|
|
|
William Jewell's Widening Embrace. How the college founded by Southern Baptists has treated sexual orientation.
April 3, 2009
by Bradley Osborn
It’s progressivity in an unlikely place: the gayest of plays being staged at a college founded by Southern Baptists. In August 2008, Professor Kim Harris, now directing the William Jewell College Theatre production of Angels in America, presented a paper to the Association for Theatre in Higher Education titled The Queering of Theatre at William Jewell College. In it, he charts the evolution of creative and academic freedoms at the school.
Harris first notes the founders’ identities as Missouri Baptists looking for a place to build a college to train ministers for the rough frontier. With regard to theater, there was a prohibition on smoking and simulating drinking alcoholic drinks on stage. This policy was later dropped, but the requirement of play pre-approval by administrators was sometimes in place over the years.
In the early 2000s, the staging of The Vagina Monologues became a point of contention. Missouri Baptists were incensed at the thought of a play about that certain female part. The play went on, but vaginaphobic Missouri Baptists were ready for a fight. There were also demands that faculty members be required to sign an agreement affirming parts of Genesis as literal fact. In contrast, William Jewell was permitting its students to discuss the possibility of integrating “sexual orientation” into the text of the Student Bill of Rights.
Disgusted at these welcoming developments, the Missouri Baptist Convention voted to withdraw its support of William Jewell.
Soon, the phrase “sexual orientation” was indeed added to the Student Bill of Rights. But during a panel discussion on homosexuality, organizers could not get a William Jewell College LGB student to appear on stage, so an empty chair was placed there instead. It was after this that The Empty Chair came to be published. Students, faculty and staff contribute original works to it annually, penning pieces on sexual orientation.
A group called PEACE allies (Providing Everyone a Caring Environment) formed, allowing LGBT students to provide support to each other, with faculty and staff PEACE allies.
U.S. News & World Report named William Jewell as its Liberal Arts College of the Year for 2009. Sexual orientation is now included in the anti-discrimination section of faculty and staff hiring policies. And the college has screened many LGBT-themed films, staged The Laramie Project, held the Band-AIDS fundraiser and hosted queer-inclusive Youth Leadership Institute camps.
The hilltop is warming to the breadth of humanity.
|
|
|
|
