Vandals deface human sexuality posters

By: Abigail Nawrot

Sports Editor

Vandals defaced flyers advertising the college’s human sexuality class with homophobic slurs.

For the past three years, Professor Ann Reucker has designed posters each semester with her students. They placed about 50 posters around campus promoting Reucker’s human sexuality class. Five posters have been removed due to the words written on them. 

The posters had a collage of words related to course material on them. The intersectional vocabulary was blacked out and the word “heterosexual” was circled, followed by discriminatory written comments. It is unknown who or how many people defaced the posters.

The posters’ vandalism was not only offensive to students of Ruecker’s human sexuality class, but other LGBTQ+ campus members.

Students first approached Reucker about the posters two or three weeks ago. Two students in her human development class pointed it out, including a student who was transgender. 

“They took them down because they were that offended, and they’re not even in that class,” Ruecker said.

According to Annabelle Fitzsimons, a human services major and student in Ruecker’s human development class, the posters could potentially alienate members of the LGBTQ+ community. 

“When my friend saw one of the posters, he ripped it into pieces and threw it in the garbage,” Fitzsimons said. “I think vandalizing the posters was a very immature thing to do, because if you have an opinion, people are always willing to discuss things.”

 Fitzsimons continued, “If someone feels negatively towards the LGBT community, they can have a discussion with someone, but it’s hard to help someone being close-minded.”

Fitzsimons also expressed concerns about the potential effects on LGBT members that could see the posters and have their mental health suffer as a result. 

“You don’t know what a person is going through,” Fitzsimons said. “Seeing hurtful things like that could potentially trigger someone or remind someone of abuse they suffered.” 

As stated by Fitzsimons, discriminatory things like the vandalism are what make people afraid to share their experiences. 

“Historically the LGBT community has suffered a lot, even to today,” Fitzsimons explained. “Letting this behavior continue is permission for that legacy to live into the future.” 

According to a study by the Williams Institute, 58% of LGBT youth have expressed they feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation. 

 Ruecker expressed her concern that the posters could impact Hudson Valley Community College students. 

“It’s really important to me that students feel safe, and seeing these posters defaced, it’s people anonymously and openly discriminating against the LGBT community,” Ruecker said. “I don’t want to see students become afraid to be themselves or feel unwilling to explore it as a result of that.” 

Despite the rising questions as to what the defaced posters mean for the campus, Ruecker is attempting to educate potential audiences.

Reucker said it’s imperative people learn the material she teaches, and that human sexuality should be a required course. 

Reucker also explained that she really wants the poster vandalism to be an educational experience. 

“It happened, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay or we’re going to pretend it didn’t,” Ruecker said. 

Ruecker has discussed this issue with students during class and public safety has now been notified of the issue.

“In my class, I want to encourage diversity, so it was really hurtful to see that the LGBT community is still being discriminated against,” said Reucker. “I want campus to be a safe place for students, and queer students are a part of a marginalized community.” 

According to Reucker, this kind of behavior would be expected from high schoolers, but as college students in 2019, the actions are disappointing.

In her human sexuality class, Reucker discusses topics such as cross-cultural differences, anatomy, sexual orientation and arousal. 

The goal of the class is to increase awareness of common societal issues like gender identity and sexual orientation, in the hope that students leave more open-minded and understanding of another person’s experiences. 

Reucker said she teaches the class from a socio-political perspective to allow people to voice their opinions. 

“We agree to disagree,” Reucker explained. “I don’t want to sway any of my students to my perspective, but to increase awareness, especially for those in the field of human services.” 

According to Reucker, for students who want to be counselors and social workers, these topics are important for diversity because they will come across all types of people.