The Silence Is Broken: A History of the First Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual College Student Groups

Abstract

The story sounds familiar: following a 1969 confrontation in New York, a small group of self-identified lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and their supporters created a militant gay rights organization in the United States, one that would help foster the gay liberation movement. However, the indi? viduals involved in this group were not residents of New York City but students at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and the confrontation was not the riot of working-class black and Latino drag queens at the Stone? wall Inn in Greenwich Village but the takeover by African American stu? dents of Willard Straight Hall, Cornell's campus union. Nor did the group, the Student Homophile League (SHL), begin in the wake of Stonewall; rather, it was formed in 1968, making it the second gay rights group to be organized on a college campus, after Columbia University's Student Ho? mophile League, of which the Cornell group was initially a chapter.1 While Stonewall served as a main catalyst for the rise ofa new era in the struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, the preceding gay activism at Columbia, Cornell, and a handful of other universities played a critical role in laying the groundwork that would enable a militant movement to emerge following the riots. Not only did the stu? dent groups take the lead in asserting a sense of pride in being gay, but,