Date: Thu, 9 Feb 95 11:11:18 CST From: Robert Dailey February 9, 1995 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Notre Dame Gay Group to Hold First Public Meeting Following University's Move to Bar Further Activities NOTRE DAME, IN -- The gay and lesbian group recently barred from holding further meetings in campus facilities at the University of Notre Dame will gather this evening for its first public meeting at the university's student center. The group, Gays and Lesbians of Notre Dame and St. Mary's College (GLND/SMC) will hold an open meeting tonight (Thursday) at 7:30 PM in the common area of Notre Dame's LaFortune Student Center. The group has extended an invitation to the entire university community to attend and show its support. The group was informed by university administrators on January 23 that it would no longer be allowed to use the room in the University Counseling Center where it was housed for nearly nine years. Commented GLND/SMC co-chair John Blandford, "The student center is space we are all entitled to use as students, and it is important that we continue to maintain a strong presence here at Notre Dame. Despite the university's attempts to wish us away, lesbians and gay men are very much a part of the Notre Dame family. The meeting will allow us to re-assert the importance of our presence and enable the rest of the community to come out and show the true support that is out there. People need to know that the real Notre Dame is in its people and not in the insensitive decisions of a few administrators." The meeting will be held in the common area just outside the student center's "Tom Dooley Room." Dooley, an alumnus of Notre Dame and favorite son, was a naval officer and medical missionary is Southeast Asia during the late 1950's. It was recently revealed that Dooley had received a dishonorable discharge from the navy in 1956 because he was a homosexual. The cause of Dooley's separation from the navy was described in the late Randy Shilts' _Conduct_Unbecoming_, a 1993 work on gays and lesbians in the military. In addition to the room in the student center, Dooley is honored with a statue on Notre Dame's campus. Said Co-Chair Kelly Smith, "It seems especially ironic that the university's action to bar us from using campus facilities even keeps us locked out of the 'Tom Dooley Room.'" The group intends to meet outside the locked doors of the room and invoke Dooley's memory and his prominence in the history of the university. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ \\ + \\ E-Mail: John.M.Blandford.2@nd.edu //\\ // \\ Phone: 219.232.6332 + // \\ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -- Robert F. Dailey St. Edward's University, #892 rdailey@acad.stedwards.edu 3001 S. Congress Ave. (512) 448-8704 (voice) Austin, TX 78704-6489 (512) 448-8492 (fax) U.S.A.