Finding a Queer-Friendly College, Part 2 – College Bound Mentor Podcast #11

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This is Episode #11 and you’ll hear Stefanie interview a college student, Ben, about his experience being a member of the queer and Modern Orthodox Jewish community on a college campus. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!

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College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #11: Finding a Queer-Friendly College, Part 2

Feeling safe and supported on a college campus is important for any student. For students in the LGBTQ+ community, it can be an even more important factor when deciding where to go to college. In this Part 2, Stefanie interviews a college student, Ben, about his experience being a member of the queer and Modern Orthodox Jewish community on a college campus. Hear his experience coming out, what went into his college decision, how to get the pulse of the straight people on campus, how to get involved on campus, and his advice to queer students just starting college. This episode covers everything from queer-friendly colleges to getting involved on campus. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• How important was it for Ben to find a queer-friendly college?
• What is it like to be queer in the Modern Orthodox Jewish community?
• How was Ben’s first year of college?
• What activities and groups has he been involved in on campus?
• Did he mention being queer in his college essays?
• Have any of his identities been challenged in college?
• What does he recommend to queer students just starting college?
• How do you handle people being against who you are as a person?

Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com.

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

• Finding a Queer-Friendly College, Part 2
  • [0:18] Welcome to College Bound Mentor
  • [0:25] Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, Stefanie Forman
  • Interview with Ben
  • [1:20] How do Stefanie & Ben know each other?
  • [2:05] What is Ben’s background?
  • [2:56] How important was it for him to find a queer-friendly college?
  • [6:00] What is it like to be queer in the Modern Orthodox Jewish community?
  • [6:45] How was Ben’s first year of college?
  • [9:55] What activities and groups has he been involved in on campus?
  • [11:21] What makes a queer-inclusive community?
  • [14:15] Did Ben mention being queer in his college essays?
  • [16:42] Have any of his identities been challenged in college?
  • [18:30] What does he recommend to queer students just starting college?
  • [19:42] How do you handle people being against who you are as a person?
  • [21:42] Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com
  • Theme Song: “Happy Optimistic Americana” by BDKSonic

What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?

Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Ben 0:01
Queerness is whatever you want it to be.

Lisa Bleich 0:19
Hey, CBMers. Welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond, we’re your co hosts, Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie, and today is part two of our series for finding a queer friendly college last time we talked to a panel of experts, and today we had the opportunity, actually, Stephanie had the opportunity to talk with one of her former clients, who just finished his first year at the University of Pennsylvania. So let’s listen to Stefanie’s interview with Ben.

Stefanie Forman 0:50
Hi, Ben.

Ben 0:51
Hi. How are you?

Stefanie Forman 0:52
Good! I’m so happy to be here with you, and I know that our conversation is going to be super helpful to students, to parents, to everyone listening. Because of your insights, I’m just going to give a little background of how I know you who you are, and then, and then you can add and stuff a little bit too. So I met Ben, I think, three summers ago, right? Yeah, because this is yeah,

Ben 1:16
oh my god, yeah. So

Stefanie Forman 1:18
Ben and I met three summers ago. He was a student that I worked with, that I helped with the college application process, the writing and I he did not want to work with me at first, but I was very reluctant.

Ben 1:30
Yeah, no, look, it’s blossomed. Yes, yeah. So

Stefanie Forman 1:33
anyway, I met Ben three years ago, and he just finished his first year, because he took a gap year, and his essay, which we’ll get into, is something I still think about. I will always think about just how he spoke about his identity and embracing who he is. And I’m not going to say anything else, because this is about you Ben, and I want you to, I don’t know, just give a little bit of background, and then we’ll get into some questions. So go for it

