How is the LGBT community at Johns Hopkins? Besides the obligatory student-run LGBT group, are there any facilities, programs, or services for the LGBT community? Is there a Safe Zone program on-campus (and if not, is the whole campus generally pretty safe)? Are there accommodations for transgender students (such as private bathrooms, unisex public bathrooms, a relatively simple way to change your name with the university, etc.)?

Thanks for answering my questions!


Edit:

Also, do you know of any churches near campus that are inclusive to the LGBT community? On St. John's website, I noted that they are an inclusive church, but do you know of any others? Is there a Religious Society of Friends group on/near campus, in particular?

I don't know about stats, but the LGBT community at Hopkins is here, and it's far from underground. We have a Diverse Sexuality and Gender Alliance (DSAGA), and the Counseling Center has recently announced that it now has an LGBT therapy group. (Quote part of the announcement: "This is a weekly unstructured group for students who identify as LGBTQ, are same-gender loving, or are questioning their sexual preferences and/or gender. The group provides a safe place for students to discuss issues related to how they identify, either in terms of their sexual practices or gender identity. This also includes people who are unsure but questioning their LGBT sexual preference or identity.")

Meanwhile, there currently isn't a Safe Zone program here (at least as far as I know). I think, though, that most faculty and students here are accepting of people who have different sexual orientations from them. As for restrooms, most restrooms are the typical men's bathrooms/women's bathrooms with multiple stalls each, but there are a couple of private, single-accommodation bathrooms (although I'm guessing they were designed with mostly physically handicapped individuals in mind, since they have toilets and handicap-friendly metal bars).

I know that only a few blocks south of campus (it's next door to the Hopkins Hillel building) is the Homewood Friends building. It's not affiliated with the University, but it's probably the closest gathering of Friends to the Homewood campus. :)

To add to Kate's post, DSAGA is a very active and welcome group on campus--each semester they host a slough of events that many students (even who aren't associated with DSAGA) attend.  

Like Kate mentioned, the Counseling Center provides a lot of great resources for anyone needing special accommodations--they will be very supportive of one's needs and help them locate resources--whether that is locating single bathrooms on campus (there are a LOT--esp in Gilman), working with the administration to change ones name, or just providing support and a supportive network --Kate mentioned the LGBT Group.  The Counseling Center at Hopkins is great--the staff are helpful and knowledgeable and can help with a lot more than just providing one-on-one counseling! So keep that in mind as a resource.

In general, Hopkins Campus is a pretty accepting place =)

Also--One student just wrote a Guest Blog about his experiences on Coming Out at Hopkins! Check it out: http://hopkins.typepad.com/guest/2009/03/c...with-dsaga.html

I've been meaning to respond to this, so sorry for the late reply. First off, I'm the current Events Coordinator of DSAGA, which stands for the Diverse Sexuality and Gender Alliance. Pretty much we are the GSA at Hopkins. We are currently in the process of trying to get a Safe Zone program here, but in all honesty, the community at Hopkins is pretty open about everything. I've personally never felt endangered or anything, and the only instance in which something did happen was when random people started ripping DSAGA's signs down for an event. Nothing major, we alerted the Reslife office, and all was smooth sailing. I mean, you're always gonna find someone that doesn't share the same beliefs as you, but in general, they're pretty rare occurrences at Hopkins.

As for transgender students, I don't think there's a way to change your name with the University, but you can always start new and change your name to the new people you meet. I know it's completely different but I went mainly by Peter my whole life, and now I've changed it to Pete more often than not in college. I mean, it really depends, but more and more people started calling me Pete, and that's fine with me. Like I said, it's not the same, but it's not like your friends will be able to see your real name all the time anyway.

Now, for some events that DSAGA sponsors. First off, DSAGA meets every Monday night at 8pm in Mattin 160 (or 162, I forget, haha). Anyway, there are random themes for the meetings, and sometimes we don't even meet in that room. Some past meetings have consisted of movie nights, smoothie/baking parties, Gay Bingo (such as anatomy and safe sex habits), trips to Mount Vernon, phone-banking with the College Democrats, and a Condom Hunt. Mainly we want to promote safe sex around campus as well as spread the word about our organization.

Other than our meetings we sponsor two events for National Coming Out Day. The first event consists of us having a big closet on the breezeway and if people walk through it, symbolizing "coming out of the closet", we give them a cookie or a piece of candy. They can come out as whatever they want, we just use it to spread the word about DSAGA. Also, we have a Coming Out Day Dance, and this year we actually had a Gay've (Gay Rave). It's a lot of fun and we have students from other universities in Baltimore show up, so it's a nice little mixer.

Also in the month of April we have Awareness Days, which is spreading LGBT awareness throughout the Hopkins community. We usually invite speakers or performers to show up and have some nice events open to the whole community. Last year we actually saved our budget so we would have more funding for this year, and we're still in the planning process for who we're going to bring.

But yeah, if you have any more questions about LGBT life at Hopkins or want to get in touch with anyone at DSAGA, our e-mail is dsaga@jhu.edu Pretty much anything you e-mail us about is confidential, so you could also e-mail us about anything you need to talk about. The community is here for you, even if that sounds really corny, haha.