U. Oklahoma Agrees to ‘Separate-But-Equal’ Study Lounge for LGBT Students

In order to create a more “inclusive” environment on the campus of University of Oklahoma, the Queer Inclusion on Campus group has requested their own LGBT study lounge. How that facilitates inclusion is beyond me, but if a bunch of gender studies students say it’s necessary, who am I to question them? I wonder if I can get my own lounge for white people, or would that be racist?

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From The Daily Caller:

Officials at the University of Oklahoma have announced plans to enhance inclusivity on campus by building a separate-but-equal student lounge which will segregate gay, lesbian and transgender students by themselves.

The idea for ostracizing students based on their sexual preferences came from an OU group called Queer Inclusion on Campus, reports The Oklahoma Daily.

“Queer Inclusion on Campus is an initiative of several students representing the issues that are important to the LGBTQ community,” OU senior Alexander Ruggiers told the campus newspaper. “We produced a document that we delivered to a lot of high level administrators about things that we wanted to see changed.”

The students behind the 20-page document had originally sought an resource center for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students. Thus, the special, segregated study lounge amounts to a compromise.

“Through a meeting with President Boren and other high level administrators we reached a happy medium which was a new LGBTQ study area,” Ruggiers, a gender studies and English major, told the Daily.

“It’s going to be huge,” Ruggiers also explained. “I think it’s going to be used for a number of things, one, to have a sense of community, something that LGBTQ students have never had before.”

The taxpayer-funded school’s officially segregated study lounge will provide a safe space for gay students, OU spokesman Kasey Catlett explained.

Steering a bunch of gay students into one convenient place will also mean less harassment, predicted OU student David Martin.

So what do you think? If this fair to the rest of the students or should every group have their own area?

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