The registrar's office may not keep track of students' official grade point average, but Brown itself recently received a different kind of GPA. The Advocate, a gay and lesbian magazine, released "The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students" last month, assigning a "Gay Point Average" to colleges and universities across the country.
In addition to profiling 100 schools, the guide also includes the Advocate's list of its top 20 "LGBT-friendly campuses in the United States" that feature "the best programs, services and student coalitions for LGBT students," according to an Aug. 2 press release. But students looking for Brown in the rankings might be surprised to find that the University does not appear in the guide, which praises other Ivies, larger state schools and even the University of Rhode Island.
To determine each school's "Gay Point Average," the Advocate included evaluations of schools' LGBT-inclusive policies, programs and practices. The evaluation rated elements of college life ranging from general institutional support for LGBT students to services like available housing and campus safety.
The ranking of the top 20 schools took into account each school's "Gay Point Average" as well as information gleaned from 5,500 online interviews with LGBT students, faculty and staff from campuses all over the country. The list also took into account how individual schools have historically handled LGBT-related issues.
The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California both received a perfect score - out of 20 points - and tied for first on the top 20 list. Other schools in the top 20 included Indiana University, Stanford University and the University of Michigan.
The guide profiles but does not rank other schools. Bruce Steele, editor-in-chief of the Advocate, said this was done in part to account for the varied nature of LGBT students' experiences at the schools. "Ranking (all) the colleges would be a bit of hubris we would not presume," Steele said in an interview with The Herald.
The guide features quotes from LGBT students and advice on how students might select LGBT-friendly schools. It also provides guidance for campus officials on how to improve campus support and safety.
Michael DeLucia '07, head chair of Queer Alliance, expressed some skepticism about the validity of the rankings. DeLucia, who completed his freshman year at Wesleyan University before transferring to Brown, said both schools are "in some ways very LGBT-friendly." Wesleyan also was omitted from the top 20 list.
DeLucia said he disagrees with the notion that every school can be assigned a meaningful "Gay Point Average," adding that it's hard to apply a numerical ranking system uniformly across schools.
"I think this speaks to the arbitrariness of the ranking system," he said. "Each issue (the Advocate guide) is dealing with is at a different point of development at each school," Delucia said. "I am skeptical that you can (infer) from that and give a quantitative score."
DeLucia added that though he does not know "whether Brown deserves to be in the Top 20," the University shares many of the attributes of schools included on the list. He said QA - which works to promote advocacy, outreach and community building among LGBT students - has a "very visible" place on campus. QA is currently working to create more housing options for students who identify as trans-gendered and members of the organization are talking with administrators about potentially providing resources like free, anonymous HIV testing.
Steele said much of the feedback he has received regarding the Advocate's guide has largely been in response to the top 20 list, which was featured in a New York Times article earlier this month. He said administrators and students at schools on the list seemed proud to be included.
However, he acknowledged that many gay-friendly schools were likely left off the list.
"Being omitted from the list is not a reflection on the school," Steele said. He suggested that schools like Brown may be "so comfortable in their reputation" that they have limited knowledge of measures other schools are taking to make their policies, programs and practices more LGBT-inclusive.
"A word-of-mouth reputation is only one part of the criteria that go into a book like this," he said, adding that he "can't comment" on the reasons why particular schools did not make the list.
Anushka Merchant, a junior at Penn, expressed surprise at her school's high placement on the list.
"The only time I remember seeing a LGBT organization was during orientation in freshman year during a Campus-Organizations Fair," she wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. "I don't think I have even met any queer people here, but that might just be because people don't make it obvious."
Nadeen Kharputly, a sophomore at Stanford, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that Stanford's position on the list is probably warranted.
"I would say that Stanford is a pretty gay-friendly school," she wrote, adding that there are 14 LGBT student organizations on campus, including a number of ethnic LGBT groups, such as Black and Queer at Stanford, Queer and Asian and La Familia de Stanford.
Stanford also hosts a number of panels and events throughout the year addressing LGBT issues and allows incoming students to request "LGBT-friendly/accepting" roommates, Kharputly wrote.