Ben 2:03
Sure. First of all, I really want to express my gratitude to you, and you know, three years such a long time ago, but it really does feel like just a short time ago that we were having our preliminary meetings and we were brainstorming together. And I mean, it’s just my absolute pleasure to a, be speaking with you, just, just in general, and need to be speaking on your podcast. So Hi everyone. My name is Ben. I am a rising sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, where I’m majoring in English and minoring in psychoanalytic studies and chemistry on the pre-med track. I am super excited to be speaking about my identity, and my gay identity was really, really something at the forefront of my mind in the college search and decision process, and I’m really happy to be talking that through in the next couple minutes. Yeah,

Stefanie Forman 2:49
so you just mentioned that and your queer identity. So how important was it for you to find a queer friendly community when you were first looking for colleges? You know, what were you looking for in a school and you Ben, which is going to come up, you had two distinct communities you were looking for in a school, the queer community and the modern Orthodox community. So I’m so curious to hear about the intersectionality between the two was one more important than the other, and just how it all played out. So

Ben 3:20
So I came out my February of Junior Year to all my friends and I guess, the rest of the world, and I’d grown up modern Orthodox my entire life. Modern Orthodoxy is a branch of Judaism that is traditionally orthodox in that we observe the law as at least how we see it, taken exactly from Sinai and, you know, interpreted through the generations, but also engage with the modern world learn science and humanities, but at the end of the day, anyone who says that they’re modern Orthodox will probably say that they are Orthodox. They are observant in Jewish law more than they are modern. Or at least that is the traditional approach. And it was very hard coming out. I was the first member of my synagogue to be an open member of the queer community. My synagogue has like, two, 3000 people. It was a big deal and a big step for my entire family. Luckily, my community was incredibly accepting, and to this day, my rabbi is incredible, and really all the congregants are incredible, but I was really the only person in my community who was queer and going into college. It was definitely it was the Jewish community and the queer community that was in the forefront of my mind. Any college I went to for a weekend or just visiting, I asked what the pulse was in Jewish queer life. And in my weekend at Penn, I actually I had just like, by chance, almost just like, asking someone off like, Oh, what is queer Jewish life at Penn I got the number of the student leader of Penn Hillel. Hillel is usually a center of Jewish life on college campuses, the director of the gay student club, and I sat with her, and first she gave me a tour, but we just sat on a Saturday afternoon for like an hour and a half, and she just took a. Everything I had to say, question by question, explaining patiently, and she really showed me that Penn has awesome Jewish queer programming. And was really, really a reason why I was so excited to come in, definitely part of my decision making process. That’s

Stefanie Forman 5:13
so nice that you had that experience. I remember when we were talking, you would visit schools, maybe multiple times, to experiences Shabbat and to get Jewish life. But how amazing that you had that contact right away, who sat with you for so long and explained, I guess, this robust community that was so accepting. Yeah, she was really awesome. And then, you know, some of our listeners might not know this, but it’s very rare to maybe, at least in my own experience, I haven’t met many modern Orthodox Jews who are out. Did you so I’m sure there’s many members of the Jewish community who are queer. But did you feel like you were more alone because you’re also modern Orthodox, or was that never an issue.

Ben 6:02
Yeah, absolutely in high school, that was definitely an identity that I couldn’t really connect with with other people, and I mean, all the more so that is the reason why I wanted to find such a community in college. I think you, you implicitly brought up a point that was really, really interesting, is that, I mean, it kind of goes without saying most Orthodox people either are not queer or are not out as queer due to stigmas that syllabus in the community, and something that was also really important for me to see was what’s the pulse of the straight people or the straight modern Orthodox people in the community? How do they feel regarding these things? And it was sitting at a Shabbat meal and hearing the conversation and comments that were brought up that was also definitely informed my decision making process as well. Because as important are the queer people, so are the straight people. Mm,

Stefanie Forman 6:46
hmm, yeah. So what is it like? I mean, you just finished your first year. What was it like being queer in the modern Orthodox community at Penn or at the community, the general community, not even, you know, religious wise. And what’s it like being supported at Penn? Do you feel supported?

