Illinois State University’s LGBTQIA+ community has long played a vital role in shaping campus life—often in ways that remained hidden from official narratives. While queer students, staff, faculty, and administrators have been a part of Illinois State University since its inception, the stigma attached to non-cisheteronormative identities has meant that their stories only began to enter into the written record during the second half of the 20th century. This timeline traces the evolving landscape of queer advocacy and activism at Illinois State and beyond, from early organizing efforts in the 1960s through the tumultuous 2020s. Drawing on newspaper and newsletter reports, oral history interviews, university archives, archived web pages, and personal communications, it highlights both the setbacks and triumphs that have defined this resilient community’s fight for understanding, equity, and justice across more than six decades.
Note: Where necessary for context, quotes are employed that use historical language to refer to members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Additionally, select milestones that speak to the broader milieu of LGBTQIA+ affairs in Bloomington-Normal have been included in italics.
1960s
January 1, 1962: Illinois becomes the first state in the country to effectively decriminalize homosexual behavior and relationships by striking its sodomy laws during a larger push to modernize the state’s criminal code. Connecticut is the second to do so in 1971, and 19 other states follow suit throughout the decade. Multiple gay alums interviewed for Milner Library’s Alumni Oral History Project noted that their decisions to attend college in Illinois were influenced by the state’s presence among this number.
April 19, 1967: Columbia University’s Student Homophile League becomes the first officially recognized queer student group on a college campus.
Circa 1968: Per a March 17, 1987, Vidette article written by members of Illinois State’s Gay People’s Alliance, “a group of 50 homosexuals, mostly women, met in Stevenson Hall, with several women guarding the doors and hallways.” They credit this with being the first organized gathering of queer students on campus.
April 12, 1968: John Parisie robs and murders former Bloomington resident Robert Chester “Chet” Jackson near Lake Springfield after Jackson “proposed an unnatural sex act,” according to the Bloomington Pantagraph. Parisie had asked a friend for help making his rent on April 8 and, after the friend refused, told him, “If nothing else I can roll a queer for money.” During the subsequent trial, Parisie’s lawyer and a psychiatrist testifying in his defense unsuccessfully argue that he may have been gripped by an “acute homosexual panic” when propositioned by Jackson, leading to “extreme fear and aggression in which the individual is almost like an animal.” The story sparks fear throughout Central Illinois’ gay community, highlighting the dangers of cruising during that era. Illinois becomes the second state in the nation to ban the so-called “LGBTQ+ panic defense” in 2017.
April 17-25, 1968: Illinois State’s Associated Women Students present Sexpo ’68, a week-long symposium on changing sexual attitudes and ethics. Topics of discussion include “Sex and Marriage,” “Free Love,” “Pornography,” and “Is There a Need for Sexual Revolution?” At least two speakers expound on homosexuality: David Sonenschein of Indiana University’s Institute for Sex Research, and psychologist Albert Ellis, author of Homosexuality: Its Causes and Cure.
June 28, 1969: A police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City, sparks spontaneous protests and rioting by bar patrons and other queer New Yorkers. This incident is widely accepted as the beginning of the gay liberation movement in the United States.
1970s
March 6, 1970: First mention of Illinois State’s Gay Liberation Front in the Vidette. A series of articles the following month introduce the GLF to campus and describe its significance in the larger context of the nascent gay rights movement.
![Flyer reads: "Out of the Closets and Into the Streets. ISU/IWU Gay Liberation Front. MEETING: AT ISU, Centennial East room 284. 2:30 P.M. Sunday, March 8th. Gay Brothers and Sisters, Eight percent of the student community at ISU & IWU is gay! Wea re the largest oppressed minority group. We are going to get what we want because we are over 1,000 strong! Last year two female homosexuals were forced to move to different dormitory rooms because they were engaging in sexual intercourse. They were referred to university counseling service. This is pure bullshit. If we get together we can stop crap like this. WE WILL NO LONGER ENDURE SUBJUGATION BY AN INSENSITIVE AND IGNORANT SOCIETY WHICH DOES NOT TRULY UNDERSTAND HUMAN SEXUAL BEHAVIOR!!!! The topics that will be discussed at this meeting will be, the organization of the GLF, membership, obtaining a faculty sponsor/advisor, regular gay dances, self-discovery and group study, bail fund, and demands to be made on the university. Also to be discussed will be the action or activity to be planned when Allen Ginsberg comes to Ill. Wesleyan. Get yourself together, be brave, accept yourself, so that others can accept you. Make sure you come to the meeting and bring your friends. POWER TO THE PEOPLE.... GAY IS GROOVY." [Omega symbol]](https://news.illinoisstate.edu/files/2025/11/glf.jpg)
March 15, 1970: GLF holds their first dance. Poet Allen Ginsberg, in town to speak at Illinois Wesleyan University, attends and is reportedly “kidnapped by a group of lesbians.” He writes a poem about the experience titled “Police State Blues,” which is published in the Vidette the following year.
November 9, 1971: First recorded meeting of Homophile ISU, a successor organization to the GLF, which had dissipated some time previously. According to founding member Alfred Karge, “we didn’t want to be associated with GLF… we were going to be nice, well-mannered librarians, dressed well, polite, that whole Barbara Gittings, (Frank) Kameny thing.” The group elects not to register as an official student organization, as that would require the officers to give their names to the University. Student activities coordinator Robert Elsey attributes this decision to the fact that “many students in teacher ed would have their careers threatened if they ‘went public’” with their sexual orientation.
January 8, 1972: Unable to apply for university funding as an unregistered organization, Homophile ISU holds its first drag show to raise money. Misses Melinda Deon, Anastasia, Renee, and Jamie of The Three Way Review perform at the University Union Annex.
October 3, 1972: First Vidette appearance of the name Gay People’s Alliance. According to Karge, “we changed the name from Homophile ISU to Gay People’s Alliance (because) we attended a conference in Milwaukee that radicalized us (Midwest Homophile Conference, Pg. 15). It was a bunch of people just like us who had organized at University of Wisconsin and other universities. All came together, shared ideas and stuff, and the first thing we did (when we got back) is no more wimpy Homophile ISU … we’re going to be Gay People’s Alliance.” The organization keeps the name until 1990, when they adopt the moniker Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GALA).
