Dear Editor,
I am writing to say how disappointed I am at recent happenings here at ETSU.
According to campus policy, “All persons are treated equally in the University’s programs and activities, recruitment and admissions, and employment practices.” (http://www.etsu.edu/humanres/ppp/PPP-62.htm)
This includes persons of different sexual orientations. However, as one of the key planners of the recent Pride parade for all LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) persons on campus, I find that this is just not true.
Our organization, Rainbow Alliance, ran into all sorts of difficulties in planning the parade. One of the most dismaying things was that we contacted University Relations well in advance of our event and, yet, our event was not added to the university calendar as we requested. In fact, to my knowledge, University Relations did nothing towards promoting our event as they claim they will do.
Likewise, not a peep was mentioned in the East Tennessean regarding our upcoming event. Nor was there any coverage of the event in the issue immediately following our event.
Furthermore, many of our members worked hard to design flyers and make sure that they were hung in many of the major buildings on campus only to find that, one or two days later, those flyers had been taken down.
Call it petty, but these are exactly the kinds of thing that our organization is fighting against. It is very disheartening to find that, on a campus which claims equal treatment, it is just not so and nobody does anything about it.
Jollie Nightingale

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