Safe Places , continued

Bob Schoenberg: “Mind-boggling” changes in 20 years.

Out of the Closet
and Into the
Carriage House

In the two decades he has spent working at Penn, Bob Schoenberg has seen the resources devoted to lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender (LGBT) issues increase from one part-time employee—him—working out of a corner of the advising office to a staff of three full-time employees (headed by him) in a spacious, newly renovated historic building that he says, “is the envy of programs across the country.”

Schoenberg’s longevity and dedication were credited by Vincent Griski W’85, who, with David Goodhand C’85, was the lead donor for the Carriage House renovation, at the ceremony dedicating the space in September [“Gazetteer,” this issue], and Schoenberg was quick to remind current students—and prospective future donors—that 20 years hence, “I’ll still be here.”

The Gazette profiled Schoenberg in November 1983 in a story headlined, “Bob Schoenberg Has an Unusual Advisory Role.” At the time, he was one of the first people officially charged with advising gay and lesbian college students. The assignment had grown out of the harassment of gay and lesbian students the previous year, who “pressed for an administrative response to their general needs as well as to the hostility,” the article notes. “When I was hired in 1982, I was only the second person in the country to be a professional point person for LGBT,” he says.

Schoenberg’s history at the University actually goes back even farther—to the late 1960s, when he was in the master’s program in social work. He says he didn’t take much notice of the gay community on campus—or, indeed, of the campus at all. On the one hand, “I was just in the process of coming out myself,” and on the other, “which is something that hasn’t changed in 30 years,” students in the social work program are only at Penn two days a week, spending the other three in the field.

After receiving his master’s degree, Schoenberg worked with retarded and neurologically impaired children at the Elwyn Institute and St. Chrisopher’s Hospital. “I came back in the [U.S.] Bicentennial year to the doctoral program.” Since receiving his doctorate in 1989, Schoenberg has been working on LGBT issues full-time, while also teaching in the School of Social Work.

Schoenberg credits the current University administration with being “extremely supportive” on those issues. It was President Judith Rodin CW’66 and Provost Robert Barchi M’72 Gr’72, he says, who had the idea of renovating the Carriage House as the new home of the LGBT Center. And the president’s comments when the project was announced in October 2000 [“Gazetteer,” January/February 2001] “were amazing in terms of the level of institutional support and commitment to diversity of all kinds,” he adds. “The idea that we don’t want to separate people because of their differences, but at the same time recognize that people need to have safe places they can go to be with people who are like them.”

(He does, however, mention two administrative battles over the last decade. One was over benefits for same-sex domestic partners, “a stunning victory” when the University approved equal treatment in 1994 and the health system followed six months later; the other over the continued presence of military recruiters on campus despite discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, which “has been more frustrating and continues to be waged on some level,” he says.)

As for Penn students, while there remain some “who are not very tolerant or accepting of gay students,” Schoenberg says, “most have learned a level of politeness, so that derogatory comments might only be made when they believe there are no gay people in the room—sometimes they are still there and they hear them.” In one incident last year, students sitting outside a fraternity house taunted a couple of gay men, one of whom was wearing a “pink velour sportcoat,” as they passed by. The perpetrators wrote a letter of apology after a complaint was lodged with the Student Conduct Office. Transgender students, especially those whose appearance may seem ambiguous, can still face a “very difficult time” on campus, and there are occasional reports of fag being scrawled on a wall or whiteboard in residence halls.

However, “given that one of the reasons that I was hired in the first place was because of a couple of instances of really severe physical assault, we rarely hear of any kinds of incidents of physical assault anymore,” Schoenberg says. Some “bastions of homophobia are being broken down,” he adds, with several fraternities and sororities and athletic teams including out gay and lesbian members. “Things are definitely better than they were.”

One area that “we continue to struggle around is LGBT students who are also students of color,” he adds, who report experiencing racism in the LGBT community and homophobia in their community of color. Students in this dilemma tend to conceal their sexual orientation, “but it’s a double-edged sword,” says Schoenberg. “Yes, you can hide it, but at what cost to yourself in terms of your real identity? So, we’re working hard to make the campus as accepting as possible of all people [regardless of] race, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

Asked whether LGBT students arrive on campus more certain of their sexual identities than 20 years ago, Schoenberg says, “I wish I could quantify that. It’s a really fascinating question,” and adds that a part of his doctoral research was designed to
address it. In interviews with students at seven Philadelphia-area institutions of higher education, “what I found was that there was a range,” he says. “I think that it’s still the case that students arrive on campus at different places [in their development], but I can’t really minimize the effect of the media [and] Internet.”

In the 1983 article, Schoenberg comments on the lack of role models for gay and lesbian students on television and in the media. That’s less of a problem today, at least in the number of depictions of gays and lesbians on screen. As far as being role models, “I think they fall pretty short,” he says, of characters on shows like Will and Grace, Spin City, or Queer as Folk.

The Internet may have the greater impact, he says. “There’s a way to do research—in an abstract sense and a deeply personal sense—from your bedroom, anonymously. That simply wasn’t available to us 20 years ago.” Prospective students can look at the LGBT Center’s Web site, and send e-mail using only their screen names, if they prefer, “saying, ‘I’m thinking of coming to Penn. What will it be like for me as a questioning student or a gay student or whatever the case happens to be,’” says Schoenberg. After sharing his own perspective, “which is hardly unbiased,” he will generally offer to put the writer in touch with current students “and they can have an e-mail exchange.”

Another difference for current students is “gay-straight alliances, which are a very popular phenomenon in high schools nowadays,” says Schoenberg. Such groups allow students to fight for, say, civil rights for gay people, without “forcing you to identify who you are or why you’re a part of the organization.” More and more students who come to Penn have had experience with these groups. “The idea to somebody who is my age and came out in his early-to-mid-20s that somebody could be 13-14 and part of a group or even out to their parents” is amazing, he says.

In a few cases, parents have even brought their child to the LGBT Center while on a campus visit. One mother wanted her son to go to two places—“to meet the coach of the athletic team he wanted to be on and the LGBT Center, ‘because he’s gay and that’s who he is and we want him to be happy.’ I think that’s much more of a 2002 than a 1982 phenomenon.

“On the one hand, 20 years seems like a lifetime, and on the other, when I think of the difference between that little corner of Houston Hall and where we are now—it’s mindboggling,” he says.

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Copyright 2002 The Pennsylvania Gazette Last modified 11/04/02