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You had to know somebody who knew somebody else, and all of it was very under-the-radar for the sake of safety.

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It was hard to know who to trust, Garrett said. But their first attempts were met with apathy and resistance. Although very few people were ever interested in hearing us. Advertising the Gayline with flyers did not go over well with the administration, Garrett said, nor with the students who often gay the flyers down.

Alternative was forbidden from on-campus advertising unless it were a recognized student organization — which John J. This conflict produced the change from Alternative to GSS and the nearly decade-long court battle that ended in Running the Gayline The Gayline started small, but grew to have an expansive college of local referrals and consistent volunteer training from professional counselors.

The physical phone box was installed at the local Unitarian Universalist Church, but whoever was staffing the line had calls forwarded to their personal lines at their homes. As their membership and services developed, so had their methods, Bailey said. Sometimes they just wanted to know where the gay bars were.

This prompted GSS to find people in the community who were receptive to them, which was not an easy task early on. She gave classes to those of us who were going to be answering the phone on how to handle situations like when someone was suicidal, how to refer somebody to station health counseling and convince them to do it and other basics.

Training guides provided by Bailey describe a wide range of techniques such as problem solving with the callers, warning signs of suicide and good responses when handling emotional conversations. The Cri- sis Center even provided questionnaires and tests for volunteer training so that in potential emergencies volunteers could help until professionals could intervene.

However, many calls were not seeking help, both Bailey and Garrett said. When I got to campus I checked in with campus police, someone would be as- signed to me, and as long as I was on campus they had to follow me around. When I was in class, they stood outside the classroom door. Sherri Skinner, Class ofa doctoral student when GSS began, likewise had many academic issues, mainly with conducting research for her dissertation.

That was really the biggest thing with not bar GSS, but other people I was involved with. In October ofthe Student Senate narrowly passed a resolution recommending that the administration officially recognize GSS. The court case was decided in favor of GSS on April 1,and it finally became a recognized student organization.

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