Nov 13, 2009  |  By: Amy Cavanaugh  | COMMENTS     

Editors’ note: This is the first of a two-part series examining the campus climate for LGBT students at Georgetown following recent anti-gay incidents there.

It started when two men struck a Georgetown University student with her book bag, knocking her to the ground.

The attack — targeting a woman wearing a T-shirt bearing a pro-gay slogan — left the student with minor injuries and unnerved LGBT students on campus.

Another student, Lisa Frank, an 18-year-old lesbian from Oregon in her first year at Georgetown, happened to be wearing a “Legalize Gay” shirt from American Apparel on the same day of the assault.

“That was pretty unsettling,” she said. “That whole idea of being attacked because of what I was wearing or how my gender or sexual orientation was perceived.”

But the assault Oct. 27 that Frank and other students hoped was an aberration became just the first of several recent anti-gay incidents on campus.

On Nov. 1, a man allegedly assaulted a student after repeatedly asking him, “Are you a homo?” The attack, which occurred less than two blocks from the main Georgetown campus entrance, sent the student to Georgetown University Hospital.

The next day, a handwritten note left taped to the door of Georgetown’s LGBTQ Resource Center called director Shiva Subbaraman a “homo” and told her to “go back to India.”

Sgt. Carlos Mejia, commander of the D.C. Police’s Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit, said during a campus vigil Nov. 2 in response to the attacks that police are investigating. And Georgetown’s Public Safety Department is separately investigating the handwritten note.

Despite those efforts, J.M. Alatis, an 18-year-old gay man who serves as the secretary and historian for GU Pride, said he became increasingly alarmed at the developments.

“I came here from West Virginia, and I thought D.C. was more open and things like this wouldn’t happen,” said Alatis, who’s in his first year at Georgetown. “But with the second one, a few days after, I was angry and just upset that we had already had one rally against it and … [then] there was another attack.”

Carlos León-Ojeda, a gay 21-year-old Georgetown senior from New Mexico who co-chairs GU Pride, said the recent attacks have brought back memories of similar anti-gay incidents that occurred in 2007.

Among those incidents was a widely reported anti-gay assault in September 2007 against another Georgetown student, which happened near where the most recent assault against the male student occurred. In the older case, charges filed against one man were later dropped after prosecutors determined they lacked sufficient evidence to secure the suspect’s conviction.

“When the initial hate crimes happened then, they were a catalyst for the LGBTQ Resource Center coming into formation,” León-Ojeda said. “I was used to bias-related incidents happening sometimes, but this time they all happened within a week.”

Some students, including Frank, assumed such attacks at Georgetown were a thing of the past. When she heard people talk about the incidents from two years ago, she paid little attention.

“My thought was, ‘That was 2007, and it’s 2009 now,’” she said. “The year was off to a great start, and we were putting on events for coming out week and there were no incidents whatsoever. So it was shocking to get the first e-mail [alert from campus police] and really angering and frustrating to get the second one.”

The attacks were particularly chilling to Alatis and Frank, who said finding a campus with a safe environment for LGBT students was an important factor in their decision to attend Georgetown.

“I went to a very liberal high school with an active gay-straight alliance, though I was not active in it,” Frank said. “When coming to college, I wanted to be somewhere where I felt safe — and in a liberal and gay-friendly city. I checked web sites for clubs, and when I found out about the Resource Center, it definitely made me more comfortable coming here.”

Alatis added that while he isn’t out at home, he “wanted to express” himself at Georgetown.

“There’s a big difference between West Virginia and D.C.,” he said. “The campus is more liberal than my hometown, and I really wanted to go somewhere I could explore not just the LGBTQ organization but the community and where I wouldn’t have to hide anymore.

“Most other universities I applied to had organizations, but what Georgetown offers is the only resource center at a Jesuit university.”

‘Maybe that’s the reality’

León-Ojeda, Alatis and Frank said in the wake of the attacks, they’re cautious walking around campus and D.C., but don’t feel unsafe.

“You just have to know that on certain ...