March 21, 1973: GPA sponsors a presentation by pioneering lesbian activist Barbara Gittings. Her speech, “Gay Liberation: What Every Heterosexual Should Know,” is held in Hayden Auditorium. Gittings, leader of the American Library Association’s Task Force on Gay Liberation, returns to campus in 1976 to speak on “homosexuality in the literature of children and young adults.”
March 29, 1973: GPA becomes an official registered student organization (RSO) with the ratification of its first constitution and receives an office and phone number in the Student Association Building at 225 N. University Street (since demolished).
April 1973: Rep. Webber Borchers introduces a bill to the Illinois House of Representatives to condemn Illinois State student fees going to support Gay People’s Alliance. The bill is defeated 9-2 in the House Higher Education Committee.
November 8, 1973: Psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis returns to campus to present a lecture as part of the yearly University Forum Series. However, unlike during his 1966 and 1968 visits, this time Ellis’ negative views of homosexuality are met with organized opposition. In advance of his arrival, Gay People’s Alliance circulates a flyer encouraging Illinois State community members to attend their regularly-scheduled meeting instead of the forum, which is being held at the same time. “GAY PRIDE AND GAY LIBERATION are alive and well and flourishing in organizations on campuses and in towns large and small across this nation,” reads the flyer, continuing, “Dr. Ellis cannot ‘treat’ this burgeoning, healthy movement and make it go away. The day of exploiting guilt and fear is finished. The new homosexual has rejected this wickedness. No longer does the doctor know best about homosexuality. We assert that we are the authorities and experts on homosexuality. Bigotry, not the people victimized by bigotry, is what needs ‘therapy’ … GAY IS GOOD – GAY IS PROUD – GAY IS HEALTHY.” A little more than a month later, the American Psychiatric Association’s Board of Trustees votes to remove homosexuality from the forthcoming edition of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), effectively declassifying it as a mental illness.
Fall semester 1975: Illinois State’s Intercollegiate Council of athletics coaches reportedly meet to discuss the “problem” of lesbians on women’s sports teams. According to the Post Amerikan, a local underground newspaper with close university ties, “they decide to leave the whole thing up to the discretion of each coach as each situation comes up,” leading to some aspiring female athletes saying they had been passed over because of rumors intimating they might be gay.
April-July 1976: Gay People’s Alliance sponsors a sexuality convention on campus April 2-4, featuring pioneering lesbian author Rita Mae Brown. Workshop titles include “Creative Sexuality,” “Transsexualism-Transvestism,” “Improving Communication in Sexual Relationships for Men,” “Religion and Homosexuality,” and “VD-Sexual Disease.” The convention also features films that show “abstractions of men’s and women’s bodies and/or make a statement about our sexual beliefs and our ‘sexual’ world.” In reaction, Normalite Steve Holmes and his organization, McLean County Citizens for Decency Through Law, circulate a petition asking the University to ban “X-rated” films, which garners about 6,000 signatures. The petition is presented to Bloomington’s state senator Harber Hall, who then distributes copies of the Vidette article announcing the convention to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee during a discussion of higher education funding, saying it was written by “somebody who has a sickness.” University president Gene Budig is quick to point out that no state funds were used in putting on the convention. The controversy continues at the July Board of Regents meeting, where Holmes’ group again presents their petition. Budig weighs in that “the university considers its present film policy to be as restrictive as current law and court interpretation permit.” Several regents say they support the petition’s aims, but a motion to address the university’s policies is not brought forward.
May 27, 1976: First meeting of the Gay Awareness/Action Union of McLean County, the area’s first queer community organization. Per the Post Amerikan, it forms out of the Citizens for Decency controversy and is “divorced from the university.” The group aims to “gather concerned citizens together to overcome the myths and stereotypes, especially as they appear in our community, about gay people and homosexuality.” The Post-Amerikan continues printing their phone number as a local resource through January 1982.
June 28, 1977: Champaign passes a city ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “race, sex, age, marital status, sexual preference, or personal appearance.”
October 14, 1977: GPA holds the first Gay Blue Jeans Day at Illinois State. Per a March 16, 1988, Vidette article, this was intended to be “a day where all who wore blue jeans were to feel the oppression of what it is like to be accused of being gay or stared at. The day was not only for gays to wear jeans, but a day where sympathetic individuals were allowed to make a statement about gay rights. The national event was called off due to a lack of response, but the news reached Normal too late to end GPA’s plans for the day. Gay Blue Jeans Day went on as originally scheduled and was covered by the local media.” Gay Blue Jeans Day is revived at Illinois State in 1986 during Gay and Lesbian Awareness Week in March and held annually through 1997. Its observance proves a consistent flashpoint each year, with students debating the event – and gay rights generally – in the pages of The Vidette.
April 6, 1979: My Place Discotheque, Bloomington’s first gay bar, opens its doors. Reports the Post-Amerikan, “opening night was a smashing success. Everyone I talked to, both gays and straights, expressed delight and astonishment that an openly gay bar had finally come to this town… a lot of local gays began to realize we aren’t going to have to travel out of town anymore to find a place where we can publicly meet and dance and drink and have fun with other gay people… energy was high and the atmosphere was electric. It was hard to ignore the feeling that something unique and historic was taking place.” The owners relate that their decision to open the bar in Bloomington as opposed to Peoria had a lot to do with the fact that McLean County was home to two universities. They also express surprise that their business venture has so far experienced “little opposition,” just “a broken window, a battered door, and a few taunts from passing cars.”
1980s
September 14, 1981: Gay People’s Alliance announces the formation of its Speakers Bureau, made up of “GPA members who are willing to be guest speakers in human sexuality classes or in residence halls to help managerial assistants (MAs) deal with homosexual people on their floors.” The Bureau is a formalization of GPA’s long-standing practice of sending members to speak to students in psychology and other classes about their sexual orientation and coming out process, as well as an extension of the group’s periodic “gay-straight raps” inviting heterosexual students to meet members of the queer community and ask personal questions in an informal setting. The Speakers Bureau remains a mainstay of GPA and successor organizations through the late 2000s.
