Several Yale University students and
staff members have recorded a video for the It Gets Better campaign,
including Katie Miller.
Miller is the lesbian cadet who quit
the West Point Academy in protest over “Don't Ask, Don't Tell,”
the now-defunct military policy which for 18 years threatened to end
the military careers of gay students who did not hide their sexual
orientation. Miller was ninth-ranked in her class of 1,157 when she
resigned two years into her program. She has since said she hopes to
join the military through officer candidate school after graduating
from Yale.
The It Gets Better Project encourages
bullied LGBT teens considering suicide to hang in there, because life
eventually gets better.
In the 14-minute video, Miller
discussed her experience.
“I spent two years at West Point,
which is the United States military academy. While I was there, this
was 2008 to 2010, 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' was in full effect. If you
are found out to be 'homosexual' then you are discharged from the
military. So it was actually written into law when I was there that
I could not be gay,” Miller said.
Other students discussed coming out gay
and life on campus. (The video is embedded in the right panel of
this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
Miller, who came out gay at 17, has
previously said she enjoyed taking gay-related curriculum at Yale not
offered at West Point.