Voices
The list includes my alma mater, Wake Forest University, which
comes in at number 7 this year. We
rose in the ranking! Huzzah! Go
Deacs! But here’s the thing: This
ranking is crap. Let me explain.
In recent years Wake Forest
has established and grown an LGTBQ center and hired a phenomenal
director to run it, all in response to
a movement ignited by students.
It has extended tax equity benefits
to same-sex partners of university
employees. And in the midst of the
uproar over Chick-fil-A’s questionable donations to anti-gay organizations, Wake Forest conducted
a year-long dialogue on the issue with well-attended discussions
and panel presentations. Oh, yeah:
For the 2012-13 school year I, an
openly and vehemently homosexual man, served as the popularly
elected president of the Wake Forest student body.
Let me be abundantly clear: I do
not believe that my election was
some panacea for a school steeped
in conservative traditions and still
rife with narrow-minded individuals. Just as President Obama›s
election did not signal the end
of racism in America (shocker, I
know), my election did not herald
a new era of equality and tran-
TRÉ
EASTON
HUFFINGTON
08.25.13
quility on Wake Forest’s campus.
However, I would assert that my
election and subsequent tenure
were proof positive of something
that’s becoming more and more
apparent: My generation doesn’t
care whom you sleep with.
Back to The Princeton Review. If I were a 17-year-old high
school junior and soon-to-bereborn gay baby, I would shutter
at the thought of even consider-
What is the method
behind The Princeton
Review’s rankings? Who
participated in the survey?
What was the sample size?
The world may never know.”
ing one of the schools on this list,
let alone actually attending one.
What is the method behind The
Princeton Review’s rankings?
Who participated in the survey?
What was the sample size? The
world may never know. But as illgotten as the information within
this survey is, its power cannot
be underestimated. It’s hard to
challenge the claims of an organization with the considerable heft
that, for whatever reason, The