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Wes Streeting is right that our universities must be places of empowerment and support for all students (¡°Leaders show how to build gay-friendly campus¡±, News, ?June). An interesting area is how they will face up to the homophobia experienced by students in the past.

For example, consider Princeton University. It recently held Every Voice, a conference for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender alumni, and ran a cover feature in Princeton Alumni Weekly, titled ¡°Hidden lives¡±, which explored mainly unflattering aspects of life at the college for LGBT people. A large and positive mailbag ensued and I understand that the university regards it as a worthwhile exercise that will bring its LGBT alumni closer to the institution than ever before.

That said, from my experience I am not sure I agree with Streeting about the sinister-sounding ¡°sexual orientation monitoring¡±. I?joined the staff of City University London in 2003 as a man in an 11-year relationship with a woman and left in 2005 as a man in a relationship with another man. While I found the university counselling service to be of some use, at no point during this period did I experience the urge to report my sexual orientation to the human resources department.

David Mungall
London