State College, Penn State again named among nation’s best for being LGBTQ-friendly

State College and Penn State have again earned perfect scores in separate organizations’ rankings that reflect a welcoming environment for the LGBTQ community, placing them nationally among elite company.

State College earned a 100/100 in last week’s 2022 Municipal Equality Index (MEI), which measures the inclusivity of municipal laws, policies and services for the LGBTQ community. (That annual report is issued by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the country.) Penn State also discovered earlier this year it earned a 5-out-of-5-star rating on the Campus Pride Index that takes into account schools’ LGBTQ policies, programs and practices.

Campus Pride, a national nonprofit, also named Penn State to its “Best of the Best” LGBTQ-friendly Colleges and Universities list, making it one of 40 institutions chosen for cultivating “a safe, welcoming environment for students, faculty and staff alike.” State College was also one of 120 cities nationwide to earn a perfect MEI score, with the average score of the 506 rated municipalities coming in at a 69.

It is the fourth straight year State College has earned a perfect score. It is at least the third consecutive year Penn State has made Campus Pride’s “Best of the Best” list.

“It’s pretty humbling to see the strides that we’ve made here locally in Central PA regarding LGBTQIA+ residents and visitors in State College,” said Kevin Kassab, the borough’s manager of community engagement, whom the borough manager praised Monday night. “I’m 64 years old, so I’ve seen great strides occur here in State College and, working in the borough, it’s always been a welcoming organization.”

In 2017, State College earned an above-averaged score of 73. In response, Kassab and the borough implemented an LGBTQ Advisory Committee that helped spark change. Since that committee’s creation, the resulting impact has seen State College’s score rise to a 98 followed by four straight 100s.

Among the LGBTQ-related changes over the years include increasing the number of gender-neutral bathrooms, implementing an all-inclusive workplace policy, ensuring domestic partners of borough employees receive work and health benefits, hanging Pride banners downtown, supporting an annual Pride Parade, having transgender-inclusive health benefits, banning conversion therapy for minors and establishing a liaison for the LGBTQ community in Kassab.

Likewise, Penn State has also earned acclaim for their commitment to safety, inclusiveness and on-campus resources. In Campus Pride’s 50-point report-card checklist, the land-grant university failed to check just three boxes — for not having an LGBTQ social fraternity/sorority, not providing gender-inclusive housing for new students (although PSU does for returning students) and not giving LGBTQ-inclusive training to admission counselors.

In eight subcategories that included titles like policy inclusion, campus safety and student life, Penn State never finished with fewer than 4.5 stars. In four subcategories, it finished with 5 stars and, in the other four, it earned 4.5 stars — for an overall perfect score of 5-out-of-5 stars.

“We take a tremendous amount of pride in this distinction as being a welcoming and supportive campus for our sexual- and gender-diverse students, faculty and staff,” Sonya Wilmoth, director of Penn State’s Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, said in a written statement issued shortly after the fall semester began.

Of the Big Ten’s nine flagship campuses that were rated, all received at least four stars. Five others also joined Penn State on the “Best of the Best” list in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, Purdue and Rutgers. By comparison, only three of the SEC’s seven rated schools earned scores over three stars: Tennessee (4 stars), Alabama (4.5 stars) and Kentucky (5 stars).

In the Human Rights Campaign’s municipal ratings, nine other Pennsylvania cities were rated with State College tied for the top spot with Erie (100), Philadelphia (100) and Pittsburgh (100) — followed by Allentown (94), Reading (91), Carlisle (90), New Hope (81), Harrisburg (71) and Wilkes-Barre (70).

Although both State College and Penn State haven’t been immune to a handful of acts of hate — such as Proud Boys supporters on campus to a Martin Luther King Jr. mural vandalized downtown — both areas continue to support the LGBTQ community on a daily basis, with positives appearing to far outweigh the negatives.

Both the town and gown acknowledged more work is left to be done.

“This is no place for hate,” Kassab added. “That’s what we stand for.”