The Independent Voice of Southern Methodist University Since 1915

The Daily Campus

The Daily Campus

The Independent Voice of Southern Methodist University Since 1915

The Daily Campus

The Independent Voice of Southern Methodist University Since 1915

The Daily Campus

SMUs Tyreek Smith dunks as the Mustangs run up the scoreboard against Memphis in Moody Coliseum.
SMU finds new head coach for men’s basketball
Brian Richardson, Contributor • March 28, 2024
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Administration: take action against bigotry

When I first came to SMU, I learned “Every Mustang Will be Valued” — but you know what? That “will,” that tiny little word, is striking such a harsh nerve at the moment. From what I’ve seen of bigots online (via YouTube, Facebook and especially Yik Yak) LGBTQ Mustangs will not be valued. In fact, they are not to be valued because apparently almost everyone is too busy valuing their own privileged self-interests.

The valuing of queer students is not a present reality at this university: I should have been taught (all of us really), “Every Mustang is Valued.” (What a quirky thing that language is, isn’t it?)

Or maybe, we should have just done away with that hypocritical motto in the first place — at least, until it had some weight.

Over the last few days, some have told me that such a seat would be redundant. Many students voted “no” because they thought it doesn’t matter. But to these very people I say: it doesn’t matter because it really doesn’t affect you, does it? Your lives, in your heterosexual “lifestyles” are not threatened, ridiculed or erased on a
daily basis.

I don’t expect you to understand the complexities of such non-normative gendered and sexual lives. However, what I would expect (quite erroneously and naively) is for you to at least have the compassion to listen and to actually do something beneficial for not just one person but a vast group of individuals that are speaking out collectively about the discrimination they face on campus and the bigotry
they have endured.

If you had the opportunity to make the lives of your fellow mustangs even a little bit better, at no cost to you at all, would you want to? Or is that courtesy only reserved for my hetero colleagues?

But even, regardless of the failure of the LGBTQ seat referendum, I still find hope. This whole campaign has exposed the deeply entrenched anti-LGBTQ hatred ubiquitous on this campus that has always been there, unconsciously silent and ignored within the student body psyche.

The incendiary events of last few days have made one thing excruciatingly clear: We can’t pretend that homophobia and transphobia doesn’t exist. Not anymore. There is no way to ignore it now.

We can’t say that anti-queer violence are isolated incidents or the result of a “few bad apples.” That. Ends. Now.

Especially recently, I’ve had slurs and hate — anon and otherwise — thrown at me, ranging from the most typical of insults such as “f****t,” to I don’t even know how describe them. Here’s an example: “What an ugly f****t. Back to the oven you go.” Was that just a Holocaust reference, used as an insult or threat? If we scratch at the surface of this comment, and the innumerable ones that follow it, what does it tell us? What does it say about SMU?

And at the present, one question remains: what will SMU’s administration do
about it?

President R. Gerald Turner, Provost Ludden and all of the administration: How will you address this?

The students have voted—but I implore you to not remain silent, to ignore us and pretend that none of this has happened. You have a moral authority to address and denounce the anti-LGBTQ hate that has wormed out of the institution’s woodwork. As Desmond Tutu has put it, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Do not stand on the sidelines—what this demonstrates is passive acceptance; silence will do nothing but imply a tacit condoning of this heterosexist ideology.

So, will you stand for justice and equality for all your Mustangs, or only that majority that would rather trample the life from us “deviants”?

President Turner, I, along with several students of the LGBTQ minority on campus, would be more than willing to meet and discuss such measures. Please, whenever you find yourself available, contact me at [email protected]. It’s time we start tackling these issues.

Partida is a senior majoring in women’s and gender studies and anthropology.


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