December 1981: Lambda Council, a Blooomington-Normal group “for gay men and women” first organizes. According to The Pantagraph, it “plans to incorporate and sponsor such activities as a discussion group, fishing trips, baseball games, coffeehouses, and a float in Chicago’s Gay Pride parade.” As of March 1982, the group has seven members. Their newsletter WINGS (Wanted: Involvement Necessary for Gay Survival) debuts April 23, 1982. The last newspaper mention of Lambda Council announces their 4th of July picnic a couple of months later.
August 16, 1985: Herman Simon, Illinois State’s associate director of admissions, becomes the first reported death from AIDS in McLean County at age 39. An Illinois State graduate, Simon had been employed by the University since 1973 and was a founding member of Omega Psi Phi, Chi Beta Beta chapter. In 1991, two Black students of high academic standing are presented with the Herman Simon Achievement Award in his honor.
February 7, 1986: University President Lloyd Watkins issues a statement in the biweekly University Report to faculty and staff asserting that “Illinois State University is committed to providing students, faculty, and staff with a comprehensive educational program concerning AIDS, based upon currently available medical information. In those instances where a member of the university community is diagnosed as having AIDS or having tested positive for AIDS exposure, the university will consider all obtainable facts, medical information, and legal advice in determining the appropriate action to be taken.”
March 17-23, 1986: GPA holds its first Gay and Lesbian Awareness Week, which features the return of Gay Blue Jeans Day, a lip-sync battle benefiting AIDS research, and a screening of La Cage Aux Folles.
October 1986: First meeting of the McLean County AIDS Task Force. Per a February 25, 1987, Pantagraph article, the task force was led by the McLean County Health Department and included representatives from the “American Red Cross, BroMenn HealthCare, Illinois State University Gay People’s Alliance, McLean County Center for Human Services, Pastoral Services, PATH, Project Oz, Planned Parenthood, [and] Unit 5, as well as local gay businessmen and physicians.”
January 1987: Formation of the Progressive Student Union (PSU), a coalition of RSOs dedicated to promoting “political activity and awareness among the student body.” Member organizations include the Gay People’s Alliance, College Democrats, Third World Support Committee, and European Students Association, as well as the Bloomington-Normal Nuclear Freeze Coalition and ISU chapters of the National Organization for Women (NOW), NAACP, Amnesty International, and Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).
March 8, 1987: The Progressive Student Union organizes a protest against the yearly pilgrimage of neo-Nazi group New Order to lay a wreath at the birthplace of assassinated American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell at Mennonite Hospital in Bloomington. PSU’s rally attracts about 70 demonstrators, most of them Illinois State students. According to the Pantagraph, University president Lloyd Watkins and the mayors of both cities give brief remarks to the effect that “supremacist hatred cannot be ignored” before the group walks silently to New Order’s demonstration site, laying a wreath honoring victims of fascism thirty yards from the neo-Nazis’. The following year, only GPA and the Third World Student Association protest New Order’s appearance. 1989 marks the final year of the neo-Nazis’ ritual (only three members show up); instead of protesting at the site, which some deem unfair to hospital patients, those opposed hold a rally on the campus of Illinois Wesleyan University titled “Moving Forward Together.” Speakers include Normal Mayor Paul Harman and several representatives from Illinois State, including administrator Gloria-Jeanne Davis, professor Richard Jacobs, and members of GPA, Gender Issues Forum, and multiple Black student organizations.
March 5, 1988: GPA launches a gay and lesbian resource phone line (438-2429; GET-AGAY) staffed five hours per day. According to a Pantagraph interview with GPA president Stuart Underwood, it is intended to serve as “a conduit meant to aid individuals looking for activities with people who will accept the fact that they are homosexual or lesbian.” Operators can also answer questions on AIDS and safe sex, among other topics. In previous years, GPA members had volunteered with the local crisis hotline PATH to help queer and questioning Central Illinoisans navigate personal issues like clarifying their sexual orientation, coming out, and dealing with unsupportive friends and families.
September 1988: The RSO Gender Issues Forum first forms out of a “conflict in ideals” with the ISU NOW chapter, which had temporarily disbanded. A long-time ally of GPA and successor organizations, the group likewise changes its name several times through the coming decades, becoming Feminist Alliance in 1990, Women’s (sometimes styled Womyn’s) Coalition in 1992, Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA) in 2001, and finally Feminist Led Activists Movement to Empower (FLAME) in 2006.
October 1989: Illinois State adds sexual orientation to the list of protected classes in its non-discrimination and affirmative action statement, prompted in part by lobbying from GPA. Then-president Denise Goff ’86, M.S. ’04, remembers being invited, along with the leaders of several other RSOs, to a breakfast with university President Thomas Wallace to which she was asked to “bring any concerns or issues” she had. She “requested that sexual orientation be added to ISU’s non-discrimination policy and he followed through.” In articulating the need for the addition of sexual orientation protections, Illinois State’s Affirmative Action Office Director Gloria-Jeanne Davis notes that “this is a group that tends to accept the discrimination against them because they do not feel comfortable taking the case to authorities. We have to earn their trust and cultivate an environment that every student can work and live in. All students must know that they can come to the university if they are discriminated against.”
October 7, 1989: Illinois State’s Catholic Newman Center organizes a trip to Washington, D.C., for students to attend the Housing Now and NAMES Project rallies. The latter draws an estimated 50-60,000 participants to view the AIDS Memorial Quilt displayed on The Ellipse in front of the White House.
October 11, 1989: GPA holds its first National Coming Out Day celebration, one year after the event was first organized by the California-based organization National Gay Rights Advocates.
December 1, 1989: University Galleries observes the first national Day Without Art by covering works in its permanent collections “in a call for greater awareness of AIDS and its toll on society.” University Galleries has continued the tradition for 35 years, most recently by screening Red Reminds Me, “a program of seven videos reflecting the emotional spectrum of living with HIV today.”
