A Brief History on Cultural Centers at ISU

“A Home Away From Home: The George A. Jackson Black Cultural Center” exhibition, curated by University Archivist Greg Bailey, opens this week. In 2020, the Black Cultural Center (BCC) celebrated its 50th anniversary. The exhibition starts in the exhibit case on the first floor of Parks Library, near the Main Desk. Then the rest of the exhibition is on the 4th floor, en route to our reading room (403 Parks Library).

• 

  Cleaning off the windows to prepare for installing the window decals (photo Amy Bishop).

• 

  It takes a team of 3 pros from Printing Services to install the decal (photo by Amy Bishop).

• 

  Lots of smoothing and adjusting to get it just right (photo by Daniel Hartwig).

Visit this article for more information on this exhibition and the history of the BCC.

• 

  Exhibit case on 4th Floor (photo by Greg Bailey).

• 

  Exhibit case on 4th Floor (photo by Greg Bailey).

There have been other student centers on campus for underrepresented and underserved communities. Some of them are still going strong today, such as the Margaret Sloss Center for Women and Gender Equity and the Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success, and others were not sustained.

Margaret Sloss Center for Women and Gender Equity

The Margaret Sloss Women’s Center was established in 1981 to provide a centralized home for women’s organizations and to promote and sustain women through advocacy, programs, and information and referral services. The work to create a women’s center at ISU began in 1973.

A Proposal for the Creation of a Women’s Center

If you look closely very lightly underneath the typewritten word “Center” is handwritten note that is faded due to photocopying, “Aug ’73.”

From the Margaret Sloss Women’s Center records, RS 3/6/3, Box 1, Folder 7, Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives.

From the Margaret Sloss Women’s Center records, RS 3/6/3, Box 1, Folder 7, Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives.

In January 2019, the Center changed their name to the Margaret Sloss Center for Women and Gender Equity to better represent the work and mission of the center. Visit the website for more information. Margaret Sloss was the first woman to earn a doctorate in Veterinary Medicine at ISU. She was known for both her professional achievements and also her work to include and support other women in her field.

We have very little information currently on the rest of the cultural centers in this post, but we would like to have more. If you have additional materials from your time here at ISU or know more about these organizations, please reach out to us at archives@iastate.edu.

Center for LGBTQIA+ Student Success

In 2018, SCUA was invited to collaborate with the Center and host an event for their Out & About: Community through Adventure program. This program took students to interesting spots on or around campus, with the goal of connecting LGBTQIA+ students to one other and also with different university departments. The Center’s staff did the research for what archival materials we would use for the visit and brought a few items from the Center’s own records.

History of the Center

Left: 1992 ISU Daily article “ISU hires advocate for gays” on Tom Owings, 1^st Center coordinator.

From Student Organizations – Political and Social Action Organizations records, Subject Files, RS 22/4/0/1, Box 2, Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives.

Right: “LGBT office open to all students” interview with Brad Freihoefer in Mid-Iowa article, 2008.

From Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Student Services Records, RS 7/3/10, Box 1, Folder 17, Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives.

Latin American Student Union

This news clipping from the Iowa State Daily May 12, 1976, offers information on the purpose of the LASU and also upcoming events for its first year.

From Student Organizations – Multicultural Organizations records, RS 22/3, Box 2, Folder 14, Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives.

Hispanic American Student Union

News clipping from the Iowa State Daily, February 23, 1990. From Student Organizations – Multicultural Organizations records, RS 22/3, Box 1, Folder 34, Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives.

From Student Organizations – Multicultural Organizations records, RS 22/3, Box 1, Folder 34, Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives.

Asian American Cultural Center

Iowa State Daily article, October 9, 1997. From Student Organizations – Multicultural Organizations records, RS 22/3, Box 1, Folder 19, Iowa State University Library Special Collections and University Archives.

If you are interested in researching more about these, or other organizations on campus, schedule an appointment with us at archives@iastate.edu.

Latinx Heritage Month: Student Organizations

Happy National Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month!

As mentioned in previous posts, our collections currently hold far less information on the experiences of the ISU Latinx community than we would like, though we are working to correct that. Everything we do have, however, clearly indicates that ISU students with Hispanic and Latinx heritage have long led rich social lives and contributed greatly to campus culture during their time in college.

