homophobia in academia

Yeditepe University knows no limits in homophobia

Source: “Yeditepe Üniversitesi Homofobide Sınır Tanımıyor!” (“Yeditepe University knows no limits in homophobia,”), KaosGL.org, May 8, 2014,http://kaosgl.org/sayfa.php?id=16550

Yeditepe University administration knows no limits in homophobia: censorship, prevention of academic study, offenses against freedom of association.

Anti-homophobic and transphobic students from Yeditepe University wrote a declaration regarding ongoing, frequently occuring homophobic and transphobic attitudes of the college administration. Concerned by possible threats to their ongoing education, the students could not reveal their names but spoke of what they experiences at the college:

LGBTI visibility is a problem for the administration”

“As LGBTI and ally students, we would like to state our relentlessness because of the frequently occurring homophobic and transphobic events in the school. Although there are LGBTI people in the school, the LGBTI visibility and its organization disrupts the status quo and is censored and obstructed by certain university institutions. We made a list of unfortunate events and would like to share them with you.”

Our right to organize is obstructed”

“Like LGBTI organizations and communities in many universities abroad, there are LGBTI organizations in various universities in Turkey. However in Yeditepe University, the idea of an LGBTI club is perceived as a disturbance. When we applied to the authorities for a gender studies club, the petition was not even considered for approval and the authorities stated verbally that these kinds of organizations would disrupt the school and damage its reputation.”

In their opinion, there can be no academic study over gender!

“Moreover, they claimed that there can be no academic study in this field. Our regulations, activity guidelines, proposed conferences and events that we would like to host, as listed on our application, were determined not worthy to be evaluated. The application dates announced to us were always postponed to future dates; but during this time, other clubs were permitted to be established. Furthermore, they permitted certain clubs to be founded on the dates we were not allowed. This is an indication as to how arbitrary in their decisions and how homophobic in their perspective the university administration is. To this date, we do not have any clubs for gender studies and the efforts of other clubs on this issue have been censored.”

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