The Point Foundation, the national scholarship foundation that grants awards to LGBTQ students, held a benefit at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, April 10. Following cocktails, members of the foundation's board and Point scholars spoke about the organization's importance. Tom Thorne-Thompson, a member of the organizing committee for the evening, began his comments by speaking to the 'secret homosexual agenda' of furthering educational opportunities for LGBTQ scholars. Jorge Valencia, executive director, spoke about the continuing necessity of scholarships specifically targeted towards the LGBTQ community, despite the appearance of a dwindling in homophobia. According to Valencia, 'the statistics are still not encouraging': one-third of high school LGBT students drop out, three times the national average. Of these, half will not attend institutions of higher education.
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From left: Point scholars Ali Abbas, Julie Schell, Derrick Clifton and Tim Bresnahan. Photo by Yasmin Nair
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Following a short film featuring past and present Point scholars, two Chicago 2007 awardees spoke about their life histories and academic goals. Tim Bresnahan, working on a law degree at Chicago-Kent College of Law, related his story of growing up in small-town Maine, where his experience with discrimination came about not because of his sexuality but his relative poverty in a family frequently on welfare. For him, 'education was a way out.' Ali Abbas, currently a philosophy major at DePaul University, spoke about growing up between the United States ( where he was born ) and Lebanon, and of a post 9/11 climate where he had to negotiate being out as Muslim and as queer.
For both Bresnahan and Abbas, the biggest resistance to overcome was not from their families, but from the surrounding cultural and economic forces. However, many LGBTQ students face outright ostracization from their birth families upon coming out. Julie Schell, featured in the film and also present at the benefit, spoke about her family's rejection of her and the importance of the Point Foundation in providing both financial support for her education and a mentorship program. Schell is due to graduate with a Ph.D from Columbia University's Teachers College in 2009. Abbas is currently engaged in a project about gay identity in Palestinian refugee camps. While pursuing his degree, Bresnahan is interning at the National Immigrant Justice Center where he focuses on asylum seekers who apply on the basis of sexual orientation.
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