Even those point scholars with the darkest stories of adversity, like Emory’s Bryan Olsen, seem more buoyant than Point lets on. I heard Olsen speak to Point donors twice, once in New York City and again in Michigan. Both times he said that after his Mormon family learned he was gay when he was 15, he was sent to a boot camp for wayward teens in Ensenada, Mexico. Olsen says the facility, Casa by the Sea, required residents to wear shoes without backs so they couldn’t run. He says that as punishment for a three-meal hunger strike, he was forced to sit in a stress position—cross-legged, with his nose touching a wall—for two hours. Olsen’s small face, which is framed by a pop-star haircut that makes him look as though he’s still 15, scrunches with tears when he gets to the next part: “I could only come home when I wrote my parents and promised to be straight and Mormon.” There were gasps in the room the first time I heard him tell that story.

TIME Magazine – The Battle over Gay Teens