I have included here a sampling (NOT comprehensive) of current and historical Latinx student organizations whose records are represented in the archives, along with a handful of documents to illustrate their activities. Some of these materials are already digitized and available online, but, if you would like to explore any analog collections mentioned in this post, you can request materials through our new Aeon system and make an appointment to view them in our reading room.

 

International Student Organizations

Organizations supporting international students were among the earliest student organizations (along with Greek and very early literary societies) to form on campus, and many contemporary off-shoots can trace their roots back the 1920s Cosmopolitan Club. You can find photos and documents from this elsewhere on our blog and website.

 

Mexican Student Association

Poster for a 1979 MU event. RS 22/3 Mexican Students Association

 

Puerto Rican Student Association

RS 22/3 Puerto Rican Student Association

 

Greek Organizations

Greek  organizations which highlight or support a particular racial or ethnic heritage (though most of these do not discriminate against potential members from other racial or ethnic backgrounds, unlike earlier white Greek organizations) have historically, and continue to this day, to play a crucial role in providing community for individuals whose identities are underrepresented elsewhere at the university.

 

Lambda Theta Nu Sorority

2011 Iowa State Daily article. RS 22/03/01 Lambda Theta Nu

 

Lambda Theta Alpha Sorority

A handful of LTA members were kind enough to share some stories with us via oral history interviews for the #VoicesinColor project. You can stream these interviews on Aviary to learn more about these students’ experiences within their sorority, via their extensive campus involvement, and as members of the Latinx community attending a predominantly white institution during politically turbulent times.

 

Lambda Theta Phi Fraternity

The gentlemen of Lambda Theta Phi, like many contemporary student organizations, maintain an online presence apart from the Student Activities Center’s database of officially-recognized organizations. And they were gracious enough to allow us to web archive the public version of their Facebook page. You can find access and, to a limited extend, interact with the archived copies of this page in our Archive-It account.

The first archived version of the Lambda Theta Phi Latin Fraternity from March 2018. As you can see, this crawl did not successfully pick up any video files. This is often the case with social media crawls, as Facebook’s code is very complex.

 

 

Multicultural Student Organizations

This broad category technically encompasses all previously-listed organizations as well but is here used to refer specifically to organizations created to center American students from Hispanic and/or Latinx backgrounds.

 

Latin American Student Union (LASU)

RS 22/3 Latin American Student Union

 

Hispanic American Student Union (HASU)

Without more documentation, it is not clear to me whether LASU and HASU were two distinct organizations that existed simultaneously, a single organization that changed its name at some point, or two interchangeable names for the same organization. However, given the use of a similar logo/face on publications for both, my guess is that one of the latter options is more likely. Regardless, both seem to have been extremely active on campus for well over a decade.

HASU poster, date unknown, RS 22/03/00/01

 

Mexican-American Young Achievers Society (MAYAS)

RS 22/3/0/1 Mexican-American Young Achievers Society.

 

Political Activism Student Organizations

In my observation, the membership, and often leadership, of political activism groups and of the more social groups listed above tends to overlap significantly. Many social Latinx organizations also engage in political activism or advocacy at one time or another, either as part of their stated purpose or as an extension of members’ interests. Regardless, there is no doubt that the Latinx community at Iowa State has been and continues to be a passionate voice for change, both locally and on a national level.

 

Latino Caucus

It is sometimes possible to find mentions in The Tribune and other local papers of the activities of politically-minded student groups, even when we do not have these groups’ records in the archives.

RS 22/3 Latino Caucus

 

Students Against Bigotry

This organization grew out of a 2015 Latinx-led campus response to national sociopolitical issues like the Mizzou protests and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It was originally referred to as Latinos United for a Change (LUCHA), though the name changed as interest and participation broadened to include more of the student body.

RS 22/04/01 Students Against Bigotry

And, again, that is only a small sampling of the Latinx student organizations that have been active on campus, or even that are mentioned, however briefly, in ISU archival records. That said, if you or someone you know was involved with one of these organizations while a student at ISU, please do get in touch and share what you remember! We are always looking for ways to tell fuller stories about students’ lives and experiences at ISU.

Tricks, Treats, or Both? Maggot Rice Krispies, Chocolate “Chirpie” Cookies, and the ISU Entomology Club

After all of you Halloween zombies out there have feasted on blood and brains, can I tempt you with a nice chocolate-covered grasshopper, or maybe some mealworm banana bread, for dessert? No, really! Just scroll down, and you’ll see I’ve included the recipes.

