R. Hickman, E. Conklin, E. Propst, with I. Padalecki
“He was sort of endlessly harassed on campus… people would throw rolls and things like that… I think he was driven out, and I think he left freshman year. And while I was sympathetic, it was just an absolute object lesson of, do not come out, you know—this is not at all a place for that.”1Bainum, Julia, and Laura Collins. Interview with Wilson Hardcastle. 25 March 2021. Gender and Sexuality Oral History Collection. Davidson Archives, Davidson, NC.
As part of the Davidson College Gender and Sexuality Oral History Project, Wilson Hardcastle ‘93 recalled the social ostracization of a student bold enough to attend Davidson College as an openly gay man in the 1990s. For many students marginalized for their racial, sexual, or gender identities before, during, and after their time at Davidson, the “typical Davidson experience” of sex and sexuality revolved around being white, heterosexual, and cisgender. As current students at Davidson College in the class of 2022, the authors of this essay understand how our own experiences of and perspectives on sexual culture at Davidson influence our readings of these oral history interviews—which offer a wide variety of memories and thoughts regarding how the Davidson campus community has expressed and organized sexuality in the past and present. These oral histories make clear that throughout Davidson’s history as an educational institution, gender, racial, and sexual identities have impacted students’ abilities to gain social status and acceptance. On Davidson’s campus, these social structures have contributed to an incredibly varied social culture of engagement with sexual and romantic interaction, including seriously dating in pursuit of marriage, engaging in casual and frequent hook-ups, and the prospect of having neither opportunity due to social or romantic isolation.
The “Davidson Experience”?
As pitched to incoming and prospective students by official college messaging, the “Davidson experience” offers small classes, exceptional professors, and a party culture dominated by welcoming fraternities and eating houses. Davidson fraternity and eating house organizations have established a predominantly white, heterosexual, and cisgender social scene, which has consistently informed and reinforced the College’s dating culture. Specifically, the party scene created by these social organizations has historically excluded openly queer students and students of color and created barriers for their sexual and romantic lives on campus. In his oral history interview, Daniel Hierro ‘17 describes his experience with fraternities at Davidson, reflecting upon the “racist or homophobic” actions of these historically white, male, and heterosexist organizations.2 Padalecki, Isabel. Interview with Daniel Hierro. 27 March 2021. Gender and Sexuality Oral History Collection. Davidson Archives, Davidson, NC. Hierro recalls how the Davidson community never actively tried to make these white and homonormative3 As we define it, ‘homonormativity’ refers to the ways in which certain LGBTQ+ people enjoy a sense of being normal or accepted in a certain setting or culture. In Hierro’s and other people’s cases, certain LGBTQ+ people who are not seen as part of the normal culture—as defined by whiteness, attractiveness, gender conformity, among others—can feel alienated even without explicitly discriminatory actions against them. spaces more inclusive, stating that “there were never really substantive things to address the problems that were there before minorities.”4 Hierro interview. While fraternities and eating houses participated in creating a singular narrative of party and hookup culture, the Davidson administration and other authorities failed to address these exclusionary social environments.
As a result, many students regularly experienced rigid social hierarchies as part of their experience at Davidson College. For queer students and students of color, this hierarchy often led to a very limited social scene in which students were compartmentalized into or excluded from different organizations based on their identities, on Patterson Court5Patterson Court refers to the local and national social Greek Life and Greek Life-adjacent organizations on Davidson’s campus, the demographics of which housing a majority of white-dominated social institutions. Warner Hall House, for example, is a predominantly white eating house on Patterson Court. and beyond. In her interview, Nethea Princewill ‘93 describes being one of the only Black women in Warner Hall House. Princewill describes how “all the Black kids were automatically sent to the BSC,” signifying a rigid social hierarchy wherein students were assigned to certain social spaces and, subsequently, levels of social capital based on their gender, sexuality, or race.6 Hickman, Ross, and Emma Shealy. Interview with Thea Princewill. 21 March 2021. Gender and Sexuality Oral History Collection. Davidson Archives, Davidson, NC. Judy Harrell Hooks ‘85 described a similar experience in which she felt that she, a Black woman, could only attend events hosted by the Black Student Coalition7 The Black Student Coalition is a social, political, and cultural organization founded by black students in the early 1970s to push for campus equality and inclusion, as well as maintain a spirit of solidarity and support among the small numbers of black students that the college admitted to campus. rather than those hosted by the fraternities or eating houses.8 Conklin, Elsa, and Ella Nagy-Benson. Interview with Judy Harrell Hooks and Charles Hooks. 13 March 2021. Gender and Sexuality Oral History Collection. Davidson Archives, Davidson, NC.
