Continued Conflict, New Decline?
As the GPA moved forward into the early part of the 1980s, the group faced many of the same controversies and difficulties that it had in the previous decade. However, as the eighties wore on, archival documents point to declined activity in the GPA.
A January 1981 article describing the burning of GPA signs located outside their office in Jones Basement. Read an opinion piece in response to the 1981 sign burnings here.
It's unfortunate to say that incidents such as the January 1981 burning of signs were not isolated in this period. In March of 1983, the GPA hosted a Gay Awareness Week (one of the many in a long tradition of programming weeks). This was met with an amount of hostility from the Bi-College community. On Bryn Mawr's campus, signs advertising programming were systematically removed. One article describes the sign-removal group as being "so organized, in fact, that often within 15 minutes of the posting of some of the GPA posters, there [sic] were torn down and replaced."
One of the events, termed Blue Jeans Day, was an event where posters were placed around campus advertising that people should wear blue jeans in support of homosexuality on a certain day. The idea behind the event was that everyone wore blue jeans on most days, and therefore people would have to make a conscious decision to not wear blue jeans. However, in addition to the organized poster removal campaign, there was also one that repostered and tried to rebrand the event as "wear blue jeans for heterosexuality." Read another article about the Gay Awareness Week posters here, and about the Minority Coalition's support for the GPA in wake of the events here.
Another such event that played out within the newspaper was a controversy over the intersection between Catholicism and homosexuality. Though the original article couldn't be located, sometime in April 1982 there was an opinion piece entitled "Catholics Complain" written by seven students in response to a relgious forum held by the GPA. Claiming to be "true catholics," these students claimed that Catholicism was irreconcilable with homosexuality. This article spurred debate and response within the Bi-Co News publication. Click through the gallery below to read these response articles.
Other difficulties faced the club in the 1980s, including the admissions office singling out GPA pamplets for removal from their office, as well administrative staff dismissing students from stuffing staff and faculty mailboxes with information about GPA events.
And even as the decade grew older, the GPA's difficulties in keeping its signs posted continued. This article describes removal in the fall of 1984.
In 1987, there was another GPA party dispute. This time, a GPA party was called into question for coinciding with Parent's Weekend at Bryn Mawr. Afraid of parents' perceptions of Bryn Mawr and being labelled as a "raving lunatic lesbian college," Bryn Mawr's President and Dean moved to advocate for "discreet" publicization of the party, operating on the assumption that some GPA signs in the past had been lewd. Read about the party and the Dean and President's reactions here. Of course, this was all refuted by the GPA, whose president responded in an opinion piece here. Read a letter to the editor in support of the decision here.
A 1986 lavender ribbon stuffed in mailboxes as a part of Gay Awareness Week. These are the same ribbons administrative staffers blocked the distribution of, described here. Read more about the use of the ribbons here, including musings on why more people did not support them.
Despite these difficulties, the GPA managed to continue to hold events, speakers, and meetings. This includes Gay Week as well as the lavender ribbon campaign. Aditionally, read the adviretisement below about a lecture series sponsored by the GPA.
A March 1983 article describing a lecture series began by the GPA called "Smart Fags and Dykes."
However, several articles in the Bryn Mawr-Haverford news point to a seeming decline in the activity and presence of the GPA. One 1984 article opened with the line "Contrary to apearance last semester, the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Gay People's Alliance (GPA) does in fact exist." In a November 1986 article about the decline of political engagement and groups on campus, the GPA was cited as an example of one such group in decline. Here, the GPA president was quoted saying that the GPA "isn't trying to do anything this semester." The sentiments expressed in that article are echoed in an editorial published the same week entitled "Activism in Decline."
