Much has happened in the few days since I last wrote. Perhaps the most significant of which was finding that my door name-announcer thing had been vandalized with a homophobic slur at some point early Sunday morning. This was on the day before I was to give a homily for Coming Out Week in Chapel involving how I had never experienced homophobic acts while here at Gustavus. Scratch that. After a quick rewrite I came out with force and vigor stating the bare truth. Gustavus is remarkable in its tolerance of homosexuality. The thing is tolerance has become a positive thing to some people. It isn’t. You tolerate colds. You tolerate heat waves. You tolerate younger siblings. You don’t really like any of them. What Gustavus needs is a wakeup call. Acceptance is what we (the GLBT community) demand. I’d rather see 80% acceptance and 20% open disapproval on campus than 100% tolerance. It’s that insidious. The homily went over exceptionally well and hopefully change WILL be seen here because change is something long-overdue on this campus.
In other news around here, the E Pluribus Gustavus 2.0 show was a stunning success (again delivering the tough messages that the campus needs to hear) after a mind-boggling session that lasted from 8 PM to 5:30 AM on Monday morning to get the show into shape. Also, tonight’s BRA concert was very well-attended and our artists, Chris Bacon and Brenda Weiler, were phenomenal. And now I am glad to have my platter (mostly) cleared…for now.