Early Student Groups
The Student Homophile League was the first student gay rights organization in the United States, established at Columbia University in 1967. Its founder, Stephen Donaldson, was a former member of the New York City chapter of the Mattachine Society. He established the Student Homophile League because was forced by school administration to move out of his residence hall after complaints from roommates about living with a homosexual man. When Donaldson began meeting other GLBTQ students, he suggested they form a Mattachine-like organization on campus, and envisioned it as the first in a national coalition of student gay rights groups.
With his assistance, Student Homophile League branches were chartered at Cornell University and New York University in 1968 and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Spring of 1969. This led to the formation of two non-affiliated groups, the Homosexuals Intransigent at the City University of New York and FREE (Fight Repression of Erotic Expression) at the University of Minnesota in 1969, now the Queer Student Cultural Center.
On the West Coast, a Student Homophile League also was founded at Stanford University, likewise with encouragement from Donaldson, who had announced his hopes for the formation of a Stanford chapter in May 1967 in The New York Times. Under the leadership of a student who used the pseudonym Wendell Anderson, the Student Homophile League of Stanford University (which had no formal affiliation with the Columbia group) held three public meetings on campus in February 1968 and registered with the Office of the Dean of Students as a recognized voluntary student organization through spring quarter 1968. An effort to relaunch the organization the following academic year by Stanford freshman Barry "Bear" Capron was unsuccessful.
These first student organizations provided support to individuals who questioned their sexuality. They passed out gay rights literature, held dances and other social events, and sponsored lectures about the gay experience. Through their efforts, the campus climate for GLBTQ people improved, and made it possible for many others to actually accept themselves and come out. Also, by gaining institutional recognition and establishing a place on campus for GLBTQ students, the groundwork was laid for the creation of GLBTQ groups at colleges and universities throughout the country. By 1971, such groups had surfaced at more than 175 educational institutions across the United States.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Movements In The United States, Student Rights Movements
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