Why should gay students be treated differently than everyone else?

Cabot Phillips and Kaitlyn Schallhorn of Campus Reform report.

Public school gives LGBTQ students special study lounge

LGBTQ students at the University of Oklahoma will soon have their own special study center.

According to a report in the Oklahoma Daily, the public school’s student newspaper, the Queer Inclusion on Campus student group presented OU’s administration with a list of demands to better address the needs of LGBTQ students. While the students demanded their own resource center, OU President David Boren compromised with a study lounge in the student center.

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

According to a post on the group’s Facebook page, the Queer Inclusion on Campus has demanded 11 changes to the university in the spring including: safer learning environments, a vice president of diversity, scholarships for LGBTQ students, curriculum reform, inclusive student health care, and gender-neutral bathrooms.

The Oklahoma Daily reported that Kasey Catlett, assistant director of the LGBTQ and health programs at the Women’s Outreach Center, speculated that the study room would be large enough to build the LGBTQ community and provide a “safe space” for those students.

“It’s going to be huge,” he said. “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.”