34 Comments
Tonight, the student group Everyone Allied Against Homophobia will begin distributing pink fliers to all dorm rooms on the Columbia and Barnard campuses. The fliers are intended to be placed in dorm room windows to indicate that the dorm room is a “safe space” for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and queer students and their allies, as well as to display the room’s occupant’s support to onlookers outside of the room. EAAH has previously distributed the fliers to all first-year dorms, this is the first year the fliers will be delivered to all undergraduate dorms.
For more information, you can read the EAAH press release here.
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34 Comments
@Anonymous are there really trannies at CU? and im not talking about some of the chicks from BC…
@LOL My window faces inward into…somewhere from which a flier wouldn’t be seen.
@why is it homophobia? fear of man? doesn’t really make sense. just because someone doesn’t believe homosexuals are right doesn’t mean they have a “fear of” them (or of “man”).
@Because ‘Homo’ means ‘man’ in Latin. It means ‘the same’ in Greek, also the language from which we get ‘phobia.’ Obviously that still doesn’t quite work; it’s more of a portmonteau of ‘homosexual’ and ‘xenophobia,’ which is what it really is.
@Sorry! Email eaah@columbia.edu if you didn’t get a flyer and we will bring you one! And let us know if for some reason your whole floor was missed.
@Furnald 10 did not get a flyer, feel neglected
@dear eliza, I appreciate you (and Bwog) so much right now. It’s insane that people assert that our campus is “tolerant and liberal” while still expecting hateful, intolerant, discriminatory comments to be implicitly supported and displayed on a student blog. Nevermind the overt discrimination that still happens at Columbia…
Office of Multicultural Affairs. Visit. Learn something.
Kudos again to this responsible censorship policy.
@Bwog: stop censoring comments. This is an uncomfortable topic, there are going to be differences in opinion. Deleting comments because they take a different viewpoint is just as close-minded as the people whose ideas supposedly merit censorship.
@Eliza We’ve deleted two comments that were openly hateful against the LGBTQ community. These comments did not take issue with the posters themselves, but with LGBTQ students on campus. We do not allow homophobic comments on Bwog. Please consult our comment policy if you need any further clarification.
@Reconsider your policy. There are some benefits to allowing people to freely express themselves. Personally, I haven’t seen anything at Columbia that would make me think something like Safe Spaces is necessary. Part of the reason I haven’t seen that, apparently, is because you censor people who express those hateful thoughts.
True, those posts may be hurtful to the gay community, but we’re all grownups here. It is more important to have free discussion (even offensive discussion) than to try to protect people.
@Anonymous clearly, we’re not all grownups
@Eliza We censor discriminatory and hateful comments. People who use derogatory words and write hateful comments deserve to be censored, and are censored on any half-way legitimate blog, including this one. It’s fantastic that you haven’t witnessed any homophobia on Columbia’s campus, and you certainly won’t find any here. Again, please consult our comment policy if you need further clarification.
@Anonymous also, we don’t want bwog to end up on internet filters, get penalized by google, and be classified as hate speech
@the wording on these signs excludes those who are not gay and are not allies…. sucks for you intolerant bitches! you’re not safe in my room!!
@Anonymous i put mine in the recycling bin. you are remembered, little tree…
@ugh you sound so much like a jerk with that comment…
@Anonymous no i’m not. i just hate people who flyer.
@Anonymous is it so god doesnt take my first born?
@woah Literally the second I started reading this post, a flyer was slipped under my door.
@Isn't that the universal symbol for orgy on the flyer?
@Anonymous yeah, great. put up flyers at an already tolerant, liberal university. why not go into the bronx where gay people are being horrifically tortured and put some flyers there?
@Bronxxx '13 Ok, I agree with the former part of this statement. HOWEVER: While the Bronx isn’t as welcoming to the gay community as Columbia, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they horrifically torture gay people…seriously dude, as a Bronxian, I’m offended.
@Anonymous If you read the news, you’d know that there were recently brutal attacks on two gay people in the Bronx, hence the reference. Also, it’s Bronxite.
@Bronxxx '13 Op. Well, that shut me up.
@Anonymous They didn’t come to my dorm……
@Anonymous I’m a senior, but came as a sophomore. I didn’t know what those pink signs were for until the end of junior year.
@bah the environmentalists are going to freak out on campus for wasting paper…
@Anonymous I remember the year when some group tried to piggy-back off this campaign and distributed fliers that said “I am against Genocide”. Of course, when people posted them, they now read “I am Genocide”, etc…
@This is a little stupid. You don’t need to demarcate “safe” havens or shelters here. There is no need to erect protective barriers– no “danger” between your dorm room and the hall. This campus belongs to everyone– all of it.
@short-sighted It’s probably irresponsible to encourage everyone to make their room a safe space, since it kind of defeats the purpose. If everyone was non-judgemental and deliberately made sure to be sensitive to the needs of all kinds of people, there would be no need for separate spaces. But since that’s not the case, it’s good that Columbia provides official safe spaces for students where they absolutely will not be judged. In dorms and rooms, though, students will often be careless and might accidentally say something insensitive. That’s why individual students’ rooms are not safe spaces. Advertising them as safe spaces will only lead to misunderstandings and problems. I get the point of the campaign, but feel it’s incredibly counter-productive and irresponsible.
@no. no, there are judgments being passed about all sort of identities, it doesn’t warrant needing to make some spaces safe. The inherent assumption in this program is that places without the signs are unsafe. We don’t have a safe space for asian students, or physically challenged students for example, even though there is constant judgment. The assumption there is that the whole of campus is safe to these students, even if students might be judgmental. Likewise don’t create the assumption that campus is unsafe for the LGBTQ community, we are not made of glass and this program treats us like we are.
@... this is a bit wasteful of paper. instead can’t they just make available a few select fliers that say “i’m hateful, angry, violent and probably at least half gay”
@Off campus Is there a way that I can get flyers if I live off campus?
@Anonymous If you want a flyer and you live off-campus, e-mail eaah@columbia.edu to see if there are extras! We’ll do our best.