1990s
January 23, 1990: David Wojnarowicz’s exhibition “Tongues of Flame” opens at University Galleries. Wojnarowicz’s work, which focuses on homophobia and the AIDS epidemic, had been at the nexus of a political showdown in New York the previous year when the National Endowment for the Arts withdrew its funding for his show “Witnesses” on the grounds that it was too political. After much debate, the NEA restored the funds but required that his essay “Post Card from America: X-Rays from Hell” be removed from the exhibition’s catalog. University Galleries’ retrospective catalog of Wojnarowicz’s work, also funded by the NEA, includes this essay. Concludes Vidette writer Kurt Gottschalk ’90, “in effect, the NEA is paying to publish the essay in Normal but refusing to in New York.” An estimated 700-800 people squeeze into the gallery space for Wojnarowicz’s impassioned opening address. “As each T-cell disappears from my body, it’s replaced by 10 pounds of pressure, 10 pounds of rage, and I focus that rage into non-violent resistance, but that focus is starting to slip,” says the HIV-positive artist.
>View more photos of the Tongues of Flame exhibition in University Galleries’ Flikr collection.
February 2, 1990: First planning meeting held at University Galleries to form a Central Illinois chapter of ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). Several Illinois State student groups take part, including GPA, Reproductive Rights Action Network, and Gender Issues Forum, as well as a number of Bloomington-Normal organizations.
February 20, 1990: California state Rep. Dana Rohrabacher circulates a letter to members of congress calling the “Tongues of Flame” exhibit “an orgy of degenerative depravity,” resulting in nationwide media coverage. With an estimated 6,000 visitors to the exhibition, University Galleries director Barry Blinderman reports mostly positive feedback locally. Rohrabacher’s attack prompts Mississippi-based American Family Association (AFA) to create a pamphlet titled “Your Tax Dollar Helped Pay for These ‘Works of Art’” which includes sexually explicit details of Wojnarowicz’s pieces copied from the University Galleries catalog. They send the pamphlet to thousands of newspapers and Christian leaders, as well as all members of congress. Wojnarowicz sues on copyright grounds and obtains an injunction against AFA, but passes away soon after from complications relating to AIDS. In the years leading up to his death in 1992 he spends “several weeks in Bloomington-Normal, publishing three prints with Illinois State’s Normal Editions Workshop, and creating some of his last major paintings and photographs in a studio he rented at Front and Center streets,” according to biographer Cynthia Carr.
March-April 1990: Gay People’s Alliance changes its name to Lesbian and Gay Alliance “in order to encourage more women to be involved in the organization,” according to Denise Goff. By August, the new name is abandoned in favor of Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GALA).
March-April 1990: A student places a homophobic sign in the window of his Watterson Towers dorm room. While persuaded by University Housing staff to remove the sign, he follows it up with additional homophobic remarks to The Vidette. Over the next few months, The Vidette prints nearly 30 articles, editorials, and letters to the editor, with some defending the student’s free speech rights and others denouncing his hateful language. ACT-UP/CI organizes a rally outside The Vidette offices on April 9, to protest the paper’s perceived “sexist, racist, and homophobic attitudes.” Two days later, the Academic Senate passes a resolution affirming their commitment to the University’s affirmative action and equal opportunity policy. The measure, which passes by six votes, is introduced by Department of English faculty member Curtis White, who explains that the sign controversy has “encouraged and supported discrimination against gays and lesbians,” citing threats of violence against one letter-writer.
April 24, 1991: The Academic Senate refuses to discuss a resolution introduced by White calling on President Wallace to “work with the administrations of other concerned universities with the goal of changing the federal policy” prohibiting homosexual students from joining the ROTC or receiving military scholarships, noting that it violates Illinois State’s affirmative action policy. The senate votes not to allow debate based on a Vietnam War-era ruling stating that “no faculty body shall take an institutional position on any partisan issue,” prompting a 30-minute demonstration by students in attendance. Protestors unfurl a banner that reads “ISU Discriminates” and chant “ROTC discriminates, ISU does nothing.” A week later, the senate approves a Sense of the Senate resolution calling on Wallace to “challenge Department of Defense policy that discriminates against homosexuals.” This issue had been a point of controversy since the addition of sexual orientation to the affirmative action language in 1989, with objections continuing well into the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era and also growing to encompass CIA recruitment on campus. The Student Body Board of Directors had voted earlier in the year to denounce the ROTC’s policy.
![Three pose behind a table. One of them is wearing a clerical collar. A poster next to them reads, "DO YOU FEEL LIKE YOU DO NOT BELONG IN CHURCH BECAUSE OF YOUR SEXUALITY/ YOU CAN HELP MAKE HISTORY IN CATHOLICISM. We are the Independent Episcopal Catholic Church Diocese of the Northwest. We celebrate the Liturgy. You receive the [Sacraments?]"](https://news.illinoisstate.edu/files/2025/11/IMG_9642.jpeg)
March 9, 1992: Longstanding queer community hub The Bistro opens in Downtown Bloomington, with current proprietor “Mama” Jan Lancaster taking ownership one year later. One of the first events held in the space is a fundraiser for the McLean County AIDS Task Force.
September 9, 1992: More than 300 panels from the National AIDS Memorial Quilt are displayed on the floor of the Brown Ballroom at Bone Student Center. At this point, the quilt contains some 12,000 names; today that number stands at 110,000, making it the world’s largest community art project.
October 1994: Thomas Lane ’91, M.S. ’95, and Elena Bernal attempt to create a group at Illinois State for “gay, lesbian, and bisexual staff and faculty members.” “A lot of people commented that the ISU campus was not a very supportive environment,” Bernal relates to Vidette reporter Crystal Curry ’98, noting that “the participation we’ve had so far shows there’s really been a necessity for a group like this.” Lane asserts that “confidentiality is of the utmost importance” to the organizers. A couple of meetings are held before the plans are abandoned, but the group does not appear to have ever gotten to the point of choosing a name.
October 29, 1993: A Vidette editorial notes that “the local chapter of ACT-UP is defunct.”
Fall semester 1995: GALA changes its name to Pride. In 1996, the name is acronymized to mean People Realizing Individuality through Diversity and Education (PRIDE). Sometimes styled as “Pride at ISU,” this name has remained to present day, though the acronym was dropped in the mid-2010s.