Ben 7:05
That’s a great question. I think before I answer that, I want to step back and talk about what pride is in general. Pride is, I mean, I think internally, it’s just, it’s being confident in yourself no matter who you are. Straight people can have pride. Allies can have pride. Gay people can have pride. Hormone folks can have pride. You know, anyone can have pride. Externally, I think it means a lot of things. Pride can be political. Pride can be spiritual, pregnancy, religious. Pride could be it can really be anything. I really started my college experience kicking very intentionally. I spoke with the staff members at Hillel saying, I want to create space for queer people, I want to do that in any way possible, whether it’s Shabbat dinner or hikes. And a couple of weeks after I started my time at Penn, we had a queer Shabbat dinner, which was the first of its kind, and it was super intimate. 2030 people there, amazing food. Some people spoke like beautiful kedush and services, and it was really just like a great time to just eat good food and be with friends. But you know, as the night went on to really just like, sit around the table and be like, This is my experience. And someone being like, wow, that is so interesting. I never had that before, and to really have conversations that I personally had never had before, and I would assume that most people coming from Jewish backgrounds. It was, it was all Jewish background, those reform Reconstructionist, Orthodox conservative, everything to really have those perspectives and to really look at one thing in Judaism and call it two different things. Was super, super powerful. And we had one in the spring semester as well, although it was my idea this semester to again, going back to the the pulse of the straight people and their attitudes on queer people, Jewish queer people, is, I think, of equal importance. This past semester, we had a queer Shabbat dinner with allies invited as well. And when I say that the ratio to allies to queer people was probably like seven to one in the best way possible. And in fact, most of them were actually orthodox. It was really, really, really, incredible, incredible sign of solidarity throughout, specifically the Orthodox community at Penn, but just in Penn Hill in general, I mean, no

Stefanie Forman 9:17
surprise that you’re the person who sparked these dinners at Penn, and now hopefully it sounds like it will be a tradition, but I want to go there’s a lot to unpack with what you said, and thank you for sharing all of that. But do you think I mean to hear again that with the allies, and that ratio of seven to one that so many of those people were from the Orthodox community. I mean, that’s so

Ben 9:43
this isn’t just for straight peoples, for queer people in general. I think, I think that to gain acceptance. I mean, we deserve acceptance no matter what, but I think that it definitely helps that we are very involved in the community.

Stefanie Forman 9:55
So what have you been involved in, whether identity or just in general? What have you. Been doing at Penn this year. And where do you find Yeah, most of your time. I

Ben 10:05
probably spent more time in Hillel, the Jewish Center, than I did my dorm. I prayed three times a day in Hillel. I did my study in Hillel. I keep a strictly kosher diet, so I only ate in hills dining plan, which was a kosher dining hall activities. Wise, I served as the vice president of Shabbat and holiday planning for Hillel. So any special Shabbat meals that happened? We had an interfaith Shabbat. We had an environmental Shabbat and Mizrahi, Shabbat, queer Shabbat and Purim. We had matusia come and perform. We had Seders for Passover, any of that I helped plan. And then for the Orthodox community, I was also very involved in Shabbat life. I would organize Kiddush, which is like a little meal after Shabbat morning prayer service, yeah, and just Shabbat meals in general. And then this year, I’ll be kind of overseeing all that for the Orthodox community outside of Hilo, which is really not a lot of time. I work for an organization called Cosmic writers, and I teach English and writing to kids at public schools in South Philly. I’m on the Penn club swim team.

Stefanie Forman 11:14
You sleep then,

Ben 11:17
Yeah. Penn is great. Penn is great. Yeah. Amazing communities.

