Homecoming Drag Queens

dotadave · Nov 27, 2004

The New York Times
November 27, 2004
Gay Students Force New Look at Homecoming Traditions
By SARAH KERSHAW

SEATTLE, Nov. 26 - Homecoming, the quintessentially American tradition featuring kings and queens wearing satin sashes and sparkly tiaras, is a tumultuous topic on campus these days.

Universities and high schools across the country, driven in large part by protests from gay students, are re-examining the ritual of crowning homecoming kings and queens, titles that often reward student achievement, are sometimes merely popularity contests and occasionally come with hefty scholarships.

Many colleges and high schools began to abandon the tradition in the 1990's, replacing the king and queen with homecoming "royals" and "top 10 students." Some, including Duke University, did away with homecoming in the 1970's, when advocates for women's rights succeeded in arguing that the contests were archaic and sexist and that they promoted stereotypical sex roles.

But elsewhere, including here at the University of Washington and at some campuses in the South, students have clung to homecoming, and now a raging debate, in many ways mirroring the national debate over same-sex marriage, has begun to ripple across the nation's campuses.

At Vanderbilt University in Nashville this month, a gay student who ran for homecoming queen and took his place on the court in drag at a football game caused a huge stir. In October, students at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota elected their first male homecoming queen. That student and the university administrators say they were barraged with hostile telephone calls and e-mail messages from alumni and parents.

"We always get Mr. Heterosexual Vanderbilt and Ms. Heterosexual Vanderbilt to be the perfect king and queen," said Everett Moran, 21, the gay senior at Vanderbilt who ran for homecoming queen.

Mr. Moran did not win the crown, but he was elected to the homecoming court, appearing at the college football game on Nov. 6 wearing a black dress with an Empire waist and elbow-length red gloves, accentuated by the yellow sash draped over each of the 11 homecoming court students. But he made plenty of enemies in the process, with critics loudly criticizing him in the college newspaper and elsewhere.

"When the gay community separates from mainstream, it's a way of disappearing into the shadows," he said. "I really just wanted to put it in everyone's face. I wanted to make alumni and students recognize that on this campus we have gay students, and as much as the administration wants to keep us in the shadows, off to the side and out of the limelight, I'm not going to stand for it."

Some high schools now hold separate gay proms. But gay students like Mr. Moran say that is not enough. They view homecoming as an opportunity to integrate gay students into a classically heterosexual ritual.

It is difficult to nail down a precise number of colleges and high schools that have recently revamped their homecoming tradition to include gay candidates or simply to elect two queens, two kings, a female king or a male queen, straight or gay. But in the last five years, challenges to the tradition have arisen on at least a half dozen campuses, including Hayward High School, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where a straight girl was elected king last year; she ran for king because she did not want to compete with her best friend, who was elected queen.

At another high school, Sweetwater, in National City, Calif., a lesbian was elected homecoming queen in 2001 and wore a tuxedo to the celebration. A gay male student was elected homecoming queen at Southwest Texas State University in 1999, the same year that another young man, also gay, ran for homecoming queen at New Mexico State University, prompting that student government, after a backlash, to rule that queens must be female and kings must be male. That rule was overturned in 2002 after a female student applied to run for king.

"First they focused on school prom, and now they're starting to say, 'We want to be included in homecoming,' " said Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a nonprofit advocacy group based in New York City.

Mr. Jennings said that in the past year he had heard from a growing number of high school students inquiring about changing homecoming to include gays. "Boys are supposed to be with girls and so forth, but gay people are saying there's another way to be," he said. "For some people that's scary."

At St. Cloud State in Minnesota, tensions were running high among parents and alumni last month, and an online chat room run by the local newspaper, The St. Cloud Times, was flooded with venomous reaction to the selection of Fue Khang, 22, a male senior, as homecoming queen.

"We believe that the homecoming queen should be a female and that Fue should hand over the homecoming crown," said Kim Ferber, 43, whose daughter was a candidate for homecoming queen at St. Cloud and who recently circulated a petition in town to reverse the decision, gathering 500 signatures. "The town is humiliated."

