In May 2023, the student leaders of Lambda — an LGBTQ affinity group at Duquesne University — asked school administrators to change their organization’s name to something more recognizable: the Queer Student Union.
Today, the fate of that name change is uncertain. Catholic universities like Duquesne find themselves at a crossroad, with support for LGBTQ rights growing nationally but the Catholic Church and some of its U.S. membership still officially opposed to gay marriage and the full inclusion of transgender parishioners.
While some university administrators expressed support for the name change, Lambda President Nialah Miller said others disapproved of the word “queer” appearing in the group’s title. Still, “we’ve been trying to push it,” they said.
Gabriel Welsch, vice president of marketing and communications at Duquesne, said in an email that discussions remain “ongoing.”
University officials did not oppose including the word “queer” in a group’s title, Welsch wrote. Instead, staff members “sought to confirm that the term ‘queer’ was not offensive to the individuals it was going to represent.”
As an interim measure, university administrators allowed the group to expand its title from Lambda to Lambda Gender Sexuality Alliance. But a lack of consensus around the original proposal has delayed the group’s full name change by upwards of six months.
Meanwhile, student leaders at Duquesne emphasized that the name change is a crucial step toward the open expression of LGBTQ identity on campus.
“Whenever you tell people that you’re a part of Lambda GSA, they think you’re in Greek life We just wanted to change it to something that was more recognizable, and that covered more people.”
“It matters a lot, because the words that you use — they have to align with the words that people are using to describe themselves,” said Maddie Fitzgerald, founder and president of Duquesne oSTEM, an LGBTQ affinity group within the School of Science and Engineering that frequently collaborates with Lambda.
Now, “it’s Lambda Gender Sexuality Alliance, which is fine,” Miller said. “But nobody’s saying the whole name.”
A nixed mass and a sleek, black dress
Conflicting ideas over LGBTQ inclusion in Catholic spaces came to a head at Duquesne this summer when Catholics for Change in Our Church [CCOC], a local group that hosts monthly masses advocating for “constructive reform” in the Catholic Church, planned a service celebrating Pride month on campus.
While the group received permission to host a similar mass the year prior, CCOC began advertising its event this year before seeking approval from officials at Duquesne or the Pittsburgh diocese.
As word spread about the service, local religious leaders including Bishop David Zubik urged that the mass be canceled altogether, claiming that the diocese received an outpouring of complaints. Duquesne obliged, nixing the event less than two weeks in advance.
Similar contentions between religious and LGBTQ interests at Duquesne have spanned decades, back to when Lambda was founded in 2005.
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There are several theories about why the Greek letter Lambda has been adopted by LGBTQ groups, including its traditional uses as a symbol for change and balance. By creating and identifying with a covertly named group like Lambda, LGBTQ students at Duquesne hoped to signal their identity to one another without scrutiny from outsiders.
But times have changed, according to Miller, and Duquesne’s LGBTQ student body wants more visible representation. That’s why last semester the group sought approval for the name change.
“Whenever you tell people that you’re a part of Lambda GSA, they think you’re in Greek life,” Miller said. “We just wanted to change it to something that was more recognizable, and that covered more people.”
For Miller and Fitzgerald alike, pushback surrounding Lambda’s name change exemplifies limitations on how LGBTQ student groups can represent themselves on campus.
Both leaders pointed to another incident in 2019, when student and faculty organizers of an annual gender-neutral fashion show were told they could no longer use gender-neutral language or imagery for the event.
One year prior, posters for the show depicting a male-presenting model walking a runway in a sleek, black dress “generated numerous complaints,” according to a September 2019 statement by Duquesne officials. They walked back their restrictions following public outcry, but students still felt blindsided by the decision.
Although neither was involved with the show, Miller and Fitzgerald said its fallout was familiar territory.
The school community can be “finicky about word choice,” Miller said. For both groups, this means screening event ideas with faculty advisors to ensure they will receive approval.
In his email, Welsch wrote that all student groups must receive administrative approval to ensure that programming aligns with university policies, adding that “Duquesne has no restrictions for LGBTQIA affinity groups or topics.”
But Miller said their group preemptively factors an understanding of the campus climate regarding LGBTQ issues into the decision to propose events. When the group follows through with an event idea, a desire to avoid controversy on campus influences the language and imagery it uses for promotional materials.
Avoiding controversy “is just about word choice,” Miller said.
Similarly, when oSTEM hosted a fashion show featuring upcycled clothing in November, Fitzgerald said the group had to be tactful with the language and images it used to promote the event due to the 2019 incident.
When planning for the show, “there was a lot of anxiety within oSTEM and the School of Science and Engineering,” Fitzgerald said.
“It’s kind of crazy even to explain to other queer people that I’m also Catholic, or to other Catholic people that I’m queer. … It’s usually just something to avoid.”
The school’s leadership, which Fitzgerald described as an overall supportive presence, helped oSTEM plan its promotional materials, telling the group: “We don’t want this to go poorly for you.”
“We didn’t run into any problems,” Fitzgerald said. “We just had to be careful.”
Catholic and queer
For Fitzgerald, who identifies as both Catholic and queer, tiptoeing around LGBTQ issues on campus like this is frustrating. At Duquesne, Fitzgerald said some of her peers in each community struggle to understand how she holds both Catholic and queer identity at once.
“It’s kind of crazy even to explain to other queer people that I’m also Catholic, or to other Catholic people that I’m queer,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s usually just something to avoid.”
Creating LGBTQ spaces on campus does not undermine Duquesne’s religious mission, Fitzgerald said. Instead, it opens it to identity groups historically excluded from Catholic spaces.
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When those institutions uplift LGBTQ community members in the ways that they choose to represent themselves, it “legitimizes your identity,” Fitzgerald said.
Likewise, Miller, who is Black, said the goals of LGBTQ student groups mirror those of cultural or ethnic affinity groups on campus: to create a space for community-building among students with shared experience.
Students who join cultural affinity groups “want their own space where they can interact with people who know what they’ve dealt with,” Miller said.
“Queer people want the same thing,” they added — to visibly represent LGBTQ identity through resources, events and even a group name.
“Both of our groups have been approved as being aligned with the university mission,” Fitzgerald said. “We deserve to be here.”
Jack Walker is a journalist based in West Virginia, and can be reached at jackwalkerwv@gmail.com.
This story has been fact-checked by James Bell.