November 19, 1995: First meeting of the Advocacy Council for Human Rights (ACHR), “a voice for Bloomington area gays, lesbians, bisexual, families, friends, and supporters” organized around lobbying for a proposed amendment to Bloomington’s Human Rights Ordinance, which would “add family status, sexual orientation, and source of income to the (city’s) list of protected classes.”
March 23, 1996: The first annual Women’s Studies Symposium is held, with one panel dedicated to queer issues.
April 1996: Bloomington-Normal’s chapter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) forms. Two members of PRIDE attend the meeting “to serve as an information source to the parents and friends” and “offer the ‘kids’ perspective.” During the early 2000s, Department of Politics and Government faculty member Jyl Josephson takes over leadership of the group.
May 6, 1996: Despite an energetic campaign by several Bloomington-Normal organizations, including Pride, the Normal Town Council votes 5-2 to reject a proposed law that would have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. Bloomington’s Town Council had vetoed similar proposals in March 1984 and January 1996. Led by Illinois State alum and longtime employee Dave Bentlin ’88, ’92, Bloomington-Normal’s Advocacy Council for Human Rights continues the push to revise the ordinance during the years to come.
August 1996: Recently-hired Office of Multicultural Affairs Director Leonard Seawood says for the first time that his office will sponsor programming for “women, African-Americans, Latinos, international, and gay, lesbian, and bisexual community members,” an expansion of its original focus on Black and Latino/a students when it was first founded as the Multicultural Center in fall 1987. In 1998, the mission on the office’s website is extended to include providing “a supportive campus environment that … Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered (GLBT) students can enjoy.” The following year, Seawood appoints a liaison to PRIDE and invites them to use Multicultural Affairs’ building at 305 N. School Street for their meetings. PRIDE receives a dedicated space and phone number at the School Street facility, now renamed the Office of Intercultural Programs and Services, during the spring semester of 2002. When the office move to the Student Services Building circa 2005 and rebrands as Diversity Advocacy, PRIDE follows. Along with Diversity Advocacy’s other sponsored RSOs, they remain in the Student Services Building when Diversity Advocacy is again relocated to the Bone Student Center in 2017, though Diversity Advocacy continues to supply them with an advisor, provide “individualized leadership and advocacy training,” and sponsor programming aimed at the LGBTQIA+ community.
Fall 1996: Barb Dallinger ’81, M.S. ’01, Mike Schermer ’73, M.S. ’78, and Lin Hinds ’72 form Triangle Club, a “faculty and staff lesbian/bisexual/gay-straight alliance.” Sometime between 1996 and 1998 the name changes to Triangle Assocation. In a 2022 email, Dallinger recalls, “we were so impressed with everything ABAE (Association of Black Academic Employees) was doing, and we thought our LGBT faculty would be as supportive. The biggest problem—most faculty at that time weren’t out. At all. After doing a survey of some folks Mike and I knew were gay, they said they wanted movie nights or potlucks in people’s homes. Nothing at the bar. I tried a picnic at a local park (one person came), a movie night at my house (four people came), another movie (no one came) and a happy hour at the Bistro (75 people came).” Hinds likewise called the push to bring queer employees together “difficult,” noting that faculty were “somewhat dependent” on student evaluations, and being out in the classroom meant making themselves vulnerable to negative evaluations by homophobic students. Dallinger and Hinds are listed as contacts for the new organization in the Illinois State University Report, but their last names are not printed.
April 9, 1997: “Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and gay sympathizers” on campus observe the First National Day of Silence (NDOS) to draw attention to “individuals silenced because of their sexual orientation,” followed by the first LGBTQIA+-focused cultural dinner sponsored by the Office of Residential Life. It features Barb Dallinger on the piano and recipes from queer celebrities and authors. NDOS has been observed at Illinois State for the past 28 years, most recently by Students Ending Rape Culture (SERC) as Day of (No) Silence on April 11, 2025. GLSEN, the event’s national sponsor, changed the name in 2024 “in opposition to the current attempted erasure of LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender and nonbinary people, from public life.” In 2002 and 2003, PRIDE students observing NDOS were met with a coordinated harassment campaign by a group calling themselves the “God Squad.” Illinois State’s Cultural Dinners began in 1985 as a Black History Month celebration by the residence halls’ Black Awareness and Action Committee (BAAC). Once taken over by Housing staff, they grew to encompass a variety of minority communities and began to include invited speakers. LGBTQIA+ cultural dinners have featured headliners such as Dylan Scholinksi, author of The Last Time I Wore a Dress; country music star Chely Wright; Schuyler Bailar, the first openly trans NCAA Division I swimmer; and most recently, writer and performance artist ALOK.
February 1998: The Academic Senate passes a new version of the ISU Constitution including the University’s existing affirmative action and equal opportunity statement, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation among other personal characteristics. On the advice of counsel, the Board of Trustees removes sexual orientation as a protected class before approving the document in order to mirror state non-discrimination language. Many see this as the University stripping protections from the queer community, causing widespread anger and distress. PRIDE and Triangle Association meet “immediately after learning of the vote” and distribute “petitions in an attempt to get the board to reconsider,” reports ACHR’s Rainbow Connection newsletter. Following the outcry, the Board moves to add the clause back a week later, and the Academic Senate again approves the original language in April. As then PRIDE president Andrew Anastasia ’06 remembers, “it was a huge dust-up … I had to figure out how to navigate that as a student with some grace when I was feeling upset.”
Spring semester 1998: PRIDE stages their first annual Charity Drag Show. Advisor Barb Dallinger recalls being “shocked” when presented with the idea by former Bone Student Center employee Carlitta Scott: “I didn’t know if we could get away with having a drag show on campus … we knew it would come with risks, but it was a wonderful night and everyone had a lot of fun.” “At the time,” contributes former PRIDE member Tracey Vogelsang ’04, “we had no money to offer, no promise that they would earn any decent tips, and no historical precedent for a successful show … we had to rely on them taking a chance, and luckily, they did.”
