From The University of Maryland Diamondback

Scant LGBT Benefits Turn Away Potential Staff, Faculty

September 29, 2004
By Heather Keels, Senior Staff Writer

If you asked former Denton Hall Resident Director Trisha Lay last year how she felt about the campus climate for homosexual staff, she might have told you how her partner, who lived with her in Denton, couldn't use the Campus Recreation Center without paying the guest rate, or how her partner had to take community college classes because she wasn't granted the tuition remission benefits marital spouses receive.

The university is asking faculty and staff just that question, but Lay isn't around to answer. She works at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, where her partner receives full spouse benefits.

Campus diversity committees and university administrators identify the lack of benefits for domestic partners as one of the top lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues on the campus as well as a major weakness in recruiting and retaining faculty and staff.

"It's very hard to get LGBT faculty involved if you're not compensating them on an equal basis," said Luke Jensen, director of the Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equity.

Domestic partners of university faculty and staff do not receive any spouse benefits from the university (such as use of daycare and recreation facilities), from the University System of Maryland (such as family leave or tuition remission) or from the state (such as health insurance).

The Board of Regents voted against benefits on all three levels in 1996.

Jensen said he knew of a two instances when domestic partner benefits affected academics:

• A candidate for a dean position withdrew his application when he learned the university does not recognize domestic partners
• A faculty member received an offer from another institution that included domestic partner benefits, which this university had to match with more money.

"Other universities have tried to cherrypick some of our best applicants with that," Jensen said.

Partially in response, Associate Vice President Rob Waters, university President Dan Mote's special assistant for diversity, commissioned a survey on the campus climate for LGBT staff.

Focus groups, including gay and straight faculty and staff members, were asked whether they thought the campus was fair, safe, comfortable and accepting. The survey is also online, and has received at least 300 responses.

Although the study's results will not be compiled until the end of the semester at the earliest, responses are already creating a stir.

At Mote's State of the Campus Address Sept. 13, Vicky Foxworth, director of the Office for Organizational Effectiveness and former chair of the President's Commission for LGBT issues, asked Mote how he planned to address the lack of benefits.

"As I'm reading these comments and this data, it's really hitting home to me that it's a bigger issue than even I was aware of," she told Mote. "There's a lot of simmering anger on this. We've done so well on so many diversity issues, but many people on this campus really feel that there's unequal pay for equal work."

Foxworth said she was reluctant to make generalizations before the study is complete, but the responses she's seen indicated strong feelings about domestic partner benefits.

Mote said he doesn't think there is any discussion of the issue within the board, but the university is looking at what benefits it can offer on a campus level.

"We're working on this in the areas where we can make some progress," he said.

Although administrators are supportive, adding even campus-level benefits may be restricted by the regents' 1996 vote, Jensen said.

Mote's Chief of Staff Ann Wylie said Mote is awaiting recommendations on how to add campus benefits from the President's Commission for LGBT issues.

"I think if the campus were given back their autonomy to extend local level benefits, that would definitely be a step forward," Foxworth said, adding these benefits would have a symbolic if not tangible impact.

Commission chair Coke Farmer said the survey's results will help quantify the need for benefits, but Jensen said he thinks there is little chance of adding domestic partner benefits soon.

"Quite frankly, as long as Bob Ehrlich is governor, I would be surprised if it is [raised again at the Board of Regents]," Jensen said, adding that regents are appointed by Ehrlich, who has a reputation for not being supportive of gay rights.

"This is perhaps not the most opportunistic political climate," Farmer agreed, "However, an important issue remains an important issue, regardless of who is in power."

The regents last looked at adding domestic partner benefits in 2001, when they formed a committee to discuss the issue, but it was never brought to a meeting.

Foxworth said she thought the repeated failure to add the benefits, in 1996 and in 2001, contributed to anger about the subject.

"Everyone made a really big push, an enormous energy went into it, and when the Board of Regents voted against extending the benefits, people felt demoralized and very discouraged," she said.

Resistance to adding the benefits in 1996 mainly came from an economic perspective, Waters said, though some people had philosophical objections.

Opponents suggested the potential for fraud, and there is no clear legal definition for what constitutes a domestic partner.

Jensen said the system could define domestic partners in a number of ways, including requirements for have living together for a certain number of years and supplying documentation such as a joint lease or bank account.

A 2001 report by the President's Commission on LGBT Issues lists fairness and equity, recruiting and keeping top talent and a welcoming atmosphere as reasons to add benefits.

Four of the university's five peer universities - the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - offer some domestic partner benefits.

"These are the schools that we want to be counted among; these are the best schools in the U.S., and we're in this shrinking little minority," Jensen said.

Waters said fairness is the most compelling reason for the benefits.

"I think there are lots of same-sex individuals who've been committed to the university for decades who can't get benefits, and someone else who walks on campus and meets someone on the street and gets married the next day would get them," said Waters, who married a woman entitled to benefits, but his same-sex partner of six years is not. "It just seems fundamentally unfair."

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