A Queer History of Trinity College

The queer history of Trinity College starts with an unlikely love story of two first-year students who met during orientation in 1955 and later returned to the college in 2008 to become the first same-sex couple wed in the Trinity Chapel. 

The documented history spans from the largely silent and invisible lives of gay Bantams in the 1950s, across highly the controversial and contentious years for LGBTQ+ rights and visibility of the 1970s through the early millennium where support for LGBTQ+ students became institutionalized, and into this modern decade of progress on Trans and Nonbinary inclusion efforts at the college. It culminates on to our recent achievement of reaching the highest score from the National Campus Pride Index, an independent national assessment of LGBTQ+ life and services in Higher Education.

In celebration of Trinity’s Bicentennial, Crystal Nieves, director of LGBTQ+ Life ’08, M’23 compiled the college’s first historical archive of LGBTQ+ Life at Trinity. This project premiered at the Bicentennial Homecoming Weekend in October 2023 where several alumni were able to explore and interact with the exhibit. The project was exhibited to the broader Trinity community during October’s LGBTQ+ History Month Programming with a tea dance in Hamlin Hall commemorating the college’s first queer social event in 1972. The Queer History of Trinity College exhibit will run again for the upcoming 2024 college reunion. The QRC is excited to announce that a virtual archive of this project is also now available as an ArcGIS StoryMap project for self-service engagement by all from Trinity’s campus and beyond.