney acapella and then there's like every other nice group of acapella you can everything go I personally have no talent creatively I hate crime I think like you can meet a lot of great people in different spaces and also I'm like involved in a lot of like art music photography video stuff on campus and like that's how I like met most of my close friends and there's also like queer people involved not like you don't don't feel like you need to be like super active specifically in lgbtq+ spaces um and then also I feel like you can't talk about like a Harvard social scene without talking about final clubs and so like in relating to um like queerness I mean obviously like some a lot of them are like single gender very I don't know elitist like there's there's a lot of like problematic things with with final clubs but like I think specifically surrounding queerness like some of them are co-ed and like I know like a good amount of queer people who are in them don't feel like you need to be in a final Club to have a social life like there's like a lot of other spaces on campus that you can you can still have fun and slob parties at the thing I would like to say is that like you're going to experience homophobia unfortunately like it exists everywhere and I remember the first time I was called the f-word on campus and it was definitely something I don't think I'd ever forget I'm trying to combined what everyone's saying is like you know you're not a doormat no your worth don't accept the minimum like your identity is it an accommodation like that's that's I think the key thing is like you're not around statistic you're not for diversity like your person you should be treated as one I think overall people at Penn feel very welcome in those communities but that creates like a general disconnect and there's not really a united clear community on campus and it could be in some ways problematic in that like you know you're going to a fraternity and you hear this fraternity is like queer friendly but then you get called the Ephrata party you know so it's just like you're gonna experience that homophobia and I think it's very institutionalize it's being able to stand up for yourself and fight against it that's really I think the key okay so thank you guys so much for telling us about your experience be seeing it cast members are going back again to speak with all to speak to all of us again so otherwise thanks guys bye if you enjoyed this video today please make sure to smash that subscribe button press the bell to get notified when I post which is 2 to 3 times a week and follow me on Instagram so you can opportunity to call into the next kickback otherwise have a wonderful day and I will catch you guys at the next kick back [Music]

Channel: Domonique Cynthia

Views: 26,553

Keywords: the kickback, upenn, harvard, princeton, yale, brown, columbia, dartmouth, cornell, domonique cynthia, dominique cynthia, LGBTQ, pride month, lgbtq college students, information, lgbtq informational video, lgbtq interviews

Id: GWzrAcUDKAY

Length: 49min 35sec (2975 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 01 2020