The Cincinnati Enquirer |
NEWS
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Oct. 14, 1998 |
| DENVER - Last Saturday morning, while Matthew Shepard lay comatose from a beating, a college homecoming parade passed a few blocks from his hospital bed in Fort Collins. Propped on a fraternity float was a straw-haired scarecrow, labeled in black spray paint: "I’m Gay."
Few people missed the message. Three days earlier, Mr. Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming freshman, was savagely beaten and tied to a ranch fence in such a position that a passerby first mistook him for a scarecrow. Tuesday, officials at Colorado State University reacted with outrage to the fraternity float, opening an investigation and disciplinary procedures against the fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha. The fraternity chapter immediately suspended seven members. But in a week when candlelight vigils for Mr. Shepard were being held on campuses across the nation, the scarecrow incident highlighted how hostility toward gay people often flourishes in high schools and universities, gay leaders said Tuesday. "People would like to think that what happened to Matthew was an exception to the rule but, it was an extreme version of what happens in our schools on a daily basis," said Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a group dedicated to ending anti-gay bias in the schools. |
Mr. Shepard died on Monday morning from the injuries suffered in the beating. Two men, Russell Henderson, 21, and Aaron McKinney, 22, were arraigned Monday on firs-degree murder charges. Their girlfriends, Chasity Pasley, 20, and Kristen Price, 18, have been arraigned as accessories after the fact.
In response to the killing, about 50 candlelight vigils were scheduled this week, from Texas to Vermont, from Wayne, Neb., to New York City. (Stonewall Cincinnati and the University of Cincinnati Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trangendered Students will hold a candlelight vigil at 8pm Thursday in front of Tangeman University Center.) Friends at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo., have set up The Matthew Shepard Memorial Fund to raise money to pressure the state legislature to pass anti-hate crime legislation. "I see his name going down in gay history as a catalyst for renewed activism," said Matt Foreman, a former Wyomingite who directs Empire State Pride Agenda, a gay political organization in New York.
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