A Declaration : Women: More lesbian college students are acknowledging their sexual identity. As a result, they’re taking a higher profile.

Stephanie Thomas was such a fervently religious child that she proselytized for her church as a junior high school student in Palos Verdes. She continued her efforts during high school and converted her own mother and sisters to the “born-again” Christian faith she had chosen.

But during her first semester at a Christian college, Azusa Pacific University, Thomas found herself attracted to a young woman in her freshman class.

“We freaked out,” Thomas says of the day they realized their friendship was more than intellectual.

“We said, ‘Never again,’ because it’s wrong in God’s eyes. . . . We dated men and promised each other that if we could find a man we’d stay with him because we wanted to be accepted by society and by our families, and we wanted an easier life than the one we’d have” as lesbians.

For a year Thomas was counseled by a “born-again” group therapist at the university. “She was terrific, but she couldn’t help me figure out why I was the way I was.”

Thomas says she finally realized she could not change her sexual identity--so she “denounced” her religion and changed her school.

Now 22 and a senior at UCLA, she is co-president of the 2-year-old, 25-member lesbian sorority, Lambda Delta Lambda, which has new sister chapters at San Francisco State University and UC San Diego.

Thomas has access to weekly lesbian rap groups on campus and a psychotherapy group led by a lesbian for lesbians, initiated last month by the school’s Student Psychological Services department. She can enroll in such classes as “Psychology of the Lesbian Experience,” “Architecture and Urban Planning for Gay and Lesbian Communities” and lesbian literature.

Thomas feels “comfortable” at UCLA.

She is not alone. More and more lesbians attending colleges and universities nationwide are acknowledging their sexual identity. Their increasingly high profile has led to more lesbian student organizations and counseling activities, and more awareness of their presence on campus.

Even some religious schools are part of the trend. Last month, officials at Loyola Marymount, a Roman Catholic university, bowed to student protests and permitted the Alliance of Gays and Lesbians, a student club, to meet on campus and use school facilities. (Clubs that combine gay men and lesbians are becoming passe at some schools where lesbians have broken away to create organizations of their own.)

School administrators and educators emphasize that the number of lesbian students has not changed over the years. About 10% of the general population is homosexual, and that figure remains constant both on and off campus, they say.

What has changed dramatically is that more lesbians now publicly announce their sexual identity--and they do so at a much earlier age.

Walter Williams, an associate professor of anthropology at USC who teaches a course on “Gender and Sexuality as an Issue in American Public Life,” says young people are “identifying themselves as lesbians and gays much earlier in their lives than was previously true.”

Eloise Klein Healy, assistant professor and coordinator of women’s studies at California State University, Northridge, says young women now “decide at an earlier age not to be in the closet” because “ground was cleared by courageous people who came before and created space they could come out into. These kids have 20 years behind them of the gay and lesbian movement . . . and 20 years of feminism. Put those things together and it looks to them like there are more options now.”

Healy says it is not unusual for women at CSUN to identify themselves as lesbians in classroom discussions. “They’ll stand up and say, ‘I am a lesbian’ and go on to explain the issue from the lesbian point of view.”

At UC Berkeley, “there are lots of groups and forums where lesbians can identify themselves in a way not possible a few years ago,” says Arlene Stein, a doctoral candidate and author of an upcoming book on emerging trends in lesbian culture. She points out that lesbians “have begun to mainstream” and become part of more traditional institutions, such as sororities and family units of their own. Last year “two lesbians ran as lesbians for Student Union office--and one of them won.”

At USC, there is a lesbian support group in addition to the Gay and Lesbian Student Union, Gay and Lesbian Assembly for Student Support (GLASS) and Gay and Lesbian Law Union.

In February, 1989, City College of San Francisco opened a Department of Gay and Lesbian Studies. Jack Collins, chairman of the department, says there is “a flourishing of lesbian communities on campuses nationwide. Gay men went through this in the 1970s, and now the lesbians are acting in congruent ways in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. They’re more proud, less scared.”

Collins says “women worked very hard in the ‘70s to set up women’s study programs and lesbian studies programs that are just now starting to be seen around the country.”

Patrick C. Snee, a Brown University junior and member of the school’s Lesbian/Gay Student Assn. has felt the impact of increasing lesbian pride at the Providence, R.I., campus. He says the LGSA was run by gays until about a year ago, when lesbians started to exert their influence. At UCLA, the TenPercent magazine for lesbians and gays had a male editor for the first eight years. The first female editor was named two years ago, and a second was appointed last year.

Brown is one of many universities that has a Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Student Awareness week each year. In addition, the university’s associate director of student activities, Kristen Renn, was named in February as the school’s first “official liaison” to the lesbian/gay/bisexual student community.

