"A Fella Needs a Girl"

Cisnormative and Heteronormative Reproductions

A matchmaking advertisement published in the Concordiensis on November 16, 1951, linking male Union students with women from other colleges and other cities. The men are listed by their fraternity affiliation, or lack thereof. 

The demographics of Union College certainly might suggest that its queer history could be buried even deeper than in some other spaces.

Union is a predominantly white institution, and the school only instituted coeducation for full-time students in 1970, 175 years after its founding. These factors have contributed to a deeply cisnormative and heteronormative environment existing at the college since its founding.

In addition, Union College is often referred to as "the Mother of Fraternities" and has had a prominent Greek life presence for centuries, an institution which both uplifts normative hypermasculinity and perpetuates compulsory heterosexuality frequently through matchmaking practices.