He attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine from which he graduated with a B.A. in English in 1985. At Bates he was President of the Gay-Straight Alliance in 1983, and spearheaded a campaign to oust military recruiters from the campus for their discriminatory policies against the LGBT community which received extensive media coverage including front page stories by John Preston for Bay Windows and Louis Berney for the Boston Gobe.