The College of Wooster has conferred its third annual scholarship honoring student efforts to create a more welcoming campus for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people to senior Estancia Cota '11.

The recognition came on Sunday, October 10, as part of homecoming weekend at the northeast Ohio campus. College president Grant Cornwell, who has championed diversity during his first three years leading the liberal‐arts college, joined the ceremony. The weekend also marked the kickoff of the college’s LGBT alumni association, called Going True.

An anthropology major and history minor, Cota has demonstrated leadership in a variety of forums. She is president of Proyecto Latino, the student Latina/o organization, and holds the elected position of Secretary of Cultural Affairs and Diversity for the Student Government Association. She is also a student assistant at the Center for Diversity and Global Engagement on campus.

“A lot of what I'm working on now springs from Wooster,” Cota, a native of Los Angeles, said in a release. “Experiences here, both positive and negative, have shaped my studies and what I hope to do in the world. I love this school and will really miss being here.”

An emphasis on independent study has long underpinned the college’s curriculum. Cota is completing research on the services available to students of color and the changing spectrum of ethnic identities Wooster students invoke. For information about LGBT studies at the college, go to: www.wooster.edu/Academics/Areas‐of‐Study/Womens‐Gender‐Sexuality‐Studies

Writer Eric Resnick at Cleveland's Gay People's Chronice reports in the paper's July 18 issue, which is online currently, that the director of Case Western Reserve University's LGBT center was asked to resign only 88 days after being hired.

Center director Dan Coleman says he was asked to resign when he went to see Deputy Provost Lynn Singer and give her good news on the school's progress on Campus Pride's LGBT-Friendly College Climate Index. The school had been ranked at 3.5, but had moved up to 4.5, out of a total of 5 possible points.

That low score was one of the deciding factors in setting up the center, Resnick reports. Coleman told the newspaper he worked on several items to increase the score, including setting up an LGBT resource library, a graduation ceremony for LGBT students, an LGBT alumni group and more. Coleman also undertook a great deal of campus research for the index, something he says hadn't been done before.

Coleman said he was "baffled" at the resignation request and believes he was fired for moving too quickly on LGBT issues, and described a certain "patience of the entire university on LGBT equality."

“I was willing to be vocal about things and that may have crossed a boundary with the boss," he told the Chronicle. “I think they wanted someone to move slower on LGBT equality. They’re dedicated to it, but they want someone to take their time.”