You will be assimilated

As the ink spills over the legitimacy of a Gay Studies program at Yale, the University's one truly homophobic act has been quietly swept under the rug. Arguing about Gay Studies seems almost ridiculous at Yale right now; give the discipline three years and Yale will be rushing to make it a secondary major. While it would be nice if the University helped to encourage this new field, this is a traditional place where every course must be unquestionably valid, and a certain wariness is expected. Yale is not a trail-blazer.

Yale's most glaring affront to gays, however, remains to be dealt with: its rejection of Larry Kramer's alternate proposal for an on-campus Gay Student Center. Rejecting a Gay Studies program is, if not right, smart, or forward-looking, at least understandable. Rejecting a Gay Student Center is simply indefensible. The University offers the following "defense." According to Joseph Gordon, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs, building individualized student centers has become passé. Yale's concern now is with building "a Yale student center first," one for general, integrated use. "This administration," says Gordon, "isn't into building [special] centers."

In fact, according to Gordon, building centers like Yale's African American Cultural Center was in vogue 20 years ago, part of a fad for giving minorities their own meeting places. The '90s, according to Gordon's theory, are a more enlightened era during which we should focus on uniting, rather than dividing, cultures.

So does this mean Yale wouldn't build an African American Cultural Center if the request came today? And is Gordon saying that Yale shouldn't? Does he honestly believe that the Yale of today would be better off without the Af-Am Center? La Casa? The Asian American Student Center? Does Yale honestly believe that our society as a whole would be better served if we forced every ethnicity and culture to assimilate into the majority?

It's a brave and naively appealing theory: as non-prejudiced people we should stop segregating ourselves and start interacting as a happy whole. In fact, this is a frightfully dangerous fallacy.

Any minority accepted by a Yale-affiliated group--a Mexican in The Whiffenpoofs, a female editor of the Daily News, a gay SAE pledge--is just that: accepted. The majority holds the power over that minority member to make him or her feel either accepted or rejected. Cultural differences may be tolerated, even encouraged, but they will always remain differences from the majority--differences subject to majority approval.

And to fit in, the minority will have to assimilate. The Whiffs won't adopt a Spanish repertoire. The Daily News won't change all third person gender neutral pronouns to "her." And however understanding a brotherhood it is, SAE won't fill its formal with same-sex couples, just so its one gay member feels at home. Inherent in the notion of forcing all minorities into the majority is homogenization. Force us all into "one happy whole" and that whole can't help but look and act more like the majority than any of its individual minority parts.

The University cannot possibly believe its own rhetoric. If it really was deeming the Af-Am house unnecessary, Assistant Dean Kimberly Goff-Crews, BK '83, LAW '86, would launch a massive counter-attack as an Ethnic Dean (fortunately for Yale, there is no cultural dean representing gay students to kick up such a fuss). Why, then, has Yale really rejected the opportunity to provide its gay students a place on campus where they can feel comfortable, appreciated, and productive? While a General Student Center would incorporate gays, it would not be a place conducive to planing the next Pride Week. It would not even be a place where two women could feel comfortable with their arms around each other.

Discussing Gay Studies at Yale is wasted breath right now. Kramer's ideas will return--he is accustomed to acting three years before everybody else follows suit. But fighting for the existence of minority centers couldn't be more crucial.

Reverend Frederick Streets, DIV '75, actually told all this year's freshmen that self-segregating into cultural communities is a mistake (you want to fit in? Don't join a gay student center, play football!). Such rejoinders represent the ultimate--and fatal--mistake of any diverse society. An enlightened, post-prejudiced community (if there is such a thing) means recognizing that we're not all the same--not trying to make us all the same. Melt us all into one common currency, and it's going to be an awfully white, expensive coin.

Barry Levey is a junior in Davenport College.

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