Now that President Barack Obama has signed a repeal to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, and as implementation of repeal proceeds forward in the next year, how should colleges prepare?  As a former U.S. Army officer commissioned through ROTC (and very proud of both), I tried to put myself back in time to think about what I might have needed had this repeal occurred during my college/ROTC years.

The Department of Defense (DOD) December 2010 report on DADT repeal implementation pays little attention to how colleges should prepare for the DADT repeal and the impacts on ROTC programs and cadets at civilian colleges.  Although ROTC programs were mentioned briefly in parts of the report, e.g., repeal would not likely increase ROTC candidate numbers or recruiters’ access to college campuses, there are no clear implementation steps for college administrators to follow in that report.  Leaders at universities will need to create their own implementation plans to ensure a smooth a transition on campus post-repeal.

Recommendations to College and University Leaders

The impact to colleges and universities will depend on campus leadership.  Following are some tips on how college leaders (at institutions with or without ROTC programs) might begin to plan for any impacts following the President signing the DADT repeal into law.  This list is not intended to be exhaustive, but offers some “action steps” that administrators and student leaders can think about as repeal becomes a reality.

Read the recommendations, after the jump...

My first blog for Campus Pride focused on the aftermath of an alleged anti-gay incident at Emory University that made the national news.  In that blog, I opined  that leaders at Emory and on other campuses across the country should try to figure out ways to have something positive come from an unfortunate event on campus.

After receiving feedback about the article, I thought that a follow-up “post” might be helpful to outline some ideas  about what campus leaders could do on campus to help decrease (or, ideally, eliminate) anti-LGBT harassment and bullying on campus.  As an aside, some feedback noted that I had omitted the “Q” in LGBT-Q in my first blog.  True, I did omit the “Q,” representing those on campus (and everywhere) who may be questioning their own sexual orientation or identify as queer.  For this and future blogs, I will add the “Q.”  My apologies to those who fall into the “Q” segment within the LGBTQ world (which I suspect may have included many of us at some point in our lives).

I noted previously that anti-gay animus is hard to detect, as only the actor who takes action against an LGBTQ individual or group truly knows whether his/her action was based on anti-gay feelings or beliefs.  But, for a moment, let’s put aside that issue since the determination of animus is “post-action”  and, instead, we should focus attention on what campus leaders can do “pre-action,” i.e., to prevent the occurrence of negative events on campus.  More campus energy should be spent on preventing harassment and bullying, rather than attempting to determine (post-action) why it occurred.  Newly introduced federal legislation, if passed, may require such energy.

In thinking about preventive action, I offer the following three ideas after the jump...