The social scene was similarly limited for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Even within the often small queer community, many queer student organizations created predominantly white spaces and cultures that continued to exclude and marginalize queer people of color on Davidson’s campus, as expressed by Daniel Hierro ‘17, a gay Afro-Latino man:
“I could throw a rock and hit a white gay person at Davidson, but, for me, I wanted to be able to hook up with people where I didn’t have to explain my existence.”9 Hierro interview.
These oral histories describe Davidson’s as a place where racialized and sexualized social and romantic geographies formed as a result of social pressures, regulations, and hierarchies enacted primarily by and for white, heterosexual students. These social hierarchies restricted not only the ability to build strong communities within these social scenes, but also the ability to feel respected, seen, and understood by one’s peers and potential romantic partners. Considering the experiences of the narrators, the ability to participate and feel comfortable in this overwhelmingly white, cisgender, and heterosexual social and party scene was a privilege not offered to all Davidson students.
Sexual Culture and Change at Davidson
Across many oral history interviews, narrators articulated their own broad visions of how Davidson’s sexual culture has operated. Collectively, these alumni describe a campus culture in which sexual and romantic experiences at Davidson mostly happened either in casual, party-based sexual hook-ups or in monogamous, marriage-bound relationships. Especially for those with marginalized racial and sexual identities, having sex and being in relationships outside of these two categories were difficult, if not seemingly impossible.
Additionally, many of these oral history narrators seemed to share the assumption that satisfying sexual or romantic experiences were critical indicators of whether people enjoyed their time at Davidson; however, this was not universal. For Nethea Princewill, navigating Davidson as a Black asexual woman, who would have liked to date romantically but not sexually, was challenging, as she didn’t have the sexual or romantic “luxury” to which many white and heterosexual students had access.10 Princewill interview. Within the broader context of what Princewill remembers as a white Christian purity culture in North Carolina in the early 1990s, the choice between marriage and casual sex was a cultural assumption that structured white and heterosexual dating cultures at Davidson and beyond. This dichotomy left little space for her desires and identities.
As Davidson has become more publicly progressive in terms of accepting sexual, racial, and gender diversity, some of our narrators, like Jane Campbell and Heather McKee, have come to see what was once a resoundingly repressive and isolating campus as a place progressing in terms of including sexual and gender minorities. For Campbell and McKee, their path-breaking lesbian marriage ceremony at Davidson College Presbyterian Church was part of broader participation in institutions like the U.S. military that have historically excluded LGBTQ+ people.11 Walton, Lucy, and Courtney Clawson. Interview with Jane Campbell and Heather McKee. 13 March 2021. Gender and Sexuality Oral History Collection. Davidson Archives, Davidson, NC. As for others, what may be currently more positive perspectives on Davidson’s progress remain closely tied to memories of experiencing the campus’s lack of acceptance, representation, and open discussion of different sexualities.
While we can hold space to celebrate efforts to include and meaningfully represent sexually marginalized people, our narrators’ memories, including Campbell’s and McKee’s, point toward a wider social experience of exclusions, silences, and erasures for those who have not conformed to white, Christian, and heterosexual culture. This collection of perspectives on sexuality at Davidson College provides a limited glimpse into how previous versions of Davidson have experienced what it can mean to be queer or straight, Black or white, and future interviews will illumine even further what is already a nuanced understanding of Davidson’s sexual cultures.