Can LGBTQIA+ students find a home at Marist?

Student sews together a craft during the Pathwork Pillow Night in the Student Center on Wednesday 4/16. Photo by Lilian DeFilippis '26.

A wave of dread washed over Sarah Gabrielli ‘18 as she sat in her Marian dorm room listening to her new roommates debrief after returning from a party at Vassar College. 

“They were talking about how girls were making out at the party as if it was a crazy story. They kept laughing and saying how it was so ‘not Marist,’” Gabrielli said. 

Gabrielli was baffled. “I kept thinking, what have I gotten myself into? Why isn’t that Marist?”

It was 2014, and although Gabrielli had been openly bisexual since high school, the Marist environment left her feeling isolated from other LGBTQ+ people. She didn’t meet a fellow openly queer woman until her junior year. 

Fran Astino ‘16 felt similar feelings of isolation while at Marist. She arrived at Marist in 2012, deep in the closet. It was very difficult to come to terms with her sexuality because she felt like no one else was questioning their identity. 

“I was really scared because everybody around me was not even remotely openly out with their sexuality, except for my gay male friends,” Astino said.

Though there were more openly gay men on campus than women, that community was still extremely small. Brian Gabuzda ‘16 came out during his freshman year but felt unable to explore his identity more deeply because of the lack of queer presence on campus.

“It was stifling a bit, I'll be honest, like I'm not looking around and seeing that people are celebrating being queer,” Gabuzda said.

Gabuzda felt like he could be openly gay at Marist, but only a specific type of gay. 

“I think the nature of the stereotypical masculinity at Marist had me look at myself in the mirror and be like, oh, ‘I'm not that gay’ because I'm not feminine presenting,” Gabuzda said. 

After graduating, Gabrielli found herself searching for the community she wasn’t able to build at Marist. 

“What a shame it is to have gone through four years of college without that. When you're supposed to be discovering who you are and meeting the community you're going to have for the rest of your life. Because Marist didn't have that,” Gabrielli said. “I've had to find that in other places, and I've kind of spent my whole existence after Marist doing that.”

It’s been 10 years since Gabrielli arrived at Marist and though many things have changed, a lot of elements remain consistent. 

For recent alum Keon Lee ‘24, coming to Marist allowed him to explore his identity. Using apps like Grindr and Tinder, Lee was able to find fellow queer men at Marist and nearby schools. These experiences were essential in reaffirming his understanding of his sexuality.

“If I didn't go to Marist, I don't think I would have come out. And I don't know if that's just a college experience, but Marist pushed me,” Lee said. “Even though they were small pools, it was still good seeing the openly gay guys walk on campus, and then seeing Tinder in the area of the guys who were gay.”

Lee came out during his sophomore year at Marist and was embraced by his friends. Though he felt supported, Lee also felt stifled by the small gay male community at Marist. He found it difficult to create meaningful platonic or romantic relationships with other queer men. 

“I never experienced a time where I was friends with another gay man. It just wasn't ever that,” Lee said. “It was always turned into something sexual.”

Lee noticed schools like Vassar, New Paltz, Bard and the CIA as allowing for more platonic relationships between queer men, but he didn’t see the same trend at Marist. 

“Culturally, I think it's an issue with the type of students that go to Marist. A lot of the men there are masculine, super macho, alpha males. [This environment] doesn't help support gay men to be gay men and just be friends,” Lee said.

As a Black man, Lee feels that Marist, being a predominantly White institution, complicates finding romantic partners. 

“I can't stress enough that being a gay Black male is so different. I had a guy tell me that he couldn't bring me home,” Lee said. “That sucks to hear. That it could work out so well, but you can’t bring me home. In other words, you can't be seen with me.”

Though Lee felt the lack of openly queer men, he noticed there were a lot more other LGBTQ+ people on campus. 

“The men who are gay are just a small community. I think there are a lot of nonbinary, women and trans [people on campus], and I think that's more prevalent,” Lee said.

Marist’s Data, Research and Planning Department doesn’t track the number of LGBTQ+ students on campus. However, unlike what Gabrielli experienced in 2014, many students feel like there are a significant amount of openly queer women and non-binary people on campus.

“There are a lot more queer people than people realize. Because I know from personal experience, there are a lot of queer women who are straight passing or who are bisexual but tend to lean more toward the liking men aspect of the bisexuality scale,” Lana Tomchuk ‘26 said. “So they don't necessarily express it very frequently or often, but they are there.” 

