Oliver Garvin Crow
(they/them)
Dordt University
Oliver Garvin Crow lives in Sioux City, IA, where they attend Dordt University and expect to graduate in late 2021 or May 2022. They study secondary English education, with a minor in sociology. They identify as queer. “God created me this way, and I am not a mistake,” they said.
Dordt University’s student handbook includes anti-LGBTQ+ language and policies, but Oliver was not aware of them until their first semester, and since then they have felt a pervasively homophobic climate on campus. The student handbook states that individuals who participate in forbidden conduct, including being engaged or married to someone of the same sex, being transgender, or romantic LGBTQ+ relationships, “shall be dismissed from the university.” Professors frequently teach that people who “practice homosexuality” will “burn in hell.”
Oliver came out in June 2020. They tell some professors and friends about their LGBTQ+ identity, but it is challenging: “I feel a great amount of anxiety relating to my coming out,” they said. “I am afraid of having professors treat me differently or losing friends. I suffer some depression at school stemming from feeling different from everyone on campus.”
They are raising their voice to protect all LGBTQ+ students at Dordt University and religiously affiliated colleges across the country.
About US
At many religious schools, colleges, and universities, LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized students suffer discrimination, abuse, isolation, and hardship. If this describes you, you are not alone. We are in this together.
REAP fights for the safety, bodily autonomy, justice, and human rights of LGBTQIA+ and other communities marginalized at many predominantly white, taxpayer-funded religious schools and colleges. Using campus organizing, storytelling through podcasting, documentary film, and speaking and preaching on campuses throughout the country, REAP empowers students, faculty, staff and alumni at these institutions to advocate for human rights, while shining a light on the dangers and abuses of a major educational pipeline of white Christian Supremacy.
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