Huffington Magazine Issue 63 | Page 32

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