Though platonic relationships between queer non-men feel more accessible for many students, it is still difficult to find a romantic partner. 

“It's never really in your face that someone's gay or not, so I think that kind of adds to that overall struggle of trying to find somebody romantically,” said Elizabeth Baumgardner ‘25.

However, similarly to Lee, Lina Tornese ‘26 found Marist to be a supportive environment to find herself in. 

“I came to Marist bisexual. Then I realized I didn't like boys anymore, and from then on I became very sure of myself and very confident because I wasn't really surrounded by those societal pressures from home,” Tornese said. “For me, Marist is a very freeing place. Like, I 100% feel myself on this campus.” 

For an anonymous source who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/she pronouns, correcting fellow students if they misgender her can be daunting. 

“I never want to make it a huge deal… because I worry that maybe today is the day I piss someone off. It's scary because you don't know who you'd be pissing off just because you exist,” she said.

Though she lives with this constant worry, she hasn’t faced any direct challenges to her identity. 

“I have yet to see someone on Marist who is adamantly anti-LGBTQ+ to the point where they will see me as a target because I said, ‘can you please refer to me properly?’ So I am relieved at that moment, and I'm hoping that I never experience that one hypothetical,” they said.

Especially after growing up with anti-LGBTQ+ parents, the student has found Marist’s campus to be supportive. “Marist has been the safest place I've ever felt. And that says a lot,” they said.

However, Baumgardner struggled to find supportive friends. Her roommate and her other freshman-year friends at Marist were conservative, which led to an unsupportive group culture. With COVID-19 restrictions still in effect, she found it hard to make new friends and felt trapped.

Baumgardner, who identifies as a lesbian, never mentioned her sexuality to them until she was outed by a mutual friend in her sophomore year. “They literally said ‘We're gonna pray for you to get better,’” she recounted. 

She was later able to find supportive friends and leave her old friend group behind, but that and other experiences stuck with her.

“We have a culture here where you can exist, but you’re not celebrated,” Baumgardner said. “Like, you can exist, but it’s not like you can’t be proud of existing. Like, you can be safe, no one is going to attack or harm you. But people are still going to give you those weird looks.”

With Marist’s Catholic history, the university attracts many students from Catholic high schools. As a chaplain in the Department of Spiritual Life and Service, Miriam Eisenmenger interacts with students from a variety of backgrounds and aims to help students have an open mind.

“It's an educational institution, and so [I’m] being like, ‘Well, where is this coming from? Are you just talking out of a script that you've been hearing your whole life? Like, let's actually look at what scripture says about how we're supposed to treat other people,” she said. “We don't need to just talk about sin. Like, how are we living our lives to honor other people?”

All the department members are trained LGBTQ+ allies, and they provide a gay men’s spirituality group. However, Eisenmenger understands if LGBTQ+ students don’t want to engage with it.

“I can't guarantee it's going to feel 100% safe all the time,” Eisenmenger said.

Before their freshman year, Pluto Raja ‘27 was apprehensive about finding a community at Marist. As a nonbinary and queer Indian-American from California, Raja found Marist’s 73% White demographics daunting.

“I was nervous coming into Marist because I knew there were going to be a lot of people who were not part of the same communities as I was. But I actually found it to be very accepting,” Raja said.

Raja found friends through gender-inclusive housing and Fox Pride – Marist’s LGBTQ+ social club. 

“I'm very glad I found Fox Pride. I met a lot of people through there. And I was in Midrise and our dorm and the dorm across from us were both gender inclusive, so I've met a pretty good community,” Raja said.

For Tori Cardone ‘26, Fox Pride was a main reason they were drawn to Marist. After not being fully open in high school, Cardone wanted to allow herself to celebrate her gender and sexuality at college.

“When I came to Marist for my tour, I saw Fox Pride. It was one of the only schools that actually had their GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) out on campus, which I thought was awesome,” Cardone said. 

Two years later, Cardone is now the president of Fox Pride. The club holds a variety of events to provide opportunities for fellow LGBTQ+ students to meet each other. 

“We really focus on crafting events and social events. We do our big charity event in the year, Lavender Ball, which is in the spring semester, and we donate all the proceeds to Dutchess County Pride Center,” Cardone said. “But overall, we try to focus on fostering a student-run safe space.”

The club also hosts more serious events addressing LGBTQ+ issues like their “Coming Out Stories” meeting. The event celebrates National Coming Out Day and offers students the opportunity to share their experiences with fellow members. Ian Lopez ‘28 attended the event this semester on Oct. 10.

