Homophobia strikes Reilly in form of threats
Sasha Solomonov - February 21st, 2008
On Monday, Feb. 4, after two weeks of coming home to homophobic phrases scribbled onto his whiteboard, Ash Arp returned to his 2nd floor Reilly dorm room to find a death threat.
The words “The dyke will die” were written in black marker in all capitalized letters over an old note Arp, a sophomore sociology major, had on the whiteboard. Arp, who identifies as transgendered and prefers the pronoun ‘he,’ quickly called his roommate Laura Bjork, a freshman English major who identifies as a lesbian, and the police to document the hate crime.
Bjork said she did not find the threat viable at first, but quickly realized the severity of the situation after speaking with the police.
“I started getting spooked because the cop told us to lock our doors, even when we were going to the bathroom,” Bjork said. “Then I started realizing the seriousness of the situation.”
Four days later Arp received an even scarier threat that undermined the safety of both his roommate and himself. On Feb. 8, the death threat left on Arp and Bjork’s whiteboard, “The dykes will burn, I will find the dyks,” ultimately prompted them to move out of Reilly.
“I was terrified,” Arp said. “I have known people that have been killed by hate crimes before and it scares me that for a while you think that you’re so safe on campus, you think that you’re so safe where you are living and then this comes up and it brings back these old fears.”
Arp, who serves as panels manager for PRISM the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) club at NAU, said the person who wrote the homophobic threat on his whiteboard did so out of ignorance.
“They try to make people feel uncomfortable to try and scare them back into the closet and scare them into a life that is socially acceptable,” Arp said.
Arp said his fearlessness to be out of the closet and serve on the executive board of PRISM made him a visible target for bigotry. Bjork is also an active member of PRISM and works as secretary to the club.
Aside from anonymously written death threats, Arp experiences discrimination just by walking to classes.
“I’ll be walking around campus and people will yell out, ‘that f-ing dyke should die,’” Arp said.
Arp and Bjork are not the only LGBT students to be subject to sexual discrimination in the residence halls. Earlier this year Amanda Pixley, a freshman hotel and restaurant management major who lives in McConnell Hall, got both her door and car defaced because of her expression of her sexuality.
“I had a rainbow sticker that said ‘celebrate diversity,’” Pixley said about her car. “One day I went to my car and it was gone.”
Pixley had rainbow pictures and photographs of lesbian icons ripped or otherwise damaged on her dorm room door.
“I was angry because I didn’t think I should go through this because I didn’t do anybody any harm,” Pixley said. “I’m just being myself.”
Pixley said her friend Helen Kennedy, a fellow McConnell resident, also had lesbian iconography torn from her room door.
Gretchen Wesbrock, freshman connection coordinator for Residence Life, personally called Arp after hearing he was the victim of a hate crime. Wesbrock said her initial reaction was to comfort and console Arp.
“Then there was anger because this is the kind of stuff that I absolutely do not tolerate happening in our residence halls,” Wesbrock said.
The death threats in Reilly lead to an all-staff meeting in the hall to discuss concerns about those threats materializing, educational programming and rallying around the victims to provide support.
Following the meeting, Reilly resident assistants provided passive programming to the residents in the hall to inform them of the dangers of hate.
“Often times the students that need the events most won’t attend them, but they’ll read a bulletin; they’ll read a sign in the bathroom stall,” Wesbrock said.
In addition, Residence Life holds campus-wide anti-discrimination events throughout the year such as Sechrist’s “Take My Voice,” where participants remain silent for a day to experience what it is like to be part of minority group without a voice, and Tinsley’s “Hunger Project,” which tackles socio-economic class issues.
The programs aim to show commonalities between all people and break stereotypes.
“There’s common misconceptions about the GLBT community,” Bjork said. “People always think gay people are going to jump you if they think you’re cute. Another misconception is that the GLBT community sleeps around and that’s not true.”
While Arp and Bjork both agree Residence Life handled their traumatic situation compassionately and efficiently, Arp said the university has to take responsibility for hate crimes committed on campus.
“Since I was identified as gay and not as a transgendered individual it is a hate crime,” Arp said. “But if they had identified me as a trans individual then it wouldn’t have been a hate crime, because gender identity and expression is not currently protected in the NAU bylaws.”
NAU is the only in-state university to not include the protection of gender identity and expression in its bylaws. U of A and ASU also staff an LGBT chair to educate faculty, staff and students about the gay community, while NAU has no such position.
Chris Duarte, a junior sociology and criminal justice major and president of PRISM, said the administration handled the situation poorly.
“(The administration) sends out e-mails for snow days, sends out e-mails after Virginia Tech; how come (they) doesn’t send out e-mails for hate crimes?” Duarte said.
Duarte also wants permission to hang cameras in residence life hallways to catch perpetrators of hate crimes and prosecute them.
If found, the author of the threats could face trial three times, twice for Arp and once for Bjork. Duarte also recommended that the perpetrator serve 100 hours of community service within the LGBT public.
Regardless of the death threats, Arp said the hateful comments have no effect on how he lives his life. He refuses to be afraid and continues to “live in the limelight.”
“I know I have people who look up to me and if I were to go back into the closet then it would show them that that’s what they’re supposed to do and it would make homophobia worse,” Arp said.