Members of the newly-minted group
LGBTQ President's in Higher Education have recorded an It Gets Better
video.
The group, which represents openly gay
university and college presidents, formed in August.
They held their second annual meeting
in November at Antioch University in Los Angeles.
“What do you see when you see me?”
Dr. Charlita L. Shelton, president of the University of the Rockies,
rhetorically asks in the video. “What's obvious? I'm black, and
I'm a woman, but what you don't see is that I'm a very proud lesbian
president of a university.”
“My coming out process could not have
been better, because I had someone who supported me,” Shelton adds
in introducing her partner, Lynne Schumal.
Dr. Ralph Hexter, president of
Hampshire College in Massachusetts, says he believes being openly gay
has not been a professional impediment.
“I don't think it's closed any doors,
in fact I think it's opened many doors,” Hexter, who married his
partner, Manfred Kollmeier, in 2007, says in the video.
“And who could have imagined it, but
my partner and I of 30 years, my husband, live in the president's
house.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)
The video was posted on the website of
the It Gets
Better Project, which encourages troubled gay teens to hang in
there and not cave in to bullies, because life gets better.