“That was probably one of my favorite events I've been to so far while I’ve been here. It was really cool having everyone share their story, and their ups and downs with it. That felt like a good way to connect with other people in the community,” Ian Lopez ‘28 said.

As a gay man, Lopez has found community in attending Fox Pride events this semester. 

“I've been to almost every meeting. It's been really fun. It's been very casual. That's what I like about it too. It's not a really rigid club,” Lopez said. 

Fox Pride often works with the Queer and Trans Committee (QTC). Former co-chair Tim Lawton works in IT at Marist and helps run many events, including ally trainings for faculty, staff and students.

“The Queer and Trans Committee has a committee of staff, faculty and administration representing queer folks in our areas and supporting Fox Pride and other organizations on campus,” Lawton said. 

Last semester, the QTC hosted a Queer & Trans Joy Festival during the week of September 30th in honor of October as LGBTQ+ history month. The festival included a tabling event with local LGBTQ+ organizations and businesses, a speaker event with Jeffrey March and a drag performance.

It was held one week after the Social Justice Conference, which was also focused on LGBTQ+ issues because it aligned with the Common Read. The novel, “Felix Ever After” by Kacen Callender, follows the story of a young Black transgender queer person. 

For Dr. Ron Buckmire, the choice of Common Read reassured him as he took on his new role as dean of Computer Science and Mathematics this semester.

“To see that that was the Common Read demonstrated for me that LGBTQ+ issues are normalized at Marist,” said Buckmire, who is openly gay and a leader in DEI initiatives in academia.

The QTC additionally hosted an “Out at Marist” panel on February 12 which highlighted the experiences of queer, trans and LGBTQIA+ Marist students.

Though Marist is facilitating these events, there is a lack of participation from a lot of the student body. Keon Lee was a panelist at the Social Justice Conference and was disappointed to see very few students attending. 

“I could count with my fingers how many people I was speaking to. That’s still always unsettling,” Lee said. “And it was all faculty. I was literally just speaking to adults like professors who are already going through these trainings and who are already accepting.”

Juniper Wong ‘27 has also noticed this lack of participation in class discussions. Wong, who took a first-year seminar, Rethinking Identity & Utopia in the 21st Century, was one of the only visibly non-cisgender people in the class. Additionally, as one of the four people of color in that class, Wong felt that only the queer people in the class would actively participate in discussions. 

“It was just kind of weird how these people were so hesitant to say anything. Because I get you don't want to be offensive, but choosing to not engage is offensive to me,” Wong said.

Amaya Pichardo ‘27, who identifies as nonbinary and queer, also noticed a similar phenomenon of lack of engagement from other students.

“So many people are scared to talk about something that they can't relate to, and because of that, they kind of retreat back into their little bubble of privilege. I see that a lot when I'm doing classes that are more discussion-heavy; people are so nervous,” Pichardo said.

Marist has made many strides in the past 10 years, including creating a more accessible process for changing names, creating gender-inclusive housing and prioritizing LGBTQ+ topics in classes. 

Wong and Pichardo feel that though these all need additional effort, engaging the wider student body in discussions with and about LGBTQ+ people is essential for progress.

“I want to see them doing more things to facilitate queer spaces and queer discussion and to encourage or even force non-queer students to engage with it and learn more about it and become aware of it,” Wong said. “Because as a school, the biggest way to move forward is to make everyone have to make people engage.”

To many LGBTQ+ students, visibility is even more important with the Trump administration's direct attacks against DEI in education. President Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 22 threatening to withhold federal funding from universities that keep their DEI programs. The Department of Education has since launched 50 university investigations.

Though the validity of the order is uncertain, they are concerning to LGBTQ+ students. 

“I'm kind of worried about it, and I hope that at some point I can get some affirmation that this campus will be okay, and I'm going to finish the rest of my years here knowing that I'll still be safe and protected,” an anonymous student said.

Sarah Gabrielli went on to co-found a podcast called Cruising, about visiting the last remaining lesbian bars in the United States. Through her work, her relationship with her identity has flourished. 

“I love being queer, like it’s just so core to my identity and my career and everything that I talk about, everyone that I surround myself with. Which is just the complete opposite of what it was like at Marist. And it's really liberating,” Gabrielli said. 

She hopes that current students will be able to experience that feeling of liberation, ideally before they graduate. 

“Everyone deserves to be in a community where you feel seen and accepted and understood in a first-hand way,” Gabrielli said.