Queer Histories / Queer Futures

Purdue's history is full of queer life, celebration, and resistance. This project is a celebration of the LGBTQ Center's 10th anniversary, commemoration of the 50th anniversary of queer activism at Purdue, and tribute to the LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and faculty that shape the university’s past, present, and future. 

This is an interactive, campus-wide story map of exhibits curated from the University’s Archives and Special Collections. Scroll and click through to learn more about the rich history of LGBTQIA+ life and activism at Purdue. Use the provided maps to visit each exhibit on your own, or sign up for one of our walking tours guided by LGBTQ Center staff and leaders. 

This timeline not only captures the diversity of LGBTQIA+ organizations that have existed at Purdue, but also highlights important milestones for LGBTQIA+ students, faculty, and staff in our community.

Below you will be able to scroll through a map of the locations the LGBTQ Center will visit on our walking tours. Feel free to visit each one as you continue scrolling to see some of the artifacts on display in Stewart Center and read about the history of LGBTQIA+ life at Purdue.

Our tour begins at our LGBTQ Center. This center exists as a direct result of advocacy by students, faculty, and staff, who called for the creation of space specifically for LGBTQIA+ students and the appointment of full-time staff. The LGBTQ Center was opened in July 2012 by Vice Provost for Diversity and Chief Diversity Officer, Christine Taylor, and founding Director, Lowell Kane, becoming the fourth cultural center on Purdue’s campus. In the LGBTQ Center’s first year, we created Purdue’s inaugural HIV/AIDS Awareness Week where we hosted the AIDS Memorial Quilt and brought our first guest, Cleve Jones, to discuss the importance of remembering the AIDS epidemic and those impacted by the disease. 

Since then, the Center continued programming and policy initiatives to enhance LGBTQIA+ life on Purdue’s campus and champion student-led initiatives. The LGBTQ Center has been able to host major speakers, such as Tarana Burke and Sasha Velour, and work with students and campus partners to create gender inclusive housing and processes for adding students’ preferred names in campus systems. The LGBTQ Center also launched the Sex, History, & the Cities study abroad program in 2014, which would go on to host three more cohorts of students to teach them about international LGBTQIA+ community. Today, Purdue’s LGBTQ Center is regarded as one of the best in the nation, having been ranked 1st in the state and 13th in the country by Campus Pride Index. We are excited that our work over the past 10 years has brought positive change to Purdue’s campus and we look forward to continuing to advocate for Purdue’s LGBTQIA+ students, faculty, and staff. 

Our next stop is the front steps of Hovde Hall. This has historically been an important site for activism on campus. Our discussion of activism here at Hovde highlights that there has been decades of activism for LGBTQIA+ rights, visibility, and inclusion on Purdue's campus before the center.

In 1983, Purdue's Student Association issued a recommendation to University administration to add 'sexual orientation' as a protected category under Purdue's EEO policy. This policy change would provide a pathway for legal recourse to LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and faculty who experienced discrimination.

In 1997, a hate group posted fliers across campus expressing prejudice toward several marginalized communities. As a response, the LesBiGay Network joined other student organizations in a diversity vigil to oppose the hate speech and oppression experienced by marginalized students on campus. The next year, a gay college student at University of Wyoming, Matthew Shepard, was murdered for his sexual orientation. This hate crime sparked national outcry from the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies. On Purdue's campus, over 70 students attended a vigil honoring Matthew Shepard, which sparked important conversations on campus about the dangers of homophobia and the need for anti-hate crime policies.

In 2005, the Queer Student Union held a candlelight vigil walk from Memorial Mall to Hovde as part of their National Coming Out Day programming. The vigil was in recognition of the struggles faced by those who were not yet out.

The events featured here by no means represent all student-led activism for the LGBTQIA+ community. We have shared the stories we have uncovered in Purdue's archives and aim to acknowledge that the movement for visibility and equality has been and continues to be a movement driven by students.

We are now heading over to the Purdue P Statue. In 2010, this was the location of a National Coming Out Day (NCOD) celebration that was organized by faculty and staff. While we have evidence that student organizations have previously celebrated NCOD, we do not have evidence that faculty and staff participated. We do, however, have documentation of this particular celebration where faculty and staff were visibly celebrating their identities. Several presenters that day would go on to be leaders in Purdue Employee Pride (PEP), an organization founded in 2018 pushing for visibility and inclusion for LGBTQIA+ staff and graduate students. These presenters include people such as Tonya Agnew, SJ Houston, and Laurie Graham. This celebration emphasizes the fact that staff played a large role in visibility and activism before the Center opened its doors.

Here on Memorial Mall, we want to acknowledge and celebrate the large community of LGBTQIA+ students that has existed on campus. As well, we want to highlight the numerous organizations that have been pushing for change on Purdue's campus for 50 years.

Students founded Purdue Gay Alliance in 1971 with the purpose of providing people with the opportunity to find out about homosexuality and issues impacting the LGBTQIA+ community without fear of being "found out" by friends, family, or co-workers.

