The truth came out at an LGBT open forum last night.

About 15 students and administrators attended ‘Breaking the Silence’ last night in the Flint Residence Hall lounge, an open forum for all residents to discuss stereotypes and issues within the LGBT community.

‘The reason that this is so important is that we’re taking it to people who aren’t LGBT,’ said Brian Stout, a freshman broadcast journalism major, who organized the event. ‘I didn’t want to just preach to the choir.’

‘Breaking the Silence’ began with an introduction by Stout, who explained his connection to the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender bias-related hate crime which occurred Sept. 14, 2003. After a PowerPoint presentation about current national sentiments and issues, such as the gay marriage debate, the participants engaged in a discussion of stereotypes and issues involving LGBT students.

Stout plans to present the forum to other residence halls to help further educate and facilitate discussion for all residents.

‘These negative experiences happen in dining halls, happen on white boards,’ said Annie Hoffman, a junior magazine major and a resident advisor on the third floor of Flint Hall. ‘I don’t want my floor to be a community that accepts and even tolerates that kind of behavior.’

Nearly 70 percent of all reported bias-related incidents on the SU campus involve gender or sexuality bias, according to an SU Team Against Bias report published last week.

Stout for the first time admitted publicly that he was the SU student present when his friend was attacked in the Sept. 14 incident, which the report stated was legally defined as a hate crime.

‘I don’t call myself a victim, but I was there,’ Stout said.

Sitting on a table facing the group, Stout explained that he and his friends had been at a themed party. While walking down Comstock Avenue, they passed another group of students and one person of that group began to verbally attack them.

‘This guy just saw us and snapped,’ Stout said. ‘He immediately assumed we all were gay.’

The person then began to assault Stout’s friend, who is not an SU student, and began to repeatedly say he was going to kill him, Stout said. He punched him, pounded his head into the pavement and against a car, he said.

‘The whole thing sucked and completely distorted my college welcome,’ Stout said. ‘I couldn’t really get an accurate picture [of SU] again.’

The victim chose not to come forward about the incident or go to the hospital because he was not yet openly gay and wanted to forget the incident had even happened, Stout said.

But Stout decided to publicly explain his experience because he wanted everyone on campus to understand what had happened and that bias-related incidents happen every day, although most not quite as severe, Stout said.

‘The little things like saying, ‘faggot,’ may not seem like a big deal, but that’s exactly how this thing gets started,’ Stout said.

Many students do not try to be homophobic or intolerant, but they most likely never object to hearing offensive words or seeing them written on white boards, Stout said.

The PowerPoint presentation began with a list of myths and facts about the gay community, including the fact that various religions interpret and consider homosexuality differently. Then, as ‘I Will Remember You’ by Sarah McLachlan played, the presentation showed images of anti-gay protestors holding signs which read phrases such as, ‘Homos stay in the closet.’

‘It shocked me, and it’s still very overwhelming,’ said Jessica Hegger, a freshman advertising major who attended the event. ‘It disgusting to see people doing that, and it’s just a lot of arrogance.’

Stout had asked several students of the LGBT community how they felt upon hearing anti-gay speech, and the presentation included some of their responses, such as feelings of shame, oppression or thinking other people wished they were dead.

Following the presentation, which ended with images of same-sex couples after receiving marriage licenses after the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision upholding the legality of same-sex marriage, the participants discussed the difficulties of being religious and gay, the definition of transgender and media portrayal of the gay community.

Some people may hold inaccurate stereotypes of lesbians, such as being butch and man-haters, and of gay men, such as being sex-crazed, fashionable or passionate about interior design.

‘A lot of us cannot decorate for crap,’ Stout added.

They also discussed how important it is for straight students to be allies and realize that most people will not automatically label them as gay.

The six members of Delta Lambda Phi, a fraternity launched last semester for gay, bisexual and straight men, attended the event, and Stout plans to invite gay women to future ‘Breaking the Silence’ forums.

‘It’s great that he’s taking the initiative with this program,’ said Scott Huegelmeyer, a junior television, radio and film major. ‘Too many people before assumed that such a thing existed before.’

Published on March 28, 2004 at 12:00 pm