Renn, 25, says she is a lesbian and may therefore have a better understanding of the students’ concerns.

A new support group called SORT (Sexual Orientation Reflection Time) was initiated by Brown last month “for students in the process of coming out,” says school spokesman Toby Simon.

“We’re at the beginning of a period of really rapid expansion” in acceptance, says Loralee MacPike, associate dean of humanities and professor of English at California State University, San Bernardino.

MacPike ought to know. In October, 1988, on “National Coming Out Day,” she took microphone in hand and told 250 students in her “Perspectives on Gender” class that she is a lesbian.

“Those who thought they knew no gays or lesbians found out differently,” she says. “They had to alter their prejudices because they had to deal with me for the rest of the quarter.” She “felt much better” after she told them, she adds. Ultimately, when there are enough such revelations, MacPike believes “a kind of normalization will take place” and the word lesbian “won’t frighten people.”

When MacPike attended Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr. Pa., in the 1960s, she recalls, nobody would have used the word lesbian in polite conversation. “We didn’t think of ourselves that way because we didn’t have that category. But we have now achieved a critical mass. That is, when you get to a certain point in thinking about anything, and enough people think about it, it comes into existence.”

Asked about the increase in lesbian activism at Bryn Mawr College, Debra Thomas laughs and says she’s wearing a button that reads “Another Straight for Gay Rights.”

Thomas, director of public information for the women’s undergraduate division, says “pluralism workshops” to help increase tolerance on campus were started two years ago along with sexuality workshops, one of which is specifically for lesbians. It teaches “how to be comfortable with your sexual identity after you’ve identified yourself as a lesbian,” Thomas says.

Sexuality workshops were only for heterosexual students at first, she explains, “but we began hearing we needed to do more for homosexual students, and we wanted to help them all.

“What’s increasing dramatically on campus is (sexual) experimentation,” she adds. “I’m not just talking about homosexual experimentation, but experimentation across the board.”

At Yale University in New Haven, Conn., as at other campuses around the country, observers notice a growing interest in bisexuality.

“We get our biggest attendance at meetings where we discuss bisexuality,” says the 20-year-old head of Yalesbians, one of the school’s registered, student-run lesbian groups.

She does not want her name used because, like most students interviewed for this article, she says “everybody knows I’m a lesbian except my parents. I love them and wouldn’t want to hurt them.”

For her, as for most “out” lesbians--those who have publicly acknowledged their sexual identity--there is a big difference between the atmosphere of school and the real world.

Even at Yale, she says, many students are homophobic. “But there is a sizable lesbian population on this campus, and there are enough (lesbian-oriented) groups and counseling facilities so that all you have to do is find the right group and show up.” There are also acknowledged lesbian and gay professors at the school, she says. She is “comfortable” about being “out. If I have my arm around my girlfriend while I’m walking, it’s OK on this campus.” In the outside world, she realizes, it’s usually not.

Abigail Van Buren--Dear Abby--says she has started to receive letters from parents of lesbians. In a Feb. 28 column published in The Times, a mother complained that she “lost her only daughter” at a college “nicknamed Lesbian U because so many girls become bonded to each other there” and warned parents to “check out” schools before they let their children go. Abby recommended the mother attend a support group called Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

“My parents are the only people close to me who do not know,” says a lesbian student at USC. “They are traditional people and I see no reason to hurt them.”

Her words are repeated, with slight variations, from campus to campus.

One lesbian activist at UCLA doesn’t want her name used even though her parents do know.

“I’m a very ‘out’ lesbian in every aspect of my life--except at my job.” She needs her part-time job to save for graduate school tuition and is positive she’d be fired if her employers knew. “They’ve made some pretty crude jokes about homosexuality. They’d find some reason to dismiss me.”

She was surprised at her parents’ reaction when she told them. “I was nervous, so my mom said, ‘Take a deep breath and say what you have to say.’ I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and said, ‘Mom, I’m a lesbian.’ She said, ‘Honey, I knew that all along.’ ”

Many students aren’t that lucky. One woman, who does not want her real name or university mentioned, said a younger sister saw her kissing a girlfriend during a visit to campus. The sister told her parents, who were “disappointed and horrified.” They told their older daughter they would stop paying her school bills unless she “got help” from a psychiatrist of their choice; they chose a psychiatrist who told them he does not consider lesbianism to be “normal.” They told her that if her lesbianism becomes known, her father’s business might go downhill and her younger sister’s reputation might be ruined.

Her mother also said she “could never trust her again.”

It is a burden that many lesbian students say they bear.

On the other hand, most lesbians interviewed for this article believe they’ll be able to lead happy, productive, open lives after college. Says one, “It’s a brand-new world, and women can be achievers whether they are lesbian or straight.”