In 1992, the ISU Entomology Club made national headlines for a component of its annual Insect Horror Film Festival when students Julie Stephens and Kathy Gee took their entomological desserts on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

 

The Entomology Club had been a fixture on the ISU campus since the 1970s. I’ve included the covers from some of their early newsletters below.

However, the Insect Horror Film Festival seems to have been a new development in their programming in the early 1990s — though its subsequent popularity was undoubtedly helped along almost as much by the national recognition as by the prospect of a “petting zoo,” a lecture on forensic pathology (i.e. the science of human corpse erosion), and the alluring snacks.

As far as I can tell, the Insect Horror Film Festival was discontinued at ISU around 2005* [see end note for correction], though not before it was featured in travel guidebooks and inspired similar programs in numerous other Entomology departments around the country. It also certainly made an impression on young guests who attended.

And here, as promised, are some of the tasty recipes reproduced in the Ames Tribune, along with a helpful guide for acquiring and preparing the insects.

If you forgot to pick up candy for trick-or-treating this year, now you know what to hand out to the kids!

*UPDATE: This blog posts speculates, based on current archival holdings, that the Insect Horror Film Festival was discontinued in the mid-2000s. However, Entomology has since let us know that this program, under a slightly different name, is still going strong today! For more information, check out their department’s event calendar archive and/or the Reiman Gardens event calendar.

ISU Hillel: A Jewish Student Club

Happy Jewish American Heritage Month!

Currently, Iowa State University boasts two recognized Jewish student organizations on campus: Hillel and Chabad. Because we, unfortunately, do not have an abundance of archival documentation on either, my knowledge of their histories is a bit murky. However, I have located some traces of ISU Hillel (a branch of a national organization by the same name) back to 1940, which appears to have been its date of arrival on campus. If this is indeed the correct date, and the club has been active continuously since that point, which seems to be the case, then next year, 2020, will be their 80th anniversary.

The earliest mention I found was a page from the 1942 Bomb yearbook, which featured a full page on the group after they chose to forgo an annual banquet so they could dedicate their entire event budget to the purchase of a patriotic war bond instead. The page details the group’s origins, touches on their weekly activities, and names club officers.

1942 Bomb Yearbook, page 173

Owing in part to the existence of a campus-wide “Religious Emphasis Week” in the 1940s, many of the ISC ’40s yearbooks feature sections on religious and service organizations, and these include images of the Hillel club sporadically through about 1949.

1946 Bomb Yearbook, page 120

1947 Bomb Yearbook, page 159

1948 Bomb Yearbook, page 162

1949 Bomb Yearbook, page 264

Researchers will be glad to see that most of these captions identify the individuals pictured, which means it may be possible to reconstruct membership rosters for the club’s early years, if these do not exist elsewhere, and/or look up additional information about graduating seniors’ majors or other campus involvement.

Several yearbook indexes post 1949, in fact, list B’nai B’rith Hillel under entries for senior activities, so we can surmise that the club was still in existence after this point, even if campus publications did not cover its activities as thoroughly.

Within the University Archives collections, however, we have some club ephemera that picks up documentation again in the 1970s.

Draft of a purpose statement on a fragment of paper. No date, but circa 1970. RS 22/8/0/2 Box 1, folder titled “B’nai B’rith Hillel (Jewish)”

Handwritten calendar and financial statement for club activities. RS 22/8/0/2 Box 1, folder titled “B’nai B’rith Hillel (Jewish)”

A number of these documents are internal club records — handwritten accounts detailing yearly activities and budgets. Correspondence included in this folder suggests that ISU student groups were being required for the first time to submit annual paperwork in order to maintain an official affiliation with the university, and/or receive funding. So these single-page accounts may have been drawn up for an early version of what is now the club recognition process.

RS 22/8/0/2 Box 1, folder titled “B’nai B’rith Hillel (Jewish)”

There are also a few 1970s programs, like the 1974 handout below, which advertises a series of Holocaust memorial events.

Front of the handout, RS 22/8/0/2 Box 1, folder titled “B’nai B’rith Hillel (Jewish)”

Back of the handout, RS 22/8/0/2 Box 1, folder titled “B’nai B’rith Hillel (Jewish)”

There are also a few newspaper clippings that date from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, again evidencing that the group was active on campus throughout that time, if not particularly well-documented in archival records.