A few years later, in 1973, students also founded Purdue's chapter of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). This organization's purpose was to 'educate the community that homosexuality is a positive alternative lifestyle to heterosexuality, to work for changes in the legal status of homosexuals and work for the elimination of discrimination of gay people.' Their first callout meeting was held in Stewart Center room 314, and their September 1973 meeting had 25 attendees. They offered several programs including a monthly publication of OutFront magazine, film nights in Fowler Hall during the summer, consciousness raising groups for gay men and lesbians, and a kissing booth set up during the Activities Carnival. In addition, GLF raised funds to take out a 1/2 page ad in the 1974 debris (yearbook) featuring a quote from Jill Johnston's book, "Lesbian Nation," that reads, "if you can't walk out your door and down the street and into the park in any familiar embrace wit the one you love, the whole society is in trouble." GLF was recognized as an official campus organization by University President, Arthur Hansen, in January 1974.

In 1974, a group of lesbians splintered off from GLF due to sexism within the organization and founded the Gay Women's Alliance. Their mission was to help gay women in the school and in the community, focusing on informing the general public and pushing toward creating major legal reforms. At that time, LGBTQIA+ people did not have employment protections of any kind, which came with a chronic fear of losing their jobs. This is a continuing struggle for many LGBTQIA+ people today, as there is no 'cover-all' policy protecting this community against job discrimination at the federal level.

In 1994, a new group emerged on campus. The LesBiGay Network, later called the Queer Resource Network, had a large impact on LGBTQIA+ student life. One of their projects in 1997 involved creating and distributing "Safe Zone" stickers for local businesses and organizations that acknowledge that space is safe for anyone of any race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, and ability. This is an important practice, as it allows students and other community members to identify inclusive spaces where they can feel free to be their whole selves, without fear of harm. In that same spirit, our LGBTQ Center offers Safe Zone training that empowers participants to support LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and faculty and create change on campus. Over 2,500 students, staff, faculty, and community members have participated in Safe Zone training to better understand the unique needs and concerns LGBTQ people face in higher education and increase their knowledge, skills, and abilities to create a more inclusive and affirming campus. Those that complete this training receive a placard for their office door that identifies dedicated safe spaces on campus for LGBTQ people to connect with allies to the community.

In 2003, students formed the Queer Student Union (QSU). This organization was responsible for many years of activist programming for students on campus. Major events included National Coming Out Day, Trans Day of Remembrance, and Second Chance Prom. The QSU also organized an annual Day of Silence on campus. This day is performed in remembrance of those who have been silenced because of part of their identity and at the end of that day, the QSU has a Breaking the Silence event to reflect and celebrate LGBTQIA+ identity.

All of these organizations were creating community and activist spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community before Purdue's LGBTQ Center opened. Their efforts sparked necessary conversations and change on campus that made the Center's opening possible.

After the Center opened in 2012, Purdue's LGBTQIA+ students continued forming organizations to center their experiences and needs. For example, the Queer Student Union renamed itself the LGBTQ+ Student Alliance in 2013, which focuses on education, activism, and promoting safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ students and allies. Also, Queer Students of Color (QSOC) was formed in 2015 by Purdue students Charles Hawthorne, Joshua Nelson, and McKeith Pearson. QSOC supports LGBTQ students of color at Purdue by promoting education about the experiences of LGBTQ people of color. They host meetings for members and also holds space for community members to discuss important world events impacting LGBTQIA+ communities of color, such as shared experiences, activism and self-care during the Trump administration.

Our fifth stop on this tour is Stewart Center. This is a significant place in LGBTQIA+ history for our campus, as several organizations held meetings and callouts in this space. Here, we will discuss the conversations that moved across campus over the years and the people whose time on campus made a huge impact on LGBTQIA+ life.

Having such a rich presence of LGBTQIA+ faculty, staff, and students on campus has sparked several crucial conversations about LGBTQIA+ identity, lived experience, and community needs. In addition to conversations taking place in newsletters directed towards the LGBTQIA+ community, these conversations also happened in the Purdue Exponent. It is easy to assume that LGBTQIA+ life on campus was extremely underground as many people were forced to be closeted. However, these articles demonstrate that people were speaking (writing) about issues impacting the LGBTQIA+ community very publicly for decades.

In 1973, GLF (Gay Liberation Front) began producing a newsletter called OutFront to communicate their work and connect with their community. We are fortunate to have a copy of their October 1973 issue in our archives. This issue features stories like "Drag and the Oppression of Women," which covers the ways that participating in drag allows gay men to break out of gender expectations, but also reinforces stereotypes about LGBTQIA+ people and satirizes women. The issue also asks for help getting a library together on all things LGBTQIA+ and mentions a new hotline number. The hotline is intended to share information on the gay community or "to call and rap with a Bisexual or Homosexual." They had 15 telephone volunteers who received training from the Lafayette Crisis Center.

