When Asa William Green co-founded the first University organization for gay students in 1971, he said the greatest challenge he faced daily was “staying alive.”

Friends escorted the former executive director for the Committee on Gay Education across campus, protecting him from death threats and harassment. He said he was forced to rotate living arrangements.

“I would do it all over again,” Green said in a telephone interview from his home in Panama City Beach, Fla. “We protested those things that we thought were worth protesting. It shaped who I was to become.”

Thirty-five years later, five campus organizations – Lambda Alliance, GLOBES, The Queer Graduate Group, the University LGBT Alumni Group and the Gay and Lesbian Legal Network – promote equality and awareness for the lesbian gay bisexual and transgender community.

Green left the University after realizing he could not achieve professional success in an anti-gay climate and was “surprised” by the progress the University made, he said.

“We had to fight so hard to have a meeting or a dance back then,” he said. “It usually meant a lawsuit every time we wanted to do something. Now they have offices and all kinds of baubles and toys.”

The University established the LGBT Resource Center in 2005 to help students find housing, said Shawna Scott, executive director of the Lambda Alliance.

“People can find an inclusive place that has resources relevant to their personal identities,” she said.

While progress has been made, Scott said the University is not yet a “safe place to be queer.”

“I don’t have a single friend who has not been attacked based on their [sexual] identity,” she said.

Scott said the Lambda Alliance educates students on treatment of those “different from themselves.”

The Resource Center hosts Rainbow Chat Discussion Groups – small groups facilitated by counseling and psychiatric services – dealing with development of identities, Scott said.

Robert Hill, associate professor in the Department of Lifelong Education, Administration and Policy, said the struggle to achieve “soft benefits” for LGBT faculty and staff “casts doubts” on the University’s commitment to equality.

“The administration is supportive, for the most part,” Scott said. “We try to work with them as much as possible.

“I think if every university could adopt UGA’s non-discrimination policies, we would be a lot better off,” Green said. “Quite a lot has been achieved there. Not all campuses are quite so liberal,” said Mimi Sodhi, assistant provost for the Office of Institutional Diversity.