 Media Credit: Lennie Mahler
Student and American Indian Club member Terri Smith chats with Tony Shirley in his office on Tuesday. |
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 Media Credit: Lennie Mahler
Anthony Shirley organizes lunch with friends from the Counseling Center over the phone in his office in the Union on Tuesday. |
|
 Media Credit: Lennie Mahler
Anthony
Shirley, adviser for the Center for Ethnic Student Affairs program and
the American Indian Club, teaches a Navajo language class in the Union
Building on Tuesday morning. |
|
There was no reason it had to turn sour.
Anthony Shirley was heading a panel discussion last year to help
medical students understand the perspective of the potential patients
they might encounter--homosexual patients.
Shirley said the panel went well. However, the paper feedback he
received was another story. Several students wrote anonymous messages:
"I will never treat people like you," one of them said. "After this, I
will be selective on the people I treat."
Shirley, adviser for the Center for Ethnic Student Affairs, was
shocked. From that day on, he vowed to help people become more
open-minded so he would never have to see that type of feedback again.
It all began 13 years ago when Shirley left a Navajo reservation in
Arizona to seek a college education, the third member in his family
(along with his two sisters)--and one of only a few in his
community--to do so.
It wasn't a difficult decision for him to make, considering that if he
still lived there, he would most likely work a restaurant or janitorial
job.
Finally leaving, however, was a complete culture shock for Shirley.
"It was shocking because the reservation was 'openly gay,' and I didn't
know that the rest of the world was not," said Shirley, who is also the
American-Indian adviser. "It really doesn't make a difference because
they are just open to that."
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