A 1982 review of the film Making Love published in the Exponent sparked a lot of conversation about LGBTQIA+ identities. The film is about a married man coming to terms with the fact that he’s gay, and the love triangle that develops between him, his wife, and another man. We have records of several responses published in later issues of the Exponent capturing both homophobic backlashes to LGBTQIA+ issues as well as LGBTQIA+ advocacy. One of the responses to conservative backlash poses a sarcastic recommendation that the unsupportive party simply construct a 'Homotron bomb' that would kill all homosexuals and leave the heterosexuals to continue creating a society composed of white, god-fearing, middle-class citizens. 

The Sapphos Network published several issues of their Network Newsletter for lesbians in North-Central Indiana in the 1990s. These issues capture meeting minutes and correspondence with the Network. One of the recurring columns is "Dear Sue" letters where people can write to "Sue" asking for advice on relationships and life.

Another Exponent article, entitled "Straight People Can Change," is a sarcastic commentary on common arguments made against the validity of LGBTQIA+ identity. In it, the article argues that through the power of prayer and God's love, straight people can change. The article plays off of the common argument that LGBTQIA+ are flawed and need fixing, by reversing the argument to expose how offensive those types of comments can really be. Again, this is an awesome example of the LGBTQIA+ community showing up for themselves publicly to have important conversations.

Of course, these are not the only conversations sparked over the years related to LGBTQIA+ identity, inclusion, and activism. We have highlighted a few of them on this site in order to demonstrate the breadth of ways LGBTQIA+ students have created space for themselves on Purdue's campus.

Throughout history, there have been several members of the LGBTQIA+ community at Purdue who have contributed to the movement. The physical exhibit highlights over 10 faces, our digital site will highlight four people from across Purdue's history.

Our first notable face is Professor Joakim Reinhard. Reinhard joined Purdue faculty in 1896 as an instructor of German in the Department of Literature, History, and Language. In 1897, he was promoted to Associate Professor of German before leaving the university in 1899. Our records do not indicate why he left. However, during his time on campus, Reinhard was known to be queer. A student poem called "Purdue Mother Goose," published in the 1898 debris (yearbook), features Reinhard in reference to his sexuality. The artifacts we have surfaced on Reinhard indicate that he was beloved by students and respected by fellow faculty, which may be surprising given the attitudes toward the LGBTQIA+ community at that time. Reinhard's story demonstrates the fact that LGBTQIA+ people have been integrated into Purdue's history since the university's earliest days.

Jumping forward in time, our next notable face is Jim Mahan. Jim makes the list because in 1973, he campaigned for Homecoming Queen. When asked by Exponent reporters about his reason for running for Queen instead of King, Mahan remarked, “I view my running as a comic sociodrama to point out the absurdities inherent in the Homecoming Queen Contest.” This was a very controversial campaign, which faced significant pushback from the Pep Committee who declared that any ballots for Mahan as Queen would not be counted. In response, members of Mahan's Male Homecoming Queen Committee argued that denying ballots for Mahan would constitute sex-based discrimination under Article 8. We do not know if Jim identified as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, but the work he did to challenge the gender norms by running for Homecoming Queen advocated for inclusion of those outside the gender binary. Close to 50 years later, Purdue implemented a new gender-neutral policy in 2018 to crown two students as Homecoming Royalty, rather than King and Queen.

Much of LGBTQIA+ history has been whitewashed. That is, queer histories tend to highlight the stories and experiences of white people and organizations while intentionally ignoring or erasing the contributions and experiences of queer people of color. One of the results of this whitewashing is that our artifacts of LGBTQIA+ history at Purdue do not often feature narratives of queer students of color, although they certainly existed historically and continue to push the movement for queer liberation forward today. Our final two faces are Charles Hawthorne and McKeith Pearson, founders of Queer Students of Color (QSOC). By founding this organization, these then-students created a space to center the voices and experiences of LGBTQIA+ students of color, who are often marginalized in broader LGBTQIA+ spaces, as well as on Purdue's campus.

We are moving! The LGBTQ Center at Purdue was first based in the Engineering Administration building on campus, which was demolished in 2014 to make way for the Wilmeth Active Learning Center (WALC). Since 2014, the LGBTQ Center has been based in Helen B. Schleman Hall of Student Services and while we have loved having our home on the second floor, we are also turning our attention to ways to increase the capacity and reach of our space. So, we are excited to announce that starting Spring of 2023, our new home will be in Hicks Underground Library! This move will over double the size of our current center, which allows us to host more programming, expanding our ability to serve the LGBTQIA+ community. The libraries staff at Purdue have already given us a warm welcome, and we are excited for what this move will mean for Queer Futures at Purdue!

Join us on our walking tour to check out our future home! (sign-up link below)

Thank you for participating in our virtual tour of Queer Histories / Queer Futures at Purdue. The LGBTQIA+ community on campus has come so far, but the work is not done yet!

Be sure to check out our opportunities for guided walking tours led by LGBTQ Center staff and volunteers (link below), and head over to our display cases in Stewart Center and Schleman Hall to see more artifacts!

Please also check out our 10th Anniversary landing page to explore other opportunities to celebrate the LGBTQ Center's 10th Anniversary!

Share this link on social media and tag the Center to let us know what you think!

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