Stefanie Forman 11:22
So I guess, in your own words, how do you define a queer, inclusive community, like, what does your ideal of what does it look like in

Ben 11:33
the weeks before we started meeting Stephanie, I worked for this organization called JqI, which stands for Jewish queer youth. It’s an amazing organization. It specializes in the mental health treatment, really supporting and empowering queer Orthodox Jews and really like their unofficial motto is, queerness is whatever you want it to be. People always ask, you know, as a counter unfortunately, to people who identify as transgender, like, Well, why? Why can’t you just like be, let’s say, if you’re assigned female at birth as your sex, why can’t you just be a manly female and and the answer is, because that’s not what being female means to me. This is what being a male means to me, and being queer and engaged straight or bi or the trillion of other identities in between is really, I personally believe there shouldn’t be a definition on anything. It’s whatever it means to you, and it’s however you embody it. And I think that a perfect queer community would be accepting the queer person as they are, completely as they are, sexually as they are, gender identity wise as they are, politically, religiously, spiritually. I think that unfortunately, in tandem with other political agendas that not all queer people agree with your queer community tends to be a religious and views religion as perhaps antiquated. And I think that including queer people who do identify with religion and really believe that religion and their queer identity can really mesh and really jive, I think is really important.

Stefanie Forman 12:59
Yeah. I mean, that’s so such a lovely sentiment, except as you are and right? It’s, it’s so easier said

Ben 13:05
than done, because, of course, yeah,

Stefanie Forman 13:08
but you know, it should be that simple, and it’s not. It’s just people talking and listening and understanding and disagreeing in an animated but respectful way, like that. Pride is

Ben 13:19
about celebration and celebrating who we are in our different differences. But I completely agree with what you said, yeah,

Stefanie Forman 13:25
yeah. It’s I just we were in a neighboring town I don’t know, two or three weekends ago, and my daughter’s never been to that town before, and they were having a huge it was Montclair. Do you know Montclair in New Jersey? Yeah, of course. Yeah. A huge pride celebration, and her question, she was like, so and it’s again to see it through those eyes too. It’s like, This is amazing. It’s a celebration, and everyone’s themselves, and that’s what she saw. And yet, I mean a conversation for another day. But again, yeah, yes, and I don’t know. All right, moving on. I digress. So I would love for you to talk about this, and I referenced this before. So when you applied to college, did you write about being queer in any of your essays? And in what context did you talk about it, and do you think it gave you an advantage, or did it help you, or maybe not help like, were you ever insecure a little bit that you were going to be and now I’m giving it away, that you wrote about it, but that you were that vulnerable in your personal statement, which is the main college essay.

Ben 14:29
I think that maybe putting myself out there, in addition to writing about my queer and Jewish identity, was that I wrote about my anxiety as well, and kind of how it it all tied in together on one night where I came out to a friend. I think that if I were to just write I am gay and Jewish, like, that’s interesting. But I mean, there are people much more interesting than me who are at Penn and I stop it, Stephanie, shaking red, who are at Penn and who also aren’t at Penn. I think that because I had this identity, do. Just naturally, and because I built on it, and I interned for JqI, and I spoke with my rabbi, and I worked at a mental health club, and just various other things, I think that because I built on my identity and kind of flourished in it, I think that’s probably what helped me get into college, in addition to writing the personal statement and having Stephanie’s help, of course. But I really think, just as a general advice, I think that you know everyone, of course, and I’m sure you tell us all your students, everyone does have a niche identity, and really building on that and maximizing that and using your innate qualities and being the best person you can building off of that is probably the best advice I could give. Unsolicited advice.

Stefanie Forman 15:43
I love that. And something again, that continues to resonate with me is that at your eight, you know 1718 that you were able to be so reflective and empathetic of the people who you were sharing this information with, and even if they did not give you the reaction that you ideally wanted, the way that you were able to, you know, there was no negativity at all in your essay. It was just such a, you know, I don’t know it was. It’s just so rare, and I will always remember that. Again, this was for you, and again, you got some reactions you didn’t want, and you didn’t attach anything negative to that. You were like, that’s their own process, and that’s okay, and that’s where they’re at. And this is what I’m I guess, now, being in college, you’re just talking about your identity. Have any of your identity shifted or been challenged. Have they stayed the same? Is this even something that you think about Ben,