September 1998: Illinois State begins offering limited domestic partner benefits, including allowing employees to use sick leave or FMLA to care for their partner and providing partial tuition waivers for their partner’s children. Partners may also participate in university wellness programs and the employee assistance program, as well as use Milner Library and campus recreational facilities. Medical, vision, and dental insurance are not included, as they are offered through the state.
October 3, 1998: PRIDE and Advocacy Council for Human Rights hold a Central Illinois Pride Festival in Bone Student Center. The festival had been organized by ACHR the previous two years in conjunction with the Unitarian Church in Bloomington. The 1998 event attracts attendees from as far away as West Virginia and Michigan. It includes an all-day vendor fair, as well as keynote speakers from the Illinois Federation for the Human Rights Campaign, breakout sessions on “topics like diversity in the workplace, gay adoption and same-sex marriages,” and a concert featuring Saffire: The Uppity BLUES Women.
October 14, 1998: PRIDE holds a vigil on the Quad in memory of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who had died two days earlier after being beaten, tortured, and tied to a fence near Laramie, Wyoming. It reportedly draws 200 to 300 participants and the director of the Office of Student Life makes “a commitment to the students in attendance to move the Illinois State environment toward acceptance of diversity in sexual orientation.” In its coverage of the event, The Pantagraph notes that over the past decade, two Bloomington men had been murdered and one beaten nearly to death by men who claimed the victims “made sexual advances” toward them. On the national level, President Bill Clinton unsuccessfully urges Congress to expand federal hate crime laws to cover sexual orientation. Many jurisdictions, including Illinois, begin tracking sexual orientation-based hate crimes for the first time, however. In November, the national Campus Right to Know Act is passed, requiring university police to report hate crimes based on sexual orientation, disability, religion, gender, and ethnicity. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is later implemented in 2009 after unsuccessful attempts in 2001, 2004, and 2007.
October 16, 1998: Deadline for the inaugural award cycle of the Brett Cassens Memorial Scholarship. The first scholarship at Illinois State “for gay, lesbian, or bisexual students,” it is named in honor of alum Dr. Brett Cassens ’72, an early AIDS treatment provider.
September 29, 1999: The first official Safe Zone orientation is held at Illinois State following a pilot session the previous spring. These trainings, which aim to give faculty, staff, and graduate students “the resources necessary to provide GLBT people with understanding and support,” end with participants signing a pledge to serve as allies to the community and receiving the iconic Safe Zone stickers, which many display outside their offices and classrooms to indicate that these spaces are intended to be “safe” for queer students. Recalling the origins of the program 15 years later, associate dean of students Jill Benson ties it to Shepard’s murder: “His death impacted campuses across the nation, including ours … people gathered on the Quad, not only in memory of Matthew, but to support our LGBT students. People looked to the University for a response.” These workshops are now offered several times per semester and on demand by David Giovagnoli at the Center for Integrated Professional Development under the name “Intro to Queer Allyship.”
2000s
September 6, 2000: Upward of 1,000 university affiliates and community members gather on the Quad to protest two recent incidents where Illinois State students “walking alone at night were accosted and insulted with anti-gay epithets,” according to a write-up in The Pantagraph the next day. In one incident, a straight male student perceived to be gay because of a shirt he was wearing was punched in the face and knocked unconscious, requiring hospital treatment for a broken eye socket. In the other, a female student reported being spat upon, insulted, and intimidated by a group of men. University President Victor Boschini and one of the victims speak at the rally, where participants join hands around the edges of the Quad to create a human chain. After leaving the event, a PRIDE member tells police she was called slurs, followed, grabbed, and punched by a group of men who likely targeted her because of the anti-hate and gay pride buttons she was wearing. The next week, the Normal Town Council votes to adopt a resolution “deploring” the reported crimes, but a 3-3 tie kills a motion to draft a local anti-hate crime ordinance.
Spring semester 2001: Ann Haugo, at the time a non-tenure track faculty member with dual roles in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Department of Theatre, teaches Queer Theatre and Performance, a section of THE 300: Topics in the Literature of the Theatre. The first known LGBTQIA+ course at Illinois State, Haugo remembers it as “a combined undergraduate/graduate seminar (that) incorporated a good amount of queer theory – enough that students who had taken it referred to it as a queer theory class, not a queer theatre class, because they were reading more than just scripts and theatre sources. Readings were probably 50/50 queer theory/studies, including work from theatre and plays.” Department of Theatre professor John Poole later teaches a similar THE 300 course in 2005 titled Out Front: The Politics of Queer Theatre.
February 13, 2001: Women’s Studies minor Avada Douglas ’02 stages the first production of The Vagina Monologues at Illinois State as part of the V-Day College Initiative, which allows the pioneering feminist and queer-inclusive play to be performed royalty-free on college campuses in order to raise funds for local initiatives aimed at bettering the lives of women and girls. The three performances are seen by an estimated 900 attendees and net almost $5,500 for a McLean County domestic violence shelter and rape crisis center. FMLA/FLAME continue to stage the play every year around Valentine’s Day through 2018. For 2019, they plan an open mic-style performance called simply The Monologues highlighting “real stories from the marginalized voices on campus.” The call for submissions asks for pieces on the topics of “feminism, women’s rights, sexuality, gender identity, global women’s issues, violence against women, (and) women’s empowerment.” They put out a call for new material again in early 2020 but later elect to cancel the production after the university closes following Illinois’ COVID-19 shelter in place order.
October 1, 2001: Following a five-year campaign by the Advocacy Council for Human Rights and other groups, the Normal Town Council votes to add sexual orientation (which it defines as “the actual or perceived state of heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality”) as a protected class to its Human Rights Ordinance. Illinois State President Victor Boschini and Provost Al Goldfarb had both written letters in support of the amendment to the Town Council.
April 2002: Illinois State’s School of Social Work awards its first Diversity Development Initiative Grant to the Safe Schools Project, a proposal submitted by University employees Jyl Josephson, Paula Ressler, and Dave Bentlin, as well as PRIDE President Kristy DeWall ’01, M.S. ’03, M.S. ’07, and PFLAG Board Member Bruce Lang. This grows into the Central Illinois Safe Schools Alliance (CISSA), which helps to form and support Gay-Straight Alliances (now Gender and Sexuality Alliances) in McLean County middle and high schools, as well as “provide training on GLBT issues to counselors and teachers.”
