[Bruce Wang]

Maddow's accounts of her time at Stanford have sometimes been positive and sometimes less so. She has previously said that the environment at Stanford was not friendly for gay students when she was a student. It took her 19 years to make it back to campus.

Using Gallup's figure of 3.5% of the population identifying as gay, one would expect about 60 gay students in a class. From the comments in this thread, it sounds like very few were open about it.  Seems like a gay student would feel very isolated.

I didn't know her so was not connected to her social circle at all.  So I really have no idea what her experience was.  Every person I knew that came out, found a supportive and nurturing circle of friends in either my immediate circle or those that I knew.  Of course, my perspective may be skewed.  I was one of the few straight guys on campus that had a poster of a gay person on their dorm room wall. 

Absolutely there was a homophobic element on campus.  But I'm sure Stanford was a more accepting environment than 99% of college campuses in the country.

[Bruce Wang]

Maddow's accounts of her time at Stanford have sometimes been positive and sometimes less so. She has previously said that the environment at Stanford was not friendly for gay students when she was a student. It took her 19 years to make it back to campus.

Using Gallup's figure of 3.5% of the population identifying as gay, one would expect about 60 gay students in a class. From the comments in this thread, it sounds like very few were open about it.  Seems like a gay student would feel very isolated.

I didn't know her so was not connected to her social circle at all.  So I really have no idea what her experience was.  Every person I knew that came out, found a supportive and nurturing circle of friends in either my immediate circle or those that I knew.  Of course, my perspective may be skewed.  I was one of the few straight guys on campus that had a poster of a gay person on their dorm room wall. 

Absolutely there was a homophobic element on campus.  But I'm sure Stanford was a more accepting environment than 99% of college campuses in the country.