Last week, the College hosted an open panel for the Smith community to ask  alumnae about their queer experiences. Students were encouraged to write questions about coming out at home and at work under five categories – students, family, work, dating and friends – and how to extend the LGBT narrative after graduation.

One of the first questions asked was how being queer at Smith prepared or did not prepare alumnae for the real world. Kit Wang ’81 said that “going to Smith, I heard a lot of people telling their stories. And it was hearing their stories that made it easier for me to tell my own. The lesbian alliance at Smith helped me get used to people’s reactions.”

While today’s Smith is home to a vibrant and vocal queer community, Wang, who joined the priesthood after graduation, explained that Smith was not always a safe place to be queer. “Smith was open, but not hugely open in the 1970s,” she said.

Pam Chamberlain ’69 explained that “to identify as gay was immediate grounds for expulsion when I went to school here. The focus was primarily on issues of race and class rather than sexuality.”

A more recent graduate, Ryan Ambuter, said that while it was “easy to be gay at Smith” as an undergraduate in the early ’00s, there was “a clear defiance between the trans* and gay community. In fact, an easy way to live off campus was to say you were trans*.”

Alumnae were encouraged to ask students about resources available for the LGBT community at Smith. Parks Dunlap ’13 said that they noticed a lot of “armchair activism” in the trans* community. “People will blog about trans* issues, but they don’t always do something about it.”

A turning point in the conversation was when one panelist said, “By and large, Smith is not a place you need to do advocacy. When I was an undergraduate, I often found that students went out of their way to find things to get upset about.”

While Smith may be a more welcoming place compared to other colleges, Dunlap was adamant that there was still more to be done. “I’d like to push back against the idea that we’re ‘looking for stuff to get upset about,’” said Dunlap. “Yes, there is a lot of social advocacy, but if you’ve heard about … any of the recent stuff that’s been going on on campus, you’d know that we still have a lot of work to do.”

Regarding life after Smith, Chamberlain said, “I thought coming out for me would be a one-time thing. But I learned that there are stages to coming out.”

“You first come out to yourself,” said Chamberlain, “then to others. And chances are, you’re going to have a lot of jobs in your lifetime, and you might have to come out to the people there as well. However, there are some cases where you assume people just know and there isn’t really ‘coming out.’”

Many students were concerned about extending the LGBT narrative and finding communities similar to the ones at Smith. “Start things,” advised one alumna. “Be the organizer. Wherever you are, the LGBT community may not be as visible or numerous, but they are there.”