Cece Hawley ’24 had her first crush on a girl in kindergarten, and since then, she has always known she was attracted to the same gender. Despite this, Hawley kept her sexuality a secret for many years. Raised in a Christian family in Saint Paul, Minn., she knew that some of the people around her held a stigma towards those who openly embraced their queer identity.

“For a while, I kind of pushed it down and tried to keep it hidden,” Hawley said. “And I didn’t actually come out until I was eighteen…not because I didn’t feel safe—my family had told me that…if I had ever turned out to be gay or anything, they would still love me. So I knew I’d be loved. It was more an internal struggle where, growing up Christian, I knew some people saw that as wrong.”

In high school, Hawley was the captain of the girls’ soccer, ski, and softball teams in addition to participating in pit orchestra, concert band, painting, and choir. After successfully auditioning for a particular concert choir without her family’s knowledge, she wanted to surprise her family by having them attend her first show. This took an unexpected, if silver-lined, turn when Hawley’s parents found the music binder she had accidentally left on the kitchen counter—leading to a conversation in which they learned both of her getting into the choir and of her sexuality.

“My parents found it, and they’re like, ‘I’m so excited for you that you got into this choir. I know you’ve wanted it for so long,’” Hawley said. “And then my dad started crying because he was so excited for me. And I was like, if you’re excited this much by me getting into a choir, I’m sure you’ll be excited for me to come out…. I gathered my family and then I came out. And it was a really [heartwarming] moment, and they all hugged me…. But yeah, it was a bit of a struggle up to that point, because I still really didn’t know where I was at emotionally with [myself]. But that’s kind of how it was growing up, just [the] intense fear of coming out until I did.”

Hawley also attributes her decision to come out to the bravery of another family member, who came out to her as transgender when he was thirteen. His courage inspired her to come out herself before college, and she is forever grateful to him for letting her know that it would be okay.

“I thought it was really beautiful that he decided to come out to me and felt comfortable enough to talk to me about how he was feeling,” Hawley said. “He was so young and came out with my mom and dad there. Seeing how they reacted to him made me realize, ‘Oh, I can do this, too.’”

While Hawley looks back fondly on her time in high school, her coming out was preceded by an incident in which she had been outed on campus. Though she acknowledges her luck in attending a progressive and largely tolerant school, she can still remember the anxiety she felt after her sexuality was publicized without her consent. She knows that things could have gone much worse, as they do for so many others.

“[It was] our semi-formals,” Hawley said. “I think it was sophomore year, and I was dating my secret girlfriend at the time. And she [had] been more open about things, so she had told one of my friends, ‘Oh, I’m going with my girlfriend,’ or something like that. And so then he accidentally said in an after-party [while] everyone was talking about queer people at our school, ‘Oh, Cece’s definitely gay.’ And then [someone] was like, ‘Well yeah, she’s dating this girl.’ And everyone was like, ‘What?’ And so then I got a call from my friend, and it was just a whole situation.”

Since coming out on her own terms, Hawley has lived boldly and freely while at the University. As the financial manager of SPECTRUM, the on-campus affinity group for queer students of color, she has worked with her fellow board members to host Pride events since last semester. She has also organized personal projects, including events planned alongside Neo Fleurimond ’24: the leader of Black Raspberry, the University’s all-Black band. She has also been an active member of the Xi chapter of Psi Upsilon and often organizes its queer-identifying rush events.

Despite her involvement in queer student life on campus, Hawley is still learning to reconcile the freedom she feels while at the University with the lingering difficulties of expressing her queerness back home.

“I think there’s still a lot of…residual things internally; [for instance, I have been] struggling with being more open with my family about my dating life or my dating history, which used to be such a quiet hush-hush topic,” Hawley said. “Not because my parents don’t want to hear it, but because it feels weird to [say] ‘Oh, I have a crush on a girl’…. At Wesleyan, it’s definitely been more freeing. [My sexuality is] just part of who I am; …it’s not something that people think twice about here, which is really cool. […] A really cool thing about Wesleyan is [that] it’s very open. You meet someone and you don’t know their sexuality, and that’s okay.”

In addition to her many extracurricular involvements throughout high school, Hawley worked every Sunday at a local McDonald’s branch. There, she befriended many of the other employees and discovered interests she would eventually pursue in college. With a passion for connecting with others and learning about their cultures across geographic and linguistic borders, Hawley is now on track to graduate from the University with majors in psychology and Romance Studies, as well as a minor in Global Engagement.

“I made friends with [some] adults who were [at McDonald’s], and that’s actually a reason why I decided to start learning Spanish, because I worked with a lot of Spanish-speaking people,” Hawley said. “And I came out to some of them! I would often talk to them; they weren’t in the LGBTQ+ community, but they very much supported me and would talk to me about crushes and stuff, which was very sweet.”

Now in the final semester of senior year, Hawley feels more self-assured than ever before. After going abroad in the spring of junior year, she has cherished returning to campus, reuniting with friends, living together with the people she loves, and living life itself to the fullest.

“All of Wesleyan, your life is building up to senior year,” Hawley said. “You’re getting your bearings, you’re starting to get to know people, you’re starting to see what fits and what doesn’t, what coffee you like, [which] cafeteria you want to go to, where’s the beach here, what’s the best park here… [Now] I feel so grounded and comfortable here that I could go sit in a room with some people I met freshman year and feel very comfortable just chatting about life…. The day before I left for abroad, when everyone knew I was packing up my room because I had to leave for winter break, it was just really nice to spend a final few hours with everyone…they all wrote me this huge card that I keep in my room, which is just like, ‘Okay, I met some of you guys literally two years ago. Why do I feel so close to you guys?’”

Ultimately, Hawley wants to do the things she loves with the people she loves. Be it languages, music, or simply being able to hang out with and get to know the people around her—people who inspire and invigorate her with their kindness and talent—Hawley wants to embrace life in all its twists, turns, and joyful pit stops, form meaningful relationships with others, commit herself fully to her interests, and keep one foot outside the box for the next great experience.

“Sometimes when I go out on weekends, my friends are like, ‘What’s your goal for the weekend?’ Or, ‘What’s your goal for this semester or [next] week?’ And I keep saying the same thing, which is just to have a good time,” she said. “[It’s] so subjective, but I genuinely just want to have a good time and continue to build bonds with my friends and make new friends, and for SPECTRUM, [to] throw events that people actually get something out of. I want to have a good time!”

 

Ryan Wong can be reached at rwong01@wesleyan.edu.