Ben 16:46
it certainly is. I think about it every day. Yeah. I mean, there’s no way around it. It’s a really tricky thing to be queer and Orthodox when you know the texts are so blaring, but you know, so are your emotions. And there’s, you know, people always ask me, like, what’s the answer? What’s the answer? And the answer is, there is no answer. Of course, there’s no answer. If there was an answer, you would know it. This past February, I spoke on a panel with my synagogue rabbi and the dean of why you rabbinical school, the Dean of why you rabbinical school. Son is openly gay, and the Dean, who is his father, is very open about it, and now has his own organization which does amazing things for queer people who are more orthodox. And would I would use the word yes, sheepish, which is colloquially a black hat, doesn’t really engage with the modern world. Really amazing work he does. The general sentiment of the event was, this is a contradiction that will never, ever, ever be solved. From an orthodox perspective, texts don’t change, the law doesn’t change. This is not this contradiction isn’t going anywhere. And that is not the goal. The goal is to make a safe space as possible for queer people to live their completely and perpetually complex lives.

Stefanie Forman 18:06
Oh, wow. It sounds like you’ve made also these really great contacts in the past year. Yeah, yeah. Thank God the work that you’re doing and you’re on panels. Thank goodness again, that people are hearing their ways and your experiences. But that makes me so happy to hear. And again, no surprise. So what do you recommend to queer students just starting college?

Ben 18:29
If you’re looking forward, if you’re not, that’s fine too. But if you were looking for a queer community, I would find a subset of the queer community. I think that while LGBT centers are great, it’s very, very general. And I mean, you can meet amazing people, but I think that everyone is more complex than just being queer. And there are queer clubs that intersect with races and ethnicities and different religions and many, many other things. And I would urge people to find the most specific student club or make a student club that you can in order to feel the most validated and find the most people that you connect with. I think that would be my primary advice. Great.

Stefanie Forman 19:08
I love that. And I guess my final I could talk to you for a long time, but I’m not that’s not there, but I could go on and on, but I guess my last question, just because it’s it’s timely, or maybe you can talk about your own experience or what advice you can impart, but you still, it seems like had a wonderful first year experience at Penn, despite a lot of tangible challenges that, yeah, yeah, you know that you experience because of who you are, not because of anything you’ve Ever done, but literally because of who you are on a Vash, like unabashedly, and how do you handle that? Like to be again in this community that you love and you have found your people, but yet there are so many people who are against who you are as a person that things that. You cannot change and should not change, like, how do you deal with that? I

Ben 20:05
think that really, just to sum up, the answer is a summation. We’ll be talking about community is key. And when you’re standing counter-protesting, holding an Israeli flag, and someone in the protest is yelling at you to go back to Poland and Berlin, it’s, it’s, it’s the people, your friends that you’re standing next to with an Israeli flag that really become your number one supporters. I think that the Jewish community at Penn and across many, many college campuses just really became stronger this year because of, of course, October 7 and then the aftermath that unfolded on college campuses. I don’t think any of us could have ever become this close just because we were just, you know, sharing stories. This professor just said something, this student just said something, oh my gosh, I saw someone who I thought was my friend in class. And community is key. And I would urge people queer, not queer. Zionist, pro-Palestinian, find community, because you cannot survive college without one Yeah,

Stefanie Forman 21:02
and that’s who made you. So it was nice. So in the end, everyone came together a lot stronger because of it. Yes, yes. Heard from a lot of our students this year that yeah, 100% their Jewish communities were thriving despite everything else going on. Because yeah, everything you said, All right. Well, Ben, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I’m so thank you that again, everyone can hear your thoughtful insights and reflections and everything else that you said That’s genius as always. So thank you everyone.

Lisa Bleich 21:36
Thank you so much, Stefanie and Ben. That was such a great interview. Really enjoyed hearing your experience, and we thank you all for coming to College Bound Mentor and CBMers for tuning in. To catch more episodes of College Bound Mentor, make sure to Follow or Subscribe to your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about the podcast. To learn more, visit CollegeBoundMentor.com Until next time, you got this!