Members of the LGBTQ+ community at Duquesne University were concerned and fearful after a photo began circulating the student body that many initially, and inaccurately, interpreted to depict Duquesne President Ken Gormley at a Trump-hosted inauguration event for his biggest supporters. As both a graduate student at Duquesne and a member of the community, I shared their concerns.
Worried about the kind of message this may send to members of the LGBTQ+ community on campus and what implications this could have for students in the community, I reached out to the Office of the President for comment. The response I got pleasantly surprised me but also opened up a broader conversation about Duquesne University’s relationship with the LGBTQ+ community and why people were so willing to assume the worst immediately.
The photo in question, sourced from a New York Times article with the headline At Trump’s Luncheon, Billionaires Mingle with Senators and Supreme Court Justices, prominently featured the infamous faces of Mark Zuckerberg and Brett Kavanaugh. President Gormley was seated just on the right edge of the frame, one table over. In fact, if he and his seating partner had switched seats, he would not have appeared in the photo at all.
Gabriel Welsch, Vice President of Marketing and Communications of Duquesne University, was more than happy to provide context for the photo.
For one, “President Gormley is a registered Democrat who formerly served as [Democratic] Mayor of his hometown of Forest Hills, PA.” Welsch said, dispelling any Trump supporter allegations.
President Gormley is also a renowned and published Presidential and Constitutional Scholar, making his presence at the event pretty standard in his line of work. Mr. Welsch informed me that, “President Gormley had previously attended the Obama inauguration…as well as the impeachment trials of both President Clinton and President Trump.”
The final element of the image that had people concerned was his presence at what the article headline referred to as “Trump’s Luncheon.” This may have been a slightly misnomer, as Mr. Welsch pointed out, “This was not a ‘private’ event for donors or for political supporters. Rather, it was the final official event of the inauguration ceremony held in the Capitol. It was hosted by U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.”
Even his presence at that event was a fluke, as “President Gormley was initially scheduled to attend the inauguration with the general audience outside, thanks to a ticket provided by retired Congressman Mike Doyle (D. Forest Hills) who is a long-time friend,” Mr. Welsch explained, citing that when the events were moved inside last minute, Democratic Senator, a long-time friend and former roommate of President Gormley, Mark Warner, was able to score him a last-minute ticket to the indoor event, “attended by prominent Democrats and Republicans.”
With this additional context, it may be appropriate to say that President Gormley is unfairly maligned at times, given his role as the public face of a notably Conservative institution. Mr. Welsh concluded his message by pointing me to a few paragraphs that President Gormley sent out to the University community, which mentioned Duquesne’s commitment to members of diverse communities, with the LGBTQ+ community being mentioned by name. Though I do not doubt that President Gormley believes his words on a personal level, it’s hard to see them as any more than mere marketing when viewed at an institutional level. Given Duquesne’s history with the LGBTQ+ community, it would be hard to argue that Duquesne hadn’t brought this level of, frankly deserved, scrutiny on itself and its leaders.
Duquesne University’s stance on the community can be thought of, for lack of a better term, as closeted. I will give Duquesne some credit. The university does offer some resources to their LGBTQ+ students, many of which are wrapped into wider DEI initiatives, which as of this writing are still standing. So that’s a plus all around.
However, it seems that if the community wants to show their Pride or publicly associate Duquesne with the LGBTQ+ community, Duquesne retreats back into the closet.
One of the larger controversies Duquesne faced was the one surrounding the Gender Neutral Fashion Show, an event that was held by the Gender Forum and Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, allowing students to express themselves however they see fit, regardless of how they may identify in their everyday lives.
While the 2018 version of the show had gone off without a hitch, it wasn’t until a month before the 2019 iteration was set to begin that Duquesne decided to have a problem with the show. The cited reason was that they had received complaints about the posters which depicted a male model wearing a dress. Not that the dress was revealing or provocative (it wasn’t, it was a plain black mid-thigh length dress) but that it was a man wearing it.
The story only became more problematic when it had been reported by the student newspaper the Duquesne Duke and Pittsburgh Magazine that a portion of the complaints, the actual volume, and content of which the University never bothered to expand upon, may have come from outside the University. Instead, it seemed that Bishop Zubik of the Catholic diocese allegedly had complaints come into his office.
While Duquesne never outright barred the event, it was reported that they insisted terms like gender neutral be removed, a move that appeared to be an attempt to erase queerness from something that should have queerness at its heart. Fortunately, due to mounting pressure, the University did reverse its decision, and the show went on as intended. Though it seemed even here, Duquesne was hesitant to admit that it may have been wrong or caused damage to a community, with President Gormley himself, in his official announcement concerning the reversal of the decision, referring to the entire debacle simply as a “great deal of misinformation and miscommunication.”
In another move that gave the LGBTQ+ community reason not to trust Duquesne, they had caved to pressure from Bishop Zubik and cancelled a planned LBTQ solidarity mass that was meant to occur on campus in 2023. Strangely, a similar mass was held the year prior to great success. It certainly doesn’t bode well when there are growing elements of the Catholic Church that are becoming more accepting of members of the LGBTQ+ community and Duquesne shows clear evidence of moving backwards.
Finally, the most recent example of this came when the University’s LGBTQ+ organization, LAMBDA, ultimately lost its nearly seventeen-month fight to change its name to the Queer Student Union. Much of the issue with LAMBDA’s original and current name is it doesn’t convey much about what the organization is about or who it represents.
The relative abstractness of the name also limits discoverability, and might make it difficult for students to know that such an organization exists on campus. I know I was certainly surprised when I found out, years into my undergrad program.
Duquesne did throw LAMBDA a symbolic bone by approving an extension of the name to LAMBDA: Gender and Sexuality Alliance, but that name was criticized for being too long to be practical and still limited how easily discoverable the organization was. It also has the effect of being general sounding enough to minimize the explicitly queer elements of the organization. All of these problems would have been immediately alleviated with a name change to Queer Student Union.
Ultimately, the Duquesne administration blocked the name change. This is after unanimous organization approval and approval from the Student Government Association. The University provided the flimsy excuse that they worried how the word “queer” would be perceived outside of the United States. A scathing editorial from the Duke, referred to it as “an apparent act of cowardice” and said that “Duquesne has failed to serve the majority of its students.”
While I will have the grace to admit that I was very wrong in my interpretation of the photo that initially inspired me to speak out, and, on a political and maybe personal level, about President Ken Gormley, however, I do not believe the concern, anxiety and fear that I or any member of my community feels when presented with such information is unjustified. Recent history has shown us that Duquesne University has given members of the LGBTQ+ community several reasons to be highly suspect and distrustful of it as an institution and its leaders, especially now, with the four years we face in front of us.
