I found out, in casual conversation with an Oriel College student today, that Wadham has the reputation at Oxford of being “the gay college.” The exchange went something like this:
Him: So, did you choose Wadham?
Me: Kind of. It’s the college that my university in the United States has an affiliation with, which makes it easier for me to get credit.
Him: Oh. Because, you know, it’s known as the gay college.
Me: Really? I thought it was just very progressive.
Him: … yeah… very.
This very suddenly makes a lot of things about the Sarah Lawrence at Wadham program make more sense. Of course Swarthmore would shunt its students (who, by and large, are either queer, thinking about being queer, thinking about other people being queer, or so close to queer that it’s an irrelevant distinction) in the direction of a program at “the gay college.” Moreover, this explains why, on a tour of the college grounds, my guide referred to the Wadham garden (which is beautiful, incidentally) as “the garden for homosexual liaisons.”
I guess it’s time for me to reprogram myself to stop thinking of every Wadham male I see as either (a) too European to actually be gay or (b) too hipster to actually be gay, and start thinking of them as (c) actually gay, because WHAT THE FUCK THEY GO TO THE GAY COLLEGE.