New Poll Shows 40 Percent of Students at Elite Liberal School Now Identify as LGBT

The student newspaper at Brown University has reportedly obtained additional survey data that further supports the claim that societal forces are the primary cause of the rise in LGBT identity.

According to the most recent data, the percentage of Brown University students who identify as LGBTQ+ has nearly tripled between 2010 and 2023 (from 14% in 2010 who said they were not heterosexual to 38% currently).

Academics continue to be critical of the notion that LGBT identity is a social epidemic.

When The Herald initially asked about sexual orientation in a poll conducted in the fall of 2010, 14% of respondents said they were not straight. Since then, that number has more than doubled.

The LGBT population in Brown is significantly larger than the adult national average. Only 7.2% of adults and 19.7% of those between the ages of 18 and 25 identified as LGBTQ+, according to Gallup surveys from 2022.

The disparity between the national LGBTQ+ demographics and the LGBTQ+ demographics at Brown is not a difficult issue for Josephine Kovecses, class of ’25, to solve.

The number of LGBTQ+ students at Brown has significantly grown since Fall 2010. The proportion of students who identify as bisexual has climbed by 232%, while the homosexual and lesbian population has grown by 26%.

The number of students in the LGBTQ+ community who identify as having a different sexual orientation has grown by 793%.

In recent years, students were also more likely to identify with sexual orientations other than gay and bisexual.

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