Oct 19, 2007  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Four Georgetown University professors joined the university’s gay student group this week in condemning a decision by campus police to forcibly block members of the group from delivering a gay rights petition to university president John DeGioia.

The incident took place Oct. 11, minutes after gay students and their straight supporters participated in a campus rally to observe National Coming Out Day, an annual gay rights event aimed at encouraging gays to live openly.

“Today we were made to feel not just unwelcome, but as total enemies and criminals at our own school, simply for wanting to give our president a T-shirt and more signatures from our petition,” said Scott Chessare, co-president of the group Georgetown University Pride.

Chessare gave that assessment of the incident in an e-mail to the group’s membership, saying the petition, among other things, called on DeGioia to agree to establish a university-funded and staffed “LGBTQ Resource Center” to address gay issues on campus.

According to accounts by Chessare and the Hoya, the Georgetown student newspaper, about 10 uniformed officers with the campus Department of Public Safety rushed to the entrance of Healy Hall, the administration building where DeGioia’s office is located, and blocked the gay students from entering.

One of the gay students was “forcibly removed from the Healy steps” by an officer, Chessare said. He said that when officers were asked why they were blocking the gay students’ access to the building, they refused to give an explanation and “yelled” at the students in a demeaning way.

The officers initially allowed other students to enter the building and appeared to single out the gay students, who were wearing Coming Out Day T-shirts that displayed the words “I am,” Chessare said.

Julie Green Bataille, a Georgetown University spokesperson, said the campus police were restricting access to the building because a special event was taking place inside. She said the officers were following a longstanding policy of limiting access to the building during special events to persons invited to attend such events.

Bataille said the event included a reception and debate about religion between political commentators Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath.

Chessare said the action by campus police heightened tension between gay students and the Georgetown administration that surfaced last month, when a 19-year-old student was arrested by D.C. police for assaulting a fellow student in an incident that police listed as an anti-gay hate crime.

Members of Georgetown Pride complained that the university withheld information about the Sept. 9 assault for nearly three weeks, until D.C. police arrested Philip Cooney, 19, on Sept. 27. The group said the university placed other gay students at risk by not disclosing that someone had targeted a gay person because of his sexual orientation.

The assault took place on a street about one block from the main entrance to the campus.

Bataille said university officials determined that the assault did not meet federal criteria for a general threat to the campus. She said the university issued two statements condemning bias-related incidents shortly after Cooney’s arrest.

She said DeGioia has since met with representatives of George-town University Pride and issued a statement to the entire university community by e-mail saying the university would not tolerate anti-gay prejudice.

“Whether it is homophobia, racism, sexism, religious or other discrimination, intolerance of any kind is an affront not only to individual faculty, staff and students, but to our entire campus and community,” DeGioia said in his statement.

Bataille said at DeGioia’s direction, the university’s president for student affairs, Todd Olson, created a special working group consisting of students, faculty and staff to address the issue of anti-gay bias. She noted that the university already has a part-time staff member who serves as coordinator of gay resources.

Chessare said that following the incident with campus police, G.U. Pride has decided to boycott the working group, which he called a “fig leaf” aimed at deflecting attention from the university’s “inaction” on gay issues for more than six years.

In an Oct. 16 open letter to Olson, four openly gay Georgetown professors, led by professor of English Tommasso Astarita, called on the university to speak out forcefully against anti-gay prejudice.

The letter notes that the university’s reporting system for bias-related incidents on campus shows that sexual orientation-related incidents represented “at least two-thirds of all bias-related incidents” reported on campus in recent months.

It says the latest ...