Lights were dimmed and the discs were spinning as the first couples arrived at Dickinson College’s Moulin Rouge dance party.

Some of the same-sex couples swept in wearing ostentatious designs. Others wore simple jeans and T-shirts to the event for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered students.

Jonathan Ontiberos hurried across the floor to take care of a last detail.

He taped signs, hastily printed on yellow sheets, over the words “Men” and “Women” on restroom doors. Signs stated, “This is an all-gender bathroom.”

As president of Dickinson’s Spectrum Club for LGBT students, Ontiberos wanted students to be comfortable. They could change clothes, put on a bit of lip gloss or just use the facilities without confronting an example of society’s disregard for their needs.

Soon, he won’t have to bother with temporary signs. The Carlisle campus is permanently converting some bathrooms across campus for unisex use. Single-stall restrooms that were designated “Men” or “Women” will sport the international unisex sign showing both a man and a woman.

The private college is among the first in the midstate to make gender-neutral restrooms available for LGBT staff and students.

However, schools across the country are responding to students’ sexual orientation and gender identity by adjusting traditional health, safety and social services.

Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi’s suicide, after a roommate allegedly covertly videotaped intimate moments he shared with another student, riveted national attention on the issue.

Campus Pride has been looking at acceptance and accommodation for LGBT people at U.S. private and public colleges and universities since 2001. The national nonprofit offers an alternative to rankings in the yearly Princeton Review, which Campus Pride refutes. Princeton’s list of LGBT-friendly colleges is extracted from answers to a question about campus climate, Pride claims, not services for LGBT students.

Of the 264 colleges that volunteered to be studied in 2010-11, only 26, or 10 percent, earned scores of five stars, the highest available rating. Two of the nine Pennsylvania colleges were top-ranked: the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State University.

The University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, Bucknell University and Lehigh University are among colleges in the state that have gender-neutral restrooms on campus.

Ontiberos doesn’t fit a sexual stereotype.

He feels as natural wearing a skirt and blouse and carrying a purse as he does donning jeans and a sweater. His nails are perennially manicured in gem tones with sparkles that makes his dark eyes pop.

In his nearly four years on the campus of about 2,200 students, Ontiberos hasn’t been harassed.

“Because I don’t conform to gender norms, people do take a second look. As long as I’m not alone, I don’t feel unsafe,” he said in a conversation during this week’s spring break.

Ontiberos spent last week on campus to wrestle piles of notes into a paper that will be his senior thesis. It examines “queer” issues in Russia. Ontiberos spent a semester there, immersed in Russian culture while living with a grandmotherly host in Moscow. There, diversity in sexual orientation isn’t welcomed, he said.

When Ontiberos left his California home for Carlisle in 2007, he didn’t have experience with being excluded because of his attire or club affiliations.

“I wasn’t out. When I came here, I just decided to start fresh. I decided to come out and live my life,” he said.

Like most other male freshmen, he moved into a men-only floor in a dormitory. Ontiberos was uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with straight men. His resident assistant converted an unused women’s bathroom to a gender-neutral restroom. Ontiberos was the only man who used it that year, he said.

A survey of 1,700 LGBT student and faculty conducted in 2003 by Penn State professor Susan Rankin found that their contributions and concerns often aren’t ignored. More than a third of students and nearly 20 percent of LGBT professors surveyed reported they’d been harassed.

Harassment mostly took the form of derogatory remarks primarily made by students, the survey found. Just over half hid their sexual orientation to avoid intimidation, and more than a fifth reported fearing for their physical safety.

Unisex bathrooms are just one of numerous solutions sought by LGBT advocates.

According to a checklist put out by the Web-based Transgender Law and Policy Institute, expanding student health insurance to cover services for students undergoing hormone treatment or gender surgery can be critical. A few schools — none in the state — cover hormones and surgery follow-up through student health insurance.

Dickinson College formed a LGBT task force that’s weighing changes. The school hasn’t done an assessment, but it has championed gender-identity equity in the past. Officials say Dickinson was one of the first U.S. colleges to offer health benefits to partners in same-sex couples.

Ontiberos and other students want more policy revisions. This year, the student senate, of which Ontiberos is a member, proposed gender-neutral dorms.

“We are working with senate leadership to advance it,” college spokeswoman Christine Dugan said.

Ontiberos said the school has a ways to go to eliminate prejudice.

“People throw around the word ‘faggot’ a lot. I’ve had friends who’ve been directly harassed about their orientation,” Ontiberos said.

“I do honestly believe officials and different groups do want to work to make the campus better. At the same time, there is a big clash with the campus culture,” he said.