Mrs. Ferber said she thought the homecoming controversy was reminiscent of the debate over same-sex marriage.

"It's like, what's next?" she said. "We've got to draw the line."

Mr. Khang, who has not said whether he is gay but has become something of a cause célèbre among gays over the last few weeks, declined to be interviewed, saying through a university spokeswoman that he was afraid that more news media attention would place him in harm's way.

St. Cloud's president, Roy H. Saigo, who supported Mr. Khang's candidacy, and other administrators distributed a statement on a university e-mail list shortly after Mr. Khang was elected. It said: "College campuses have long been social catalysts in the work of opening up and creating a fair society. They play a key role in supporting social justice, equality and educational opportunity, even when traditions are challenged."

At Vanderbilt, university officials said they had not resisted Mr. Moran's candidacy - although there were meetings to discuss whether he could appear at the football game in drag. The officials said it was ultimately up to the students to decide whether to shake up the homecoming tradition.

And among Vanderbilt students, there were plenty of critics, including a columnist for the campus newspaper who called the move "one more tradition down the drain."

"We're stuck between a rock and a hard place," said Evan T. Mayor, editor in chief of the campus newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler, which found itself inundated with angry letters when Mr. Moran decided to run for queen. "We're trying to be a really diverse top-20 institution, but at the same time we're in the South, a place of deep-rooted tradition. I guess the politically correct thing to do is get rid of it."

Here in Seattle, there was far less rancor as the University of Washington crowned two homecoming queens this month but no king. The "royals," as the university now calls them, were two female students, neither one gay, whose titles were announced before a packed stadium when the Washington Huskies lost to the Arizona Wildcats. The university's students had decided that the $1,000 scholarships should be doled out on a "gender neutral" basis.

"I think that everyone is a little shocked by the change, but I think that it's very monumental," said Emi Nomura Sumida, 20, one of the two Washington royals, shortly after they made their debut at the football game wearing lavender sashes and holding giant bouquets of chrysanthemums.

"My friends were really, like, excited for us," Ms. Nomura Sumida, a junior majoring in communications, said. "But when you talk to other people you don't know as well, they're like, 'Oh, two girls, that's kind of strange.' "

The other royal, Glorya Cho, 19, a sophomore majoring in international studies, added, "I think that the gender-specific titles are becoming obsolete."

Brian Alexander and Eli Sanders contributed reporting from Seattle for this article.
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You know. I really hate homecoming, along with all the other thinly vieled popularity contest in high school. You gay people who were terrorized out of going to school event with your partner didn't miss anything believe me. If it were up to me. I would abolish these things.

However, If they don't abolish homecomming at school then a good solution, a good compromise could be for the class to elect one student of either to be the class "monarch" or "royal" as one of the schools in the article does it. Then that monarch can choose another nominated student of either gender to be their partner. That way they don't have silly things like a straight student walking with a gay member of the same gender or men being elected queens. It's fair to both straight and gay students because neither gender norm is elevated.

What do you guys think?

LogsOnSticks · Nov 28, 2004

Damn, how much more controversy do we need?

You know, I'm gay and all, but...This isn't really a big deal...Homecoming IS a tradition, and I don't know why you'd want to go out of your way to change it in order to be accepted and heard...There are many other ways to do that.

But yeah, I don't like the whole homecoming crap, either...

gertie · Nov 28, 2004

interesting article. the new civil rights movement is upon and around us.

sef · Nov 28, 2004

my school does not allow boys/men what ever they are to dress as girls. they will suspend you because you are a learning distraction....
so i cant dress that way
neither can the gay guys

but the girls can dress as guys??
or as sluts??

gertie · Nov 28, 2004

doesn't make sense in teh whole of it. but what in this regard seems to really?

sef said:

my school does not allow boys/men what ever they are to dress as girls. they will suspend you because you are a learning distraction....
so i cant dress that way
neither can the gay guys

but the girls can dress as guys??
or as sluts??
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