Texas A&M junior Bobby Brooks has been elected as the university's student body president. He'll be the first openly gay student to serve in that position, The Battalion reports:
Before he had any question of who he was, who he was attracted to or what he wanted to do, Bobby Brooks knew he wanted to be an Aggie.
“I was an Aggie from the first day that I was born, there was no choice about it,” Brooks said. “My sexuality was a non-issue in terms of selecting Texas A&M as a university because I knew what this university could offer.”
Despite the easy choice of attending Texas A&M, Brooks said his sexuality wasn't something that came easy.
“My sexuality was something that I never wanted to particularly address growing up,” Brooks said. “I had a strong history of suppression with my own feelings toward that. I had known for a very long time but I didn't want to accept that and thought it would just get better.”
In high school, Brooks began his career in student leadership and ran for student body president. Through that role, he also took his first steps in acknowledging his sexuality.
“Toward my senior year of high school, I actually ran for a senior class president position at my high school and whenever I got that certain people started paying more attention to me,” Brooks said. “Through that there was someone who I had always thought was attractive and whatnot so [we started talking]. So through that person, through that experience, I was able to explore that side of me, my sexuality, a little bit.”
After he graduated high school, Brooks spent time studying abroad in Paris. During that period he felt comfortable expressing himself as a gay man without the pressures he felt in Texas. Coming back to the United States and entering his freshman year of college put a pause of his self expression.
“So when I got here to Aggieland, it started out with me kind of being afraid of [my sexuality] in general because I was back in this Texas kind of pressure, but there was something new to it in that I was now my own person, more than I was back in high school,” Brooks said.
More at The Battalion…
Brooks will take office on April 21. He plans to make the focus of his tenure diversity and inclusion.
