NEWS
LGBT community challenges homecoming rituals
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by Emily Bourne
Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Homecoming kings and queens as we know them may be disappearing. According to the New York Times, many high schools and universities are taking a second look at this longstanding tradition, partly in response to protests by gay students.
Some schools have attempted to resolve this issue by modifying the roles of king and queen to be more inclusive, allowing males to be queens and females to be kings.
Fue Khang, a senior at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, ran for homecoming queen this year and won.
According to David Anderson, a volunteer at the St. Cloud Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Services Office, students on campus often differed in their reactions to Khang’s victory.
“I definitely noticed a lot of backlash,” Anderson said, “but I’ve noticed more people supportive of it than against it.”
This backlash included a petition, started by the mother of one of the females who ran for homecoming queen, asking Khang return his crown. Thus far the petition has 500 signatures.
Anderson complained media coverage of Khang’s victory has been “totally one-sided” and “only showed the people that were against it, not the people that supported it.”
Anderson also said the media coverage was at times completely inaccurate, especially in the case of a story aired by ABC Channel 5 of the Twin Cities.
“They said [Khang] was openly gay, but he is not,” Anderson said.
Additionally, this year at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, the New York Times reported Everett Moran, an openly gay male student, ran for homecoming queen. He lost but was crowned a member of the homecoming court on the Vanderbilt football field in full drag.
Amy Duwell, co-chair of the University of Wisconsin Homecoming Committee, thought complaints might arise, especially from UW alumni, if a male were crowned homecoming queen here and thought students themselves would probably have a mixed response.
“I’m sure we’d get complaints,” Duwell said, “but I’d like to believe that we have a pretty respectful campus and a pretty accepting one.”
However, a male will never be elected homecoming queen here because the University of Wisconsin, along with many other schools across the nation, has eliminated the roles of king and queen entirely. Duwell says this is an effort to recognize the achievements of the entire court.
“We discontinued [the homecoming king and queen] because we want to recognize everyone on court equally,” Duwell said.
Duwell also said issues relating to the crowning of a homecoming king and queen will not be a problem at Madison in the future because the roles will not be returning to campus any time in the foreseeable future.
“As far as we’re concerned,” Duwell said, “we won’t have [a homecoming king and queen] again.”
Duwell added the UW Homecoming Committee does not discriminate against students based on sexual orientation, noting LGBT students have been elected to the homecoming court in the past.
Diana Parker, co-president of the Ten Percent Society, said she has not seen any discrimination against LGBT students by the UW Homecoming Committee in selecting members of the court.
“This is not an issue on our campus,” Parker said. “We’ve had LGBT people apply and make it on homecoming court.”
Parker said traditional roles of homecoming kings and queens are discriminatory, and she approves of how the UW Homecoming Committee has handled this issue.
“The king and queen positions are heterosexist, and that’s why we don’t have them,” Parker said.
Anonymous (December 7, 2004 @ 2:01am):
You liberals are so pathetic.
Anonymous (December 7, 2004 @ 9:25am):
You conservatives are such rednecks.
(God, I love quality public discourse.)
Anonymous (December 7, 2004 @ 9:42am):
We absolutely must get rid of all traditions that offend anyone.
Of course, that's impossible, but still...I won't stop protesting on Library Mall and getting my name/picture in the papers and meeting hot/easy liberal chicks until it happens!
Anonymous (December 7, 2004 @ 11:58am):
Are you fucking kidding me!? I don't know where to begin. No king and queen? Heterosexist? There is nothing wrong with tradition. The LGBT community is so hateful towards the rest of the campus, they take every chance they get to decry something as innocent as homecoming king and queen and call it discrimination. If a guy wants to run for queen and wins, fine...he's queen. Same goes for women (oops, sorry...should I spell that "womyn") running for king. This is not discriminatory. This is another instance of the extreme left telling the rest of the campus what policy should be.
Shame on the Homecoming Committee for bowing to this OUTRAGEOUS issue. The more you jerks in administration turn UW into a PC 1984, where all things white male or traditional are thoughtcrime, the less money you'll see from myself and other alumns.
p.s. LGBT needs to lighten up.