October 28, 2002: The Bloomington City Council votes to add civil rights protections for sexual orientation to its city code. Some council members credit letters in support of the measure that they received from the presidents of Illinois State and Illinois Wesleyan with “showing them the city lags behind in anti-discrimination laws.”
Fall semester 2003: Jyl Josephson, a faculty member in the Department of Politics and Government, teaches POL 337: Lesbian and Gay Politics for the first time. This course, which is still offered today, is the first regularly recurring non-topics course to be devoted entirely to queer issues.
November 2003: Rainbow Connection reports that the Triangle Association, which had become defunct sometime after 1998, “recently adopted a constitution and has begun planning future events.” The biweekly Illinois State University Report to faculty and staff lists the founding officers of the “new” Triangle Association as Nan Carlson ’98, Paul Borg, Mark Vegter ’93, and Jennifer Hootman ’97. The association’s “primary interest” is described as “meeting the needs and interests of all GLBTQ employees, assisting in the recruitment and retention of quality employees, and offering mentorship in all areas of diversity concerns.”
August 5, 2004: ISU expands domestic partner benefits. Unmarried partners and their dependents are still not allowed on employees’ state-sponsored health insurance plans, so University President Al Bowman, inspired by a similar program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, pledges to reimburse them for the difference in cost of buying insurance on the private market.
October 2004: Triangle Association establishes the GLBT Student Support Fund to help students who lose support from their families after coming out or being outed. As stated in the Illinois State University Report, the fund’s main goal “is to provide a safety net to allow gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender students to stay enrolled at Illinois State while they work through family and financial issues.” Today, the fund, which is the subject of a headlining Birds Give Back campaign each February, raises and dispenses tens of thousands of dollars a year in scholarships and emergency financial assistance.
January 21, 2005: The Illinois Human Rights Act is amended to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender-related identity in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Similar bills had been introduced in the legislature many times over the previous decades, including in 1976, 1983, 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1999.
May 2006: University President Al Bowman authorizes a new housing policy to allow “gay and lesbian students” and their “committed life partners” to live together in family housing; this privilege had previously been reserved for legally married couples. According to Rainbow Connection, the ACLU of Illinois had written to Bowman the previous February “pointing out the inequality” in Illinois State’s policy and noting “among other things, that ISU had authority to alter its housing policy in the same fashion that the University used to alter its insurance benefits program.”
July 1, 2006: An administrative order signed by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich extends health insurance, dental, and vision coverage to same-sex domestic partners of all state employees, including public university faculty and staff.
May 7, 2009: Shane McCreery, Illinois State’s director of diversity and affirmative action, announces in a memo to queer community leaders that University President Al Bowman has authorized the addition of gender identity and expression to the University’s mission statement and non-discrimination policy.
Fall semester 2009: Initially just a “glimmer in Triangle Association’s eye,” Illinois State’s LGBT/Queer Studies and Services Institute opens following two years of research, surveys, and focus groups by a “sturdy band of volunteers,” including Paula Ressler, Becca Chase, and Diane Zosky. The Institute, first located in the Women’s and Gender Studies Office in Rachel Cooper Hall, soon moves to the Professional Development Annex on Main Street. Envisioned as a “home on campus for people involved in academic, political, and social activities of particular interest to LGBTQA people,” the Institute is established with three main foci: academics, student and personnel services, and community outreach. Over the years, it amasses an on-site media library numbering more than 1,000 items and collects a substantial clothing closet for transgender students. The space serves as a meeting spot for Pride and other groups, as well as a venue for lectures and seminars. Staffing remains largely volunteer-based throughout the institute’s existence, and it operates outside of any departmental structure, governed instead by a board of faculty, staff, and graduate students representing several different units on campus. Funding comes exclusively from private donations and is used to pay graduate students who supplement the board’s volunteer labor and help keep the space open 20 hours per week. As WGS student advisor, Chase supervises undergraduate and graduate interns during the institute’s early years and eventually convinces WGS to award them course credit for their work by allowing them to enroll in internship classes. In 2018, Provost Jan Murphy approves the institute’s first university-funded staff position in the form of graduate assistant Claudia Kolakowski.
2010s
2010: After a months-long debate within the WGS curriculum committee, WGS 392: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Queer Studies and Theory (now Queer and Transgender Theory) is accepted into the catalog. The course was developed by Becca Chase, Julie Derden, Adena Meyers, and Paula Ressler. During spring semester 2011, Chase teaches it for the first time. Together with WGS 292: Introduction to LGBTQ Studies, the course will form the basis of Women’s and Gender Studies’ Queer Studies concentration in 2016.
June 1, 2011: Illinois’ Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act goes into effect, allowing same and different-sex couples to form “a legal relationship that provides all the protections and benefits that the law of Illinois guarantees to a married couple,” according to ACLU Illinois. Lin Hinds enters into a civil union with her longtime partner Judy Judy ’61 10 days later, an event she recalls as “bittersweet” given Judy later passed away only three months before the passage of the Illinois Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act in 2013, which would have allowed them to legally marry.
April 2012: Bloomington-Normal’s Advocacy Council for Human Rights changes its name to Prairie Pride Coalition.
October 2013: Lambda Psi Omega, a gender neutral, queer frarority is established, “welcoming students who identify as male, female, transgender” or “do not identify as any gender.” By late 2015 it has become defunct.
March 28-30, 2014: Barb Dallinger and Dave Bentlin launch the ISU LGBTQA Alumni Network during Pride’s Annual Charity Drag Show weekend.
July 2014: Twenty-four on-campus restrooms previously identified as “family restrooms” receive new signs designating them as all-gender. The current number of all-gender restrooms at Illinois State stands at 102.
February 2015: Illinois State hosts the Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally College Conference (MBLGTACC) with Laverne Cox as the keynote speaker. An estimated 2,200 attend, the highest turnout in the conference’s 22-year history. Andy Newhouse ’15 recalls working on the winning bid to bring the conference to Normal in 2013, then embarking on the monumental task of planning the event with Student Affairs staff, which they describe as a “two-year-long, ungraded group project.” Remembering the experience, they say the work all paid off when they got to see the student attendees realize, “Oh, I can be myself for two days,” likening it to “a little kid on Christmas morning seeing all the presents.”
