Sep 16, 2005  |  By: ELIZABETH WEILL-GREENBERG  | COMMENTS     

LEX RECZKOWSKI didn’t sound too surprised that his alma mater, Virginia’s Hampden-Sydney College had the unfortunate distinction of ranking No. 1 on Princeton Review’s top 20 worst schools for gay students. The private, liberal arts college for men sits 60 miles southwest of Richmond, the state capital.

Based on surveys answered by 110,000 students, the Princeton Review created the 2006 edition of “The Best 361 Colleges” and included best and worst rankings for food, partying, academics and quality of life for gay students. Ninety percent of the survey was conducted online and the rest of the responses were filled out by students in high-traffic campus areas across the country, according to the Princeton Review.

Organizers sent out an e-mail blast to undergraduates nationwide asking them to participate in the survey. On average, 300 students were surveyed from each school.

Out of the 70 questions asked, one was: “Do students, faculty, and administrators at your college treat all persons equally regardless of their sexual orientations?”

WHEN RECZKOWSKI, WHO graduated from Hampden-Sydney in 2003 and now works in the campus library, was a student he was selectively open about his sexual orientation.

“I was only out to the correct people,” he told the Blade. “If anyone was brave enough to ask, I was proud enough to tell the truth.”

Reczkowski did this as a “safety measure.”

“I can’t say I was afraid of physical violence but more emotional abuse or unthinking comments,” he said.

As a student, when Reczkowski received anti-gay harassing phone calls, he went to a school dean to complain. The dean told him that he didn’t know there were any gay students at the school and then, out of naiveté, not malevolence, asked him to name other gay students, Reczkowski recalled.

“That didn’t make me feel so good about being here,” he said.

While Reczkowski said that being gay on campus is slowly becoming a “non-issue,” the administration needs to do much more, like taking the lead in helping to create a Gay-Straight Student Alliance. A gay student alumni group is being formed, he said.

“I don’t think our student leaders should have to take the risk,” he said. “Nobody wants to be the first one to recognize the pink elephant in the room.”

Thomas Shomo, director of Hampden-Sydney’s public relations and chair of the Inter-cultural Affairs Committee, agreed saying, “I can’t say it’s a campus where students feel comfortable being out to more than their own circle.”

He said he planned to discuss the rating at an upcoming staff retreat.

“We’re moving in the right direction, but we’ve got a ways to go,” he said.

He acknowledged that the school also needs to address problems of racism. Hampden-Sydney was on the top 20 lists for students most nostalgic for Ronald Reagan and for most homogeneous student population.

STUDENTS AND STAFF at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tenn., seemed more shocked by their school’s place on the anti-gay list. Staff and alumni at Holy Cross said they were at the forefront of supporting gay students’ rights at Catholic colleges. Holy Cross administration recognizes its two gay student organizations and one support group.

“I think Holy Cross was the first Catholic school to officially recognize and support a Gay-Straight Student Alliance,” said Jeannie Seidler, an alumna who founded the campus group in 1995.

Now Seidler runs a support group for Holy Cross gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students. Several have difficulty reconciling being Catholic and gay, she said.

“Many of the students are Catholic and may have had internalized homophobia,” she said. “They struggle coming out to themselves.”

An increasingly conservative Vatican also affects gay student life on Catholic campuses, she pointed out.

“In some ways Holy Cross has their hands tied behind their back,” she said. “There’s only so much you can do within the Catholic Church. There is some fear with Ratzinger being pope. … Will there be faculty and administration that are ‘too supportive’?”

Even though support and advocacy groups do exist at Holy Cross, and the religious department incorporates gay liberation into a liberation theology course, gay students may still feel isolated, she said.

“It’s not a place you would feel supported until you tap into those supports,” she said. “A lot of students have never talked to anyone gay before — that they know of. It’s hard always being the one to educate.”

Daniel Corrou, a gay chaplain at Holy Cross who advises the gay student clubs, said that the ranking doesn’t reflect how supportive the administration is.

“I don’t think it’s anywhere close to reality,” he said. “For us, it’s a ...