Alum: Belonging is never having to edit yourself

Humberto Mata ’86 was Exeter’s big man on campus.

Student Council president. The prince of Wentworth Hall. Voted “future president” by his senior classmates in the yearbook.

Reggie Sellars ’86 was captain of the football team. He ran for 207 yards and three touchdowns in a win over Andover their senior year. Kelly Dermody ’85 was a two-sport athlete and an editor for The Exonian. Mata and Dermody got accepted to Harvard. Sellars went to Yale.

“We were in positions of leadership. We were visible. Everyone knew who we were. We were popular,” Mata told assembly Friday morning.

“And yet we weren’t ourselves.”

All three came out in college after having hidden their sexuality as Exonians. Mata shared that story on the eve of the first Exeter Belonging weekend, a triennial on-campus celebration that highlights individual cultural groups and the impact they have on the greater Exeter community. This weekend, Exeter will celebrate the vibrant history and impact of LGBTQIA+ Exonians.

“Everything that’s happening over this weekend, everything that we create to make the student body more diverse, more open, more tolerant, more accepting, hasn’t happened in a vacuum,” Mata said. “It’s happened over decades of work of making people feel included, feel that they matter.”

Mata expressed gratitude that Exeter and American society has made progress in becoming more inclusive and supportive of under-represented communities and emphasized that events like Exeter Belonging are especially important for LGBTQIA+ students and alumni.

Mata said he and others had to “edit” themselves — to parents, to teachers and coaches, to friends — and navigate their adolescence alone.

“In the ’80s, no cell phones, no email, no internet,” he said. “I had to go to the freaking library to the card catalog to look up homosexuality because we didn’t know, we as gay kids didn’t know how to think about it. We had no idea what was happening.

“You grow up hearing homophobic stuff, the news is homophobic, comments are homophobic, right? And you don’t know how people are going to react. You don’t know how your parents are going to react. The process of coming out, which is long and sometimes painful, allows you to start really for the first time ever telling your parents who you are without editing yourself.

“I had to edit myself at Exeter. I had a boyfriend here. So did Reggie. None of us knew. We had to hide this,” he said. “We couldn’t talk about the people we cared for. And this is not something every community goes through. This is why it’s particularly important for events like this weekend’s and for institutions like Exeter to lead the way.”