Article from the Iowa State Daily, February 2, 1978

Article from the Iowa State Daily, August 6, 1991

If you have more information or documentation regarding the history of ISU’s B’Nai B’rith Hillel club, or of other Jewish organizations or events on campus, please feel free to contact the University Archives at archives@iastate.edu. We would love to hear from you.

Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month: HASU of the 1980s

Did you know there used to be an Hispanic American Student Union (HASU) on campus? Did you know that the group (for, indeed, it was a student group, not a building) was around for at least a full decade? And that it hosted a high-profile, multi-day, annual symposium with funding from the Government of the Student Body (GSB) for at least seven years in a row? And that this symposium created a unique space for American students with Hispanic/Latinx heritage to celebrate and share their culture, create dialog around social issues, converse with prominent activists, and voice to their own experiences?

You didn’t? Don’t feel bad: neither did I.

Neither did any of the SCUA staff, in fact, until a few days ago. This is because scarcely a whisper of such a group exists in our archives. We have no collections of meeting minutes from HASU secretaries, no photographs, no write-ups in the yearbook (a staple in research on ISU student life). Virtually nothing.

So how did I find out about it?

Well, I stumbled by chance across an article, not in a campus publication, but in the public library’s digitized copies of the local Ames Tribune while trying to answer a reference question.

Article from the Ames Tribune, March 14, 1985, page 20

I think it was the detailed nature of the article that peaked my interest, the inclusion of the full schedule for the benefit of community members wishing to attend. How could something like this have slipped so completely under our radar? Especially when none of the archivists had even heard of HASU, and it did not appear in any of our indexes or subject guides.

With an exact date to go off of, the University Archivist managed to track down a recording of the lecture delivered by Arnaldo Torres. But this turned out to be less helpful than we’d hoped, as the lecture is recorded in an older tape format and has not yet been digitized. So my curiosity remained unsatisfied.

I am particularly interested in the past and present (aka “future history”!) of student organizations on campus, and I know that this kind of detective work — the business of hunting down ghosts — while frustrating, can also be really fun. So I decided I was going to learn something about this mystery organization. As a side note, I didn’t carry the investigation very far, as I was really only hunting for blog post stories. But I wanted to share some of my methodology in this post so that any of you readers who find yourselves interested in this, or similarly under-documented histories, can replicate the steps and make your own discoveries.

Since I found the group in a news article, I decided to move my search to newspapers. Fortunately, my first stop, the Iowa State Daily, produced results. One is not always so lucky.

Unfortunately, the Iowa State Daily back issues are not digitized or keyword searchable prior to the 1990s. This means, in order to find anything, you have to scroll through miles of microfilm. And the microfilm is not housed in SCUA (on the 4th floor of Parks), either. It’s housed in the Media Center which is located (yes, you guessed it) in the basement of Parks. Naturally.

For those of you who have never used a microfilm reader before, this should give you an idea.

Microfilm reader in the Parks Library Media Center.

Look at all the gears and gadgets!

Essentially, then, a microfilm reader is a cross between a giant sewing machine, a film projector, a microscope, and a really old, bulky desktop computer. If that sounds off-putting to you, don’t worry: the staff at the desk are all trained to help, and you get the hang of it pretty quickly.

The real draw-back to microfilm, though is that, while it’s easy to find articles by date, it’s less easy to search for them by subject matter. For a limited date-range, though, the archives does have a printed subject index for Iowa State Daily articles, and this helped me out a ton.

Iowa State Daily Index 1986-1987, Call #PARKS Spec Coll: Archives AI21 I8x.

So, using the index, and then searching the dates it gave me on microfilm, I found a few articles pertaining either to HASU or to their annual Hispanic Symposium in Daily issues from 1985, 1987, and 1990. And because the first mention of the symposium billed it as the “fifth annual” event, I could tell right away that HASU had existed and been active from at least 1981-1990. As to whether it continued beyond that, who can say? However, if I had decided to continue my research beyond this point, the date range would have provided an important clue.

Anyway, here are some of the articles I found on HASU and their annual Hispanic Symposium. I hope you enjoy them, and I hope they inspire you to do your own archival research. You never know what you will find with a little persistence.

And please, if you are an alumnus, and you remember participating in HASU in the 1980s, do get in touch with me. We’ll do what we can to help you tell the story of your group more fully for the benefit of future researchers.

