Cornell Close-Ups
CORNELL CLOSE-UPS | Patchcoski Trained in Seminary Before Becoming LGBT Director at Cornell
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“I did not ever plan to be an LGBT director or to be doing gender and sexuality work,” said Brian Patchcoski, associate dean and director of Cornell’s LGBT Resource Center. As an undergraduate at the University of Scranton, Patchcoski trained to become a Catholic priest. Born into a Roman Catholic family, Patchcoski said he was determined to be a priest. When the seminary he entered after high school closed, he was faced with transferring to a more conservative seminary or leaving the seminary system completely. When he visited the new seminary with his mother, she was not allowed past the front door because “she was a woman,” Patchcoski recounted.