*Jamie has asked that her name and some details of her experiences be left out or changed in order to protect her and her partner. Under SAU policies, if Jamie was found to be having a homosexual relationship, she could be expelled or suspended and her parents notified. She left SAU that spring.
Hinkle and Jamie agreed to sit down interviews with BTL about their experiences as gay people at SAU. SAU’s “homophobic bubble” was born from controversy of Julie Marie Nemecek’s federal EEOC lawsuit against the university for discrimination on the basis of gender identity, but it has also given rise to stifling oppression against LGB students as well.
“This bubble is an illusion, says Drew Hinkle, president of SAFE, formerly the unofficial Gay Straight Alliance. “I feel like if you explain it to some one not in it, it seems like a sci-fi movie,” he says.
“SAU is our own little enclave, it seems disconnected from the rest of the world, including Jackson. We are a little happy conservative place where nothing happens, or if anything bad or dirty happens, it is swept under the rug. Everything in SAU is good. It’s this whole psychological mind screw,” adds Hinkle. “Jamie” agrees.
“The more classes I take, the more I hear about, even the professors will mention the bubble, that it makes SAU a safer place. That it’s not penetrated by the outside world. They don’t allow anything they believe to be non-Christian to stay in the bubble. They pretty much exile them off the campus.”
Both decided to attend Spring Arbor for its “Christian” community.
“All the students and stuff I met seemed really cool,” Jamie says. “I pretty much fell in love with campus. I was a new Christian at the time, and I thought Spring Arbor University would help with that. I did not realize all the hypocrisy at the time.”
That hypocrisy has Jamie jumping ship at the end of this semester in favor of a public university.
Hinkle concurs with Jamie, but unlike her, he is planning on graduating from this university.
“I see it as a sign of – for me, personally – of defeat,” Hinkle says of his plans not to leave the institution. “It would be like I gave up.”
And accepting defeat, in Hinkle’s mind, is tantamount to abandoning other LGBT students. Students he says have no voice. “I know that there are students in situations like where I was before I came out, was very effected by the homophobic community I was in and perpetuated by SAU. I had to find those kids and help them find their way out.”
Both Jamie and Hinkle confirm that as many as four students may have attempted suicide in the past calendar year as a result of sexual identity crisis. That could not be confirmed by phone calls to Jackson county’s Hospital, the closest hospital to the university or by SAU officials. In fact, SAU officials refused to return phone calls and emails seeking comment on the issue of LGBT students at Spring Arbor.
Supporting those students is key to both students. So important to them, in fact, they gave these interviews at great risk to their own academic careers at the university.
“I just hope that anyone who reads the piece that feels like they can’t be themselves even around their friends, that they know it’s not OK to feel that way. It’s not OK to feel like you are wrong. You are not wrong. It’s different but not wrong,” Jamie said. “I think people shouldn’t have to feel like the feelings they have or the relationships they have are wrong, even in God’s eyes.”