Gay rights supporters on campus mean business about getting a domestic partnership policy implemented.
About 60 undergraduates, graduate students, employees and faculty met Thursday night to discuss how to best push a proposal to extend benefits, such as health insurance, pension plans, and access to University facilities, to the domestic partners of homosexual University employees.
Although similar proposals have been rejected in the past, Dale Martin, assistant professor of religion and chair of immediate past President Keith Brodie's Nondiscrimination Committee, said he is hopeful that this time will be different.
"In spite of the opposition, I think this is something the administration is committed to," Martin said.
Judith White, special assistant to the president and sexual harassment prevention coordinator, headed a group last spring that drafted a domestic partnership policy. To qualify for benefits, partners would have to demonstrate a mutual financial commitment through evidence such as a joint mortgage or joint checking account.
This summer, the faculty compensation committee, which rejected two earlier plans, endorsed the proposal, also recommending extension of benefits to non-married, heterosexual couples.
President Nan Keohane rejected the modified plan, Martin said, because "she believes this is a sexual orientation discrimination issue, not one of redefining wholesale the definition of `family."'
The Board of Trustees will ultimately vote on whether to extend benefits to domestic partners.
Many of those at Thursday's meeting said that their energies should be focused on getting a policy in place as soon as possible.
"We could probably debate all night and into the morning on which [policy] is better," said Robin Buhrke, a staff psychologist at Counseling and Psychological Services, "but we run the risk of stalling it. It's not a question of what's the best policy but of how to best move the policy forward."
Meeting attendees suggested a letter-writing campaign to focus attention on the proposal.
"The administration needs constant reminders that we're here, we want this; this is important," said Donna Giles, assistant dean of The Graduate School.
Recently enacted partnership policies at other colleges nationwide should expedite the proposal at Duke, said Robert Bryant, Juanita M. Kreps professor of mathematics.
Bryant recently attended a conference on benefits for domestic partners; he said that 31 colleges and universities currently extend some form of benefits to domestic partners of gay, lesbian and bisexual employees and faculty. Universities with such policies include Stanford, the University of Chicago, the Ivy League schools, and Wellesley College, where Keohane served as president before coming to Duke.
About 70 major corporations also offer such benefits packages, Bryant said. Were Duke to pass its domestic partner policy, it would be the first university in the South to do so.
Faculty support has been instrumental in implementing policies at other schools, Bryant said. So far, Academic Council chair James Siedow, a botany professor, said that he has not been contacted about putting the issue on the agenda of the Duke faculty's governing body.
Graduate students at the meeting also wanted domestic partnership coverage. Although graduate students may purchase health insurance from the University, the current domestic partner proposal does not include homosexual graduate students, even though graduate students have strongly backed a domestic partner policy from the start, Giles said.
Keohane has said that the University will not consider changes to graduate student benefits until employee policy discussions are concluded, Martin said.
Student insurance coverage is negotiated annually in the spring semester.
Those attending the meeting also discussed lobbying Durham city government to recognize domestic partnerships. Carrboro passed such a partnership policy last month.
Above all, meeting attendees stressed that a domestic partnership policy is long overdue at the University.
"I've worked at Duke for 23 years, I've been a lesbian for 19 years, I've had a serious commitment to a partner for 17 years, and this school has had a nondiscrimination policy for six years. Something is wrong with this picture," Giles said.
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