June 26, 2015: The landmark Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges is decided, legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
Fall semester 2015: The League of Extraordinary Genders, which describes itself as a “trans* and genderqueer support group,” first forms. The group is defunct by 2019.
October 2015: Erin Durban organizes the first lectures for QUEERtalks: New Works in LGBTQ Studies, originally “a modest lunchtime colloquium series” held at the LGBT/Queer Studies and Services Institute “to complement courses for (Women’s and Gender Studies’ nascent) Queer Studies Concentration.” Following the COVID-19 pandemic, it is relaunched as WGSS and Queer Coalition’s QueerTalks Lunch ‘n’ Learn series.
April 2016: Illinois State holds its first Lavender Graduation ceremony “to celebrate the accomplishments and success of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and allied students completing their degrees.”
June 12, 2016: A gunman kills 49 people and injures 53 in a shooting rampage at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Two days later, the Bloomington-Normal community gathers for a vigil organized by The Bistro and Prairie Pride Coalition.
August 2016: The Women’s and Gender Studies Program officially launches its interdisciplinary Queer Studies concentration, with Durban at the helm. The department had finalized the curriculum and begun putting out promotional material the previous fall.
August 2017: Illinois State’s Eckelmann-Taylor Speach and Hearing Clinic welcomes its first two transgender clients for gender-affirming communication services. In a 2021 interview with The Pantagraph, speech pathologist Tricia Larkin ’90, M.S. ’91, credits “graduate students exploring the topic of transgender voice care for their thesis” with creating the impetus for the program, which continues to be unique in Central Illinois.
July 28, 2018: The Bistro’s 25th anniversary celebration doubles as the first pride festival in Bloomington-Normal since PRIDE and ACHR’s event in Bone Student Center 20 years earlier. The seventh annual Bloomington-Normal PrideFest organized by The Bistro is scheduled for July 26, 2025.
Fall semester 2018: Queer Ed Birds is founded. Originally conceived of as an RSO for education majors “which aims to assist future teachers in providing support for their LGBTQ students,” by 2024 the organization’s unofficial slogan has become “be gay, do good,” and the focus has shifted to providing community and professional development opportunities for future teachers who identify as LGBTQIA+.
January 30, 2019: Isaac Hollis ’20 co-founds Moor Pride, “a student organization aiming to promote a positive image of the Black LGBTQ+ students at Illinois State University.” It later becomes defunct during the 2020 pandemic.
April 25, 2019: University President Larry Dietz apologizes for the publication of a homophobic letter to the editor in Illinois State magazine, saying “it contained language that violated the University’s value of respect and it is in conflict with strides the University has made and continues to make related to our values of diversity and inclusion.” The letter disparaged a same-sex couple featured in the April 2018 article “Redbird Romance” about students who fell in love at ISU.
Fall semester 2019: The Women’s and Gender Studies Program changes its name to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.
2020s
January 24, 2020: Illinois State Athletics holds its first Pride Night at a women’s basketball game versus Drake University.
February 28, 2020: Triangle Association and the board of the LGBT/Queer Studies and Services Institute hold a happy hour at the Marriott in Uptown Normal to discuss next steps for both organizations, including potentially sunsetting the institute and merging some of its functions with Triangle. Conversations are delayed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ad-hoc leadership group is not able to reconvene until the fall. During the next few months, they decide to create a successor organization to Triangle Association—Queer Coalition—and draft its first constitution.
March 2020: The LGBT/Queer Studies and Services Institute closes with the rest of the University due to COVID-19. During the lockdown period, a water leak damages the building and its contents; the institute never reopens to the public.
November 14, 2020: Pride holds a Black Trans Lives Matter march and vigil in honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). While not the first observance of TDOR on campus, it is the first time the event is covered by news media.
January 29, 2021: Queer Coalition elects its first executive board.
June 2021: The Rainbow Floor Themed Living-Learning Community (TLLC) debuts at Watterson Towers. The following year, it moves to Manchester Hall with the other TLLCs.
Summer 2021: The new Multicultural Center (formerly Diversity Advocacy) opens in a dedicated building at 301 S. Main Street, with Pride as one of the center’s four sponsored RSOs. The space features all-gender restrooms and a Gender Affirmation Station for trans students’ clothing needs; it is now open to all students and is simply called the Clothing Station.
March 31, 2022: Queer Coalition stages its first Transgender Day of Visibility Sashay. Wearing colorful clothing and holding hand signs, participants from the University and surrounding communities promenade through freezing rain from the Old Main Bell on Illinois State’s Quad to Uptown Circle to hear remarks from QC Co-President Gavin Weiser and University administrators.
September 2022: Drag Royalty is founded. “Dedicated to keeping the fabulous art of drag performance alive,” the RSO puts on almost a dozen shows during the 2022-23 school year and raises over $1,000 for charity.
September 28, 2022: Members of Kappa Sigma fraternity spray-paint homophobic slurs on the houses of Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity and Sigma Sigma Sigma sorority. The following month, another queer student reports being assaulted and called homophobic slurs at an off-campus party, prompting a March for Queer Rights protesting perceived university inaction to both incidents. Following an investigation by Student Conduct and Community Responsibilities, Kappa Sigma is suspended through December 31, 2025, but is found not guilty as a whole of violating the University’s anti-harassment and non-discrimination policy.
August 24, 2024: A student reports being knocked from his scooter, punched, and called homophobic slurs in an incident investigated by the Illinois State University Police Department as a possible hate crime. On September 4, the Young Democratic Socialists of America student group holds a March for LGBTQ+ Safety on the Quad, culminating in remarks by several speakers on the steps of Hovey Hall. A month later, the ISUPD closes their investigation, as no suspects could be identified.
May 2025: WGSS launches a formal undergraduate certificate in Queer Studies, an expansion on the Queer Studies concentration first offered in 2016.
July 19, 2025: Illinois Shakespeare Festival holds its first pride night at a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest.
