ARCHIVAL PAGE
MIAMI HERALD, February 14, 1998
1 Herald Plaza,Miami,FL,33132
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GAINESVILLE -- (AP) -- College students who once needed a court order to hold a gay conference in Alabama and risked death threats and pickets to attend the Tennessee meeting can expect a warm welcome to North Florida.
The University of Florida and the city of Gainesville will host the eighth annual Southeastern Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender College Conference this weekend. The city commission recently voted to include sexual orientation in its anti-discrimination ordinance.
The conference, which began Friday and ends Sunday, is expected to attract more than 300 students from about 50 schools in the Southeast.
"I think Gainesville, while not immune from discrimination, is a tolerant community," said conference spokesman Dave Prugh, a senior at the university.
There has been little controversy about the meeting, which has gotten support from university administrators and other student organizations, including the Panhellenic Council, which governs fraternities and sororities.
Event organizers asked and got university President John Lombardi -- fresh from a flap over his use of the word "Oreo" to describe his boss -- to write a letter welcoming the conference.
Prugh, an officer with the university's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Student Union, called the president's letter very generic.
"He was going through a very difficult time with the Oreo comment," Prugh said. "I think he wanted to take a hands-off approach to any more controversy."
Lombardi was in California on Thursday and unavailable for comment.
At Middle Tennessee State in Murfreesboro last year, conference organizers received death threats, pickets conducted candlelight vigils and police installed metal detectors at events.
In 1996, Alabama state legislators voted to ask the state attorney general to shut down the conference, which was deemed "too liberal" an event to be held at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. A federal court order allowed the conference to be held.