Table Of ContentGay Liberation to
Campus Assimilation
Early Non-Heterosexual Student Organizing
at Midwestern Universities
Patrick Dilley
Gay Liberation to Campus Assimilation
“Patrick Dilley’s new historical study based on universities in the Midwest since
1969 helps transform the study and understanding of the diversity and complexity
of both student life and student organizations on the American campus. In analyz-
ing the trends from Gay Liberation to Campus Assimilation, he simultaneously
provides a sorely needed study of previously overlooked students and their organi-
zations. By bringing this story into the mainstream of higher education scholar-
ship, he has expanded our understanding of the entire American college and
university structures and cultures.”
—John R. Thelin, Professor of Higher Education and Public Policy,
University of Kentucky, USA
“In this meticulously researched book, Patrick Dilley not only gives us the first
comprehensive history of LGBT organizing on college campuses, he also provides
a framework for understanding how these student groups formed, did their work,
and ultimately changed their politics with the world around them. This is required
reading for historians of education, activism, and sexuality.”
—Nicholas L. Syrett, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,
University of Kansas, USA
“In this book, Dilley articulates the evolution of non-heterosexual student movements
and, at the same time, provides powerfully moving stories of individual student leaders
of the time period. He presents nuanced evidence of the inherent tensions caused by
local, regional, and historical contexts, as students struggle to define the purposes of
these early activist groups and as these purposes evolve to meet contemporary needs of
students. This comprehensive and well-sourced history is an excellent contribution to
our understanding of social movements on college campuses.”
—Robert D. Reason, Professor of Student Affairs and Higher Education,
Iowa State University, USA
“The explosive rise of queer university student organizations is one of the most
important stories in the history of higher education during the 1960s–70s, yet it is
shockingly understudied largely because of how difficult it is to unearth sources for
these ephemeral groups. Patrick Dilley has broken ground for this research by
compiling an impressive collection of accounts describing the surge of activism
during these years at a variety of large Midwestern institutions.”
—Jackie Blount, Professor of Philosophy and History of Education,
Ohio State University, USA
“Once again, Patrick Dilley has applied his considerable talent to bring forward
important stories in the history of higher education and of what some scholars
now call queer history. Through painstaking archival research, he focuses on stu-
dents who were then–as queer students are now–engaged in the project of libera-
tion. Dilley’s newest project connects past to present, honors student organizers
and activists, and illuminates enduring themes in the evolution of student engage-
ment with and against their own institutions. This book will be a key resource for
understanding queer campus life in the second half of the 20th century.”
—Kristen A. Renn, Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education,
Michigan State University, USA
Patrick Dilley
Gay Liberation to
Campus Assimilation
Early Non-Heterosexual Student Organizing at
Midwestern Universities
Patrick Dilley
Educational Administration and Higher Education
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-04644-6 ISBN 978-3-030-04645-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04645-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019931006
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
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Also by Patrick Dilley
Queer Man on Campus: A History of Non-Heterosexual Men in College,
1945–2000
The Transformation of Women’s Higher Education: The Legacy of
Virginia Gildersleeve
A
cknowledgments
Historians are indebted to those who save and cull pieces of the past for
future use. Of note in this project are the unnamed folks who scanned and
made searchable the student newspapers at the University of Illinois, the
University of Michigan, the Ohio State University, Michigan State University,
and others. When I began this project, I was dependent upon what report-
age and clippings others had found and saved; I never thought I would be
able to read, at my leisure, far from their campus of origin, those student
newspapers. A part of me is glad I did not finish this project “on schedule,”
so that I was able to learn—and to cite—from those sources.
Similarly, I am thankful to institutional archivists and administrators
from across the Midwest, including Ellen Swain, Anna Trammell, Chris
Pram, Monica Burney, Katie Nichols, and Curt McKay at the University
of Illinois; Frederick Honhart, Jennie Russell, Megan Malone, and Ruth
Ann Jones at Michigan State University; Bradley D. Cook, Carol Fischer,
Dale Mitchell, Eric Groves, and Doug Bauder at Indiana University; Jean-
Nicholas Tretter, Rachel Mattson, and Lisa Vecoli of the Tretter Collection
at the University of Minnesota; Beth Zemsky, Peter Berg, and Erik Moore,
also at the University of Minnesota; David McCartney at the University of
Iowa; Gerald Peterson at the University of Northern Iowa; Jill Rosenshield
at the University of Wisconsin at Madison; Anselm M. Huelsbergen, Julie
Herada, and Debbie Landi at the University of Missouri; Kathy A. Lafferty,
Emily Beran, and Becky Schulez at the Spencer Research Library at the
University of Kansas (KU); Michelle Drobik at the Ohio State University;
Stephen Kerber at the Louisa H. Bowman University Archives at Southern
Illinois University Edwardsville; Tanya Zanish-Belcher, Jerry P. Hayes,
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
and Michele Christian at Iowa State University; Karen L. Jania at the
Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan; and Lois
Henrickson, also at the University of Michigan. A queer kudos to Dr.