Advertisement for the “Fifth Annual Spring Hispanic Symposium,” Iowa State Daily, March 21, 1985, page 14

“Past immigrants are today’s bigots,” Iowa State Daily, March 22, 1985, page 1

“Hispanic play takes on stereotypes” and “1987 Hispanic Symposium,” Iowa State Daily, February 20, 1987, page 15

“Ghosts of the Suffrage Club” by Research Assistant Amanda Larsen

This year, two talented upperclassmen have joined SCUA through the Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA) program to help us uncover some of the “hidden histories” of ISU through research into underrepresented communities in the university’s past. They are working on digital exhibits that will serve as a resource for future scholars, and both URA students will be writing blog posts throughout the school year to update you on their discoveries. Today, it is my pleasure to introduce the work of Amanda Larsen, who has chosen to research feminist activism at ISU.

-Rachael Acheson
Assistant University Archivist

 

---

Ghosts of the Suffrage Club

When thinking of the early days of campus life, it is easy to distance ourselves from those who were here at the turn of the century. Women on campus had to live in dorms with few exceptions, endure strict curfew rules, and were not allowed to leave the city without special permission. Despite the restrictions to their campus life, women on campus decided to take part in gaining the right to vote. So, they created the suffrage club.

On April 14th, 1916, the newly created suffrage club met for the first time. Around 150 women showed up to vote Ava Johnson as the president, Jeanette Knapp as the secretary, and Katherine McCarrell as treasurer. During the meeting, Dean Katharine McKay and those listed above spoke to the crowd. They goal of the club “was stated to be the support of the suffrage movement in Iowa with particular emphasis on the securing of pledges of votes favoring the suffrage measure to be submitted to the voters of the state in the June election.” One of the first speakers brought in by the “suffrage boosters” was Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the American Woman Suffrage association and former student of Iowa State, for a highly anticipated lecture at the university.

Despite having 150 women at the first meeting, there is little mention of this suffrage club in the archives and no mentions of it in the Bomb (the yearbook).  Ava Johnson, who was the president of the club graduated in 1916, but the suffrage club was not listed within her group involvement.

 

p. 76 in the 1916 Bomb

 

Nor is the club mentioned when Jeanette Knapp or Katharine McCarrell are listed the following year.

 

Knapp is on the far left. 1917 Bomb, page 108.

 

McCarrell is on the far right. 1917 Bomb, p. 110. Katharine’s name has been spelled “Katherine” when mentioned elsewhere.

 

This was not the only suffrage club in Ames, but it is only one created by students at Iowa State. All the clubs in Ames, including the suffrage club, were focused on securing the votes for suffrage during the June 1916 election. The results of the vote were 2671 votes in favor of suffrage in Story County, while only 1606 voted against.

 

From the SCUA Artifact Collection. Suffragists wore buttons like this for a variety of reasons. Many to get people to know that suffrage was on the ballot or to proudly show that they were a suffragist.

 

Newspaper clipping featuring the only known mention in the archives of the ISU Suffrage Club. RS# 22/04/00/01.

 

If you are a part of an Iowa State club or organization and have documents (any inactive records, meeting minutes, photographs, etc.) pertaining to the club, then please bring them to Special Collections on the fourth floor of Parks Library. Those records can be stored for future generations to have a better understanding of your club.

 

---

Meet the Author!

Amanda Larsen is in her third year at ISU with a triple major in criminal justice, psychology, and history. She has already proven herself to be a hard worker and innovative researcher, and SCUA is looking forward to watching her project unfold. She hopes that you have enjoyed the post!

Amanda Larsen, SCUA Undergraduate Research Assistant 2018-2019

Collecting Student Life Amongst Diverse Communities

Because Special Collections is the home of the University Archives (UA), documenting the University’s history is central to what we do.  The University Archives is filled with official records from the institution itself, but the student experience is under-documented.  This is woefully true in the case of black students.  One of the goals of the Library is to change that, but that can’t happen without alumni themselves.

One such student organization is the Eta Tau Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. is the first African American intercollegiate sorority, and it was founded at Howard University in Washington DC 110 years ago. The Eta Tau Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. was chartered at Iowa State University/Drake University June 14, 1973. Anniversaries are reminders of how important it is to reflect upon one’s history and place at the university and the greater community. It is also an opportunity to solidify ones place in the official historical records, making it known and available for generations of students and researchers.

Courtesy of Keena Thicklin, AKA 1993 Initiate and ISU Class of 1995.

