Plans Progress for LGBT 'Affinity House' at Dartmouth

The house, which will be home to at least 15 students, is likely to open in 2013 or 2014, administrators say.

Trudy Ring

Trudy Ring is The Advocate’s senior politics editor and copy chief. She has been a reporter and editor for daily newspapers and LGBTQ+ weeklies/monthlies, trade magazines, and reference books. She is a political junkie who thinks even the wonkiest details are fascinating, and she always loves to see political candidates who are groundbreaking in some way. She enjoys writing about other topics as well, including religion (she’s interested in what people believe and why), literature, theater, and film. Trudy is a proud “old movie weirdo” and loves the Hollywood films of the 1930s and ’40s above all others. Other interests include classic rock music (Bruce Springsteen rules!) and history. Oh, and she was a Jeopardy! contestant back in 1998 and won two games. Not up there with Amy Schneider, but Trudy still takes pride in this achievement.

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Trudy Ring

September 15 2012 1:43 PM EST

November 17 2015 5:28 AM EST

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Plans are progressing for an LGBT "affinity house" that will be home to at least 15 students at Dartmouth College.

The house will likely open in 2013 or 2014, college administrators told the campus newspaper, The Dartmouth, this week. Activists at the Hanover, N.H., Ivy League school have been urging the creation of such a house since 1999.

"It creates a social space where queer people can be explicitly queer in a queer environment, a space where you aren't going to have somebody walk by you and randomly yell, 'f****t,'" said Matthew Melikian, chair of the group Gender Sexuality XYZ. "In some [fraternity] basements, that's just a thing that happens a lot of the time. Not every space at Dartmouth is warm and accepting to queer people. As much as we'd like that to be the case, that's just a lie."

The house will provide communal space for residents as well, and will help meet employers' and graduate schools' increasing demand for applicants with "skills related to LGBT experiences and dynamics," The Dartmouth reports.

Some students have expressed concern that such a house will segregate and isolate LGBT collegians. However, Pam Misener, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership's adviser to LGBTQA students, said it is based on the concept that "people want to congregate around their shared interests."