Leah Reinert for doing the legwork for me at the University of Minnesota.
Thanks, too, to Jim Morrow and the late Stuart Timmons, for their assis-
tance at the ONE Archives/National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the
University of Southern California (USC) Libraries. Hats off to Tim
Bradlee for keeping (and printing) a chronology of events at KU in
1990, and to KU’s Julia Gilmore Gaughan for tracking down Student
Senate Bill 1998- 093. Special thanks to Amy Cantu at the Ann Arbor
District Library.
In addition, other librarians and archivists at a number of institutions
assisted me in locating and accessing information about gay and lesbian
students and organizing at their campuses. Thank you to the staffs of the
Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, the University of
Kansas, the University of Illinois, the Ohio State University, the University
of Northern Iowa, Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, the
University of Missouri, Michigan State University, the University of
Minnesota–Twin Cities, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, the
University of Missouri at St. Louis, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana
University, and the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.
Working with student newspaper editorial staffs, which changed, of
course, during the 16 years I worked on this project, was very rewarding.
I thank the editorial staff at the Iowa State Daily, Daily Illini, The Michigan
Daily, and the Ohio State Lantern for assistance obtaining permission for
photographs for this book. James Andres and Dennis Brumm must be
congratulated and thanked for publishing their memories, photographs,
and transcriptions covering the early history of gay organizing at Southern
Illinois University Edwardsville and Iowa State University, respectively. I
appreciate the assistance of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Barcroft
Media for allowing me to license images they each owned. In addition,
thanks to Stephen Behrens, Brian Smith, Carol Wayman, and Dan Jones
for use of their photographs.
I am immensely grateful to the former college student activists who
spoke with me over the course of this project. Thank you to Jim Toy, Jerry
De Grieck, Dan Jones, Leonard Graaf, Ruth Lichtwardt, David Hardy,
Carol Wayman, Michael Blake, Kristina Boerger, and Steve Carlson. I wish
I could have included more of our conversations within this text. I also
wish I could have profiled all of the institutions I researched.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
I was fortunate enough to present portions of the data and my thinking
about this project at a number of academic conferences, including the
History of Education Society, the Organization of Educational Historians,
the American College Personnel Society, the Association for the Study of
Higher Education, the Midwest Educational Research Association, and
the American Educational Research Association. I thank the conference
proposal reviewers for their feedback. Additionally, in conference sessions,
Jackie Blount, Karen Graves, and Ellen Broido gave comments that helped
my thinking and my writing.
I would particularly like to thank my colleagues in the History of
Education Society: Michael Havel, Jackie Blount, Lucy Bailey, Karen
Graves, Margaret Nash, Linda Eisenman, and Andrea Walton. Their
encouragement and joviality have sustained me through this project. Also
essential to me for the past 16 years were my friends Eric Moore, Kristen
Renn, Jim Antony, Karl Woelz, William Harris, Tamara Yakobowski,
Judith Green, and Saran Donahoo.
The editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan was supportive, encouraging,
and insistent when necessary. I want to thank the original commissioning
editor, Mara Berkoff, for her continued belief in my research projects.
Milana Vernikova, who provided much assistance during my first Palgrave
book, maintained her excellent oversight of the project. Linda Braus, the
editorial coordinator, was prompt and understanding, as well as having an
excellent editorial eye.
This project was funded in part through a Faculty Seed Grant Award
and research funding from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, as
well as a grant from the Association of College Personnel Administration.
I thank both institutions for their support, although neither have any
responsibility for what I write in this book.
Finally, this book is dedicated to someone I only met once. At the first
meeting of the History of Education Society I attended, I knew few other
people. For the open business meeting lunch, I hid on the side, at a large,
round table. There were a few newbies, and across the table were two
senior colleagues, heads close, involved in a conversation that did not con-
cern us. At one point, I mentioned to one of my lunch-mates that my
main line of research had been gay and lesbian college students. “But I’m
not sure I will ever do anything with it,” I said. “I think the interest in the
subject is gone.”
After the lunch session ended, I gathered my bag to leave. One of the
senior colleagues came up to me and said, out of nowhere, “You have to
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
continue your work. I use your work in my classes, and what you do is too
important not to finish.” When I saw his name tag, I realized I knew his
work, had read and admired it in graduate school. I thanked him, and he
walked away.
Unfortunately, I was unable to complete the project before his untimely
passing. Professor Harold Wechsler, I hope this book is close to what you
had in mind.