AIDS Awareness Program flyer, March 1994. Courtesy of Tasha Oakley, AKA Inititate and ISU Class of 1997.

Photograph of Eta Tau Chapter members at a formal event, ca. 1995. Courtesy of Keena Thicklin, AKA 1993 Initiate and ISU Class of 1995.

Iowa State Daily article, January 1993. Courtesy of Tasha Oakley, AKA Fall 1993 Initiate and ISU Class of 1997.

 

Help us document the Black student experience at Iowa State University. If you have letters, photographs, diaries, scrapbooks, research papers, meeting minutes, clippings, flyers, audio, film, or video recordings from your time at ISU, please consider donating them to the University Archives.

Eta Tau Chapter members at ISU game, ca. 1995. Courtesy of Keena Thicklin, AKA Inititate and ISU Class of

#TBT Bicycle Club

Bicycle Club, circa 1898. University Photographs, box (1644).

This weekend, one of Iowa’s biggest events begins. No, not the Iowa State Fair (that’s in August). Rather, it’s that huge bicycle ride across the state, RAGBRAI. RAGBRAI is a statewide event run by the Des Moines Register that began in 1973. Bicycle enthusiasts have been at Iowa State University since, judging by this photograph, at least the turn of the 20th century. ISU has had a student cycling club for years, currently called the ISU Cycling Club (in the 1970s, it was the ISU Bicycle Club).

Some information on the ISU Bicycle Club in the 1970s is available in the Iowa State University, Student Organizations, Recreation and Special Interest Groups General File, RS 22/7/0/1. Stop by sometime!

Alpha Zeta Fraternity at Iowa State #TBT

Alpha Zeta fraternity in front of Agricultural Hall (now named Catt Hall) on steps. This photograph was taken on May 23, 1927.

(University Photographs box 1627)

Charles W. Burkett and John F. Cunningham, students in the College of Agriculture at the Ohio State University, founded the Fraternity of Alpha Zeta November 4, 1897. Alpha Zeta is a professional, service, and honorary agricultural fraternity for men and women in agriculture seeking to develop leadership skills to benefit agriculture, life sciences, and related fields. There are over 100,000 members worldwide.

Drop by the reading room and review the Alpha Zeta Wilson Chapter (Iowa State University) Records. We’re open from 10 -4, Monday-Friday.

LGBT Pride Month

June is LGBT Pride Month. What better time to highlight LGBT-related materials in our collections? Iowa State University strives to provide an inclusive environment on campus, but it hasn’t always been easy. Homophobia was once rampant, not just on our campus, but everywhere. That’s not to say that it’s been eradicated, but overall there appears to be more acceptance today. In the face of the challenges LGBT individuals have faced, several student groups sprung up on campus in the 1970s. These included the Gay Liberation Front (later called the Gay Men’s Rap Group), the Lesbian Alliance, and the Gay People’s Liberation Alliance.

ISU’s Gay Liberation Front makes its public debut, 1971. RS 22/4/0/1, Box 1, Folder 35

The first gay student group on campus was the Gay Liberation Front, established during the 1971-1972 academic year (it’s unclear if the ISU group was associated with the national GLF). The organization came together to start a gay liberation movement on campus and became publicly visible for the first time in December 1971, with a letter to the editor published in the Iowa State Daily in protest of the play “Boys in the Band,” which was being performed on campus. The letter complained of the production’s “outwardly homophobic attitudes toward the gay lifestyle.” (“30 Years Is Just the Beginning,” Iowa State Daily, April 1, 2002; RS 22/4/0/1, Box 1, Folder 34). Several response letters critical of the initial letter were sent and published. The following year, the group changed its name to the Gay Men’s Rap Group, a name with less of a political connotation. Membership increased drastically from the first year to the next, with around 25 people at the first meeting that second year. A founding member of the Gay Liberation Front, Dennis Brumm, wrote a history of the gay liberation movement at Iowa State on his website, a copy of which we have printed off from 2001 (note: the version in the link above is a bit different than the version in our archive).

A publication that served as an open forum for LGBT individuals in the community to express their thoughts, 1974. RS 22/4/0/1, Box 1, Folder 35

LGBT student organizations existing today on campus can be found on the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Student Services (LGBTSS) website, along with resources for LGBT individuals and allies. For more information on the history of LGBT organizations on campus, stop by and see the Iowa State University, Student Organizations, Political and Social Action Organizations Records, RS 22/4/0/1. We’d love to see you!