Abuse Escalated as Catholic College Refused Help to Queer Student
When their roommate began abusing them with slurs and hate, a Notre Dame student’s pleas were ignored. The Catholic Church’s hard line on gender and sexuality are responsible.
by Evan Urquhart
An independent student run newspaper serving three Catholic colleges in Notre Dame, Indiana today featured a harrowing plea from a queer student, who faced escalating slurs and homophobic abuse at the hands of their roommate after hanging a bisexual pride flag in their room. According to the student, authorities at the University of Notre Dame, a renowned Catholic college which takes a hard line on gender and sexuality (and which the student says was once their “dream school”), repeatedly refused all help.
This student’s story starts out bad, as you can see, but gets much worse. In addition to having no support from school authorities to stop the abuse, the student wasn’t even allowed to change rooms at a time when many others were being allowed to do so. (It’s almost as if the slurs and abuse were being encouraged by the school, as punishment for the queer student’s identity.)
Make no mistake. This is an expected, even intended, result of the Catholic Church’s joining the culture war on the side of hate, misinformation, and fear. At Assigned, we’ve monitored the hate-mongering in the Catholic press’ multitude of outlets, including one essay that excoriated the University of Notre Dame for allowing alumni to create an LGBTQ+ affinity group. In an institution where former students can’t even create a LGBTQ+ group without pushback, is it any wonder a student experiencing homophobic abuse would find all avenues for help closed off?
It is impossible for Catholic and other Christian-affiliated schools to avoid winding up with LGBTQ+ students because LGBTQ+ identities are a natural (some even say god-given) part of human variation which arises in all times, places, and cultures. Many queer youth report being encouraged or even forced by their parents to attend religious schools as part of a larger parental project to force them to be cisgender and straight. But no amount of coercion, moralizing, or harassment is enough to make a queer student stop being themselves. Unfortunately, Catholic doctribe is in opposition to such a basic, observable fact, which is surely why abuse was not just tolerated in this case, but any option that might have ended the harassment was eschewed.
Surely if Notre Dame cared to protect this student they could have found a way to do so without compromising their religious teachings on sexuality? The student’s essay suggests one such option: Notre Dame could have allowed the student to move to a single room. If that was in some way untenable all sorts of other options come to mind. At any rate, regardless of whether gender and sexuality are officially in the school’s non-discrimination policy, student safety and the promotion of learning surely calls for action when one student is being harassed by a roommate they cannot avoid. It’s hard to understand the lack of other options here… unless of course the school was tacitly supportive of the abuse all along.