According to Boone, Harvard in 1985 “was a very curious place”—Harvard maintained a “showy, gentlemanly atmosphere,” held over from another generation.

Boone added that though the school was not supportive of gay students or faculty, it was “fine for people to have alternative lifestyles as long as they weren’t explicit about it.”

Boone said he felt that he had to “tip-toe around and separate [his] lives completely.”

Rhonda Wittels ’79—who serves as president of the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus, which was founded in 1984—said that she felt welcome at the College. But Wittels qualified this sentiment.

“The freedom we had in the 70s might have been squelched in the 80s, when everyone was trying to go to business school,” she said.

In his graduation speech, Jennings asked his classmates to consider whether a Harvard education was a privilege or a responsibility.

For Jennings, an education at Harvard was a mandate to help less-privileged people, he said.

To that end, Jennings went into teaching, though he said that he did not expect the field would allow him to fulfill a commitment to future generations.

CHANGING HISTORY?

Harvard has had an ambivalent history in LGBT issues. In 1920, there was a mass expulsion of gay students at Harvard.

And until the 1970s, LGBT students “lived on a campus that probably had a climate more akin to that of 1920 than that of today,” Jennings wrote in an op-ed for The Crimson in 2008.

But Jennings said that Harvard has made strides to better serve LGBT students. Jennings helped the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus raise $1.5 million to establish the first endowed professorship in LGBT studies in the country.

Still, Harvard has a long way to go, Jennings said.

According to Boone, Harvard has a difficult time knowing when it is behind. “Because it represents so much tradition it moves slowly,” he said.

Jennings noted that several universities have significant staff dedicated to serving the needs of LGBT students.

“It’s a little bit of an embarrassment” for Harvard, as well as an obstacle in recruiting talented LGBT students who do not perceive Harvard as being particularly gay-friendly,” Jennings said.

“There’s still a little bit of arrogance and the perception that, ‘We’re Harvard; everyone wants to come here,’” he added.

­—Staff writer Zoe A. Y. Weinberg can be reached at zoe.weinberg@college.harvard.edu.