The responses to questions about Smith friends and the Smith student body show that for the respondents, Smith provided LGBTQ community. A stark difference appears when the survey asked about how many of the respondents’ friends from home were straight and how many of their friends from Smith were straight. The graph below illustrates the responses to this question. Clearly, at Smith, the respondents were able to find many more not-straight friends than they were at home.
In one section the survey asked, “Have you and your gay friends at Smith ever discussed lesbianism/homosexuality? If yes, how was lesbianism a feature of that conversation?” Many responded that it came up talking about politics, one said “anything imaginable,” and another quipped, “Well, what else is there? ‘Lesbianism and food,’ ‘lesbianism and the modern world,’ ‘lesbianism and romance,’ lesbianism and capitalism,’ ‘lesbianism and facial hair,’… you name it, honey!” 1 Smith provides LGBT students today with queer community and friendships, and this data illustrates that this has been true at Smith for generations.
Only 124 people participated in this survey, but just how many LGBTQ people were on Smith’s campus at the time? We may not be able to know that, but the survey did provide an insight into how many LGBTQ people the respondents perceived to be on campus.
The graph below shows the results of the question, “What percentage of the current Smith student body would you estimate has ever been sexually involved with other women?” The range was 3-60 and the median was 20. Though the respondents had a wide range of answers, the vast majority thought it was under 35%. 2 What percentage of the current Smith student population do you think is LGBTQ?
The respondents held mixed comfort levels about being publicly gay on campus. When asked “How uncomfortable would you feel showing affection for another woman while walking around campus…?” on a scale from 1 (very comfortable) to 5 (very uncomfortable), 18.9% said 1 (“very comfortable”), 34.4% said 2, 27% said 3, 13.1% said 4, and 6.6% said 5. 3 Interestingly, 39.5% said they would be “very comfortable” if members of their house who were not gay knew that they had spent the night together with another woman in her room and 56.6% of women said they would feel comfortable talking about lesbianism in a general way in their house. 4 It seems that the respondents felt more comfortable talking about lesbianism in the “private sphere” and abstract than they did showing their sexuality in public. If you are queer, how comfortable have you felt expressing your sexuality or gender identity on campus?
