From daemon Sat Sep 15 21:11 EDT 1990 Return-Path: <@CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu:gaynet-request@athena.mit.edu> Received: from CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu (CORNELLC.CIT.CORNELL.EDU.ARPA) by clotho.acm.rpi.edu (4.12/ACM-UNIX-1.0) id AA18794; Sat, 15 Sep 90 21:10:58 edt Received: from MIT.EDU by CORNELLC.cit.cornell.edu (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.2MX) with TCP; Sat, 15 Sep 90 21:17:54 EDT Received: from TOTO.MIT.EDU by MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA22123; Sat, 15 Sep 90 20:40:00 EDT Received: by TOTO.MIT.EDU (5.61/4.7) id AA14915; Sat, 15 Sep 90 20:37:17 -0400 Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 20:37:17 -0400 Message-Id: <9009160037.AA14915@TOTO.MIT.EDU> From: gaynet@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Reply-To: gaynet@ATHENA.MIT.EDU Subject: GayNet Digest Volume 2 Issue 23 To: Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual Mailing List Status: RO In this issue: Rutger's Report Please send messages for the entire list to gaynet@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, requests to be added or deleted to gaynet-request@ATHENA.MIT.EDU, and personal replies directly to the other person, not the entire list. ---------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 20:28:30 EDT From: Christopher.Young@ISL1.RI.CMU.EDU Subject: Rutger's Report Well, I think this should conform to the charter of gaynet :-) A friend send this to me, and now I forward it to you all. Three cheers for Rutgers! -- Chris. This material can be reproduced for educational or other not-for-profit purposes as long as the source (indicated below) is cited. (The full report is available for $10 from: The Office of Student Life Policy and Services, 301 Van Nest Hall, Old Queens Campus, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903.) ---------------------------------------------------------------- The following is the Executive Summary of _In Every Classroom, The Report of the President's Select Committee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns_, which was submitted to Edward J. Bloustein, President, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, in November, 1989. STRUCTURE AND HISTORY Rutgers University President Edward J. Bloustein announced the creation of his Select Commmittee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns on February 3, 1988. The Committee is part of the University's larger commitment to combatting prejudice and encouraging respect for diversity, known as the Program to Advance Our Common Purposes. The Select Committee was created in response to recommendations made by lesbian and gay students and the Rutgers Sexual Orientation Survey completed under the direction of Dr. Susan Cavin. Both the students and the survey documented a homophobic atmosphere that the survey's report described as "a vicious, sometimes violent underside to life here at Rutgers." Chaired by Dean James D. Anderson, the Select Committee is composed of twenty-nine members, including faculty, students, administrators, and alumni. The Committee organized itself into nine task groups and held a total of 71 meetings on the Camden, Newark, New Brunswick, and Piscataway campuses, including three Open Forums. In addition to the Cavin study, which documented homophobic violence, four other surveys were completed: a lesbian and gay student needs assessment survey; a survey of all faculty and staff on work environment and curricular issues; a survey of campus resources and programs available for lesbian and gay students; and a national survey of lesbian and gay programs and projects underway at other colleges and universities. The Select Committee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns examined a number of areas where the University routinely interacts with students, faculty, and staff in ways which significantly affect the quality of their personal lives, their education, and their work. The Committee examined areas where heterosexism is currently institutionalized, and areas where homophobia, anti-gay violence and discrimination can be aggressively combatted. Our recommendations are made with the assumption that heterosexism and homophobia, like racism and sexism, are long-term problems which demand long-term solutions. As a result many of our recommendations are designed to be implemented over a period of time. However, some key recommendations need urgent action if the University is seriously to oppose and tackle bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination against lesbian and gay people. The following overview summarizes the most pressing recommendations, those recommendations which the members of the Select Committee for Lesbian and Gay Concerns feel need the most immediate and serious action. GOALS OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE The Select Committee's work has been guided by four goals or assumptions. They represent the spirit of our work and have guided the drafting of our recommendations. We hope they will guide the implementation and refinement of our recommendations as well. First and most important, the University must ensure an environment in which all members of our community, including lesbian and gay students, are able to participate and develop intellectually and emotionally, free from fear, violence, or harassment. For most students, college is a time of self-exploration, a time when personal identity and independence are solidified and asserted. For lesbian and gay students it is too often a period of personal turmoil and isolation as they come face to face in their daily lives with the ugliness of homophobia and heterosexism. Since a primary mission of the university is to educate its students, it is critical to provide them with the chance to grow and learn in a safe environment free of homophobia and heterosexism. No one--of whatever race, gender, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, age, physical ability, or sexual orientation--should be subjected to physical threats or abuse, academic deprecation or intellectual derision, or to treatment which deprives them of their dignity and humanity. Any community which does not aggressively work to protect its members from physical, emotional, and intellectual ravages of bigotry and prejudice is a community for which freedom of expression and intellectual integrity are a farce. Second, the university needs to promote a respect for diversity among all its members. It must combat homophobia and heterosexism as an essential part of that effort. Both the bigot and the bigot's prey are injured by prejudice and hate. Both parties lose the opportunity to participate in honest discussion; neither can share their knowledge and insight; everyone's growth and richness of experience is stunted. The bigot's hate is exhausting and depleting for everyone; as Frederick Douglass said, "Slavery enslaves the slave-master as well." A truly exciting intellectual environment is one which celebrates its own diversity and rich complexity, not one which sulks in fear of what it cannot easily understand or what it cannot conquer and make its own. Third, the university must ensure equitable and fair treatment for all members of the Rutgers community--students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, and their families. Equity is a central tenet of the American creed, enshrined in our nation's founding documents. Fairness needs to be understood within the context of the diversity and difference which currently exists within our communities. What is often seen as offering the same benefit or service equally to all members of the comunity may actually be exclusionary when viewed from the perspective of one part of our diverse world. For the university to offer all married couples spousal benefits and claim equality of treatment is to disavow the existence and ignore the history of lesbians and gays who are denied the legal option of marriage in all countries but Denmark. Finally, the university needs to encourage research and scholarly debate in the areas of lesbian and gay studies. Society needs to understand the roots of heterosexism; we need to understand why the assumption of heterosexuality is so pervasive and firmly rooted in our thought and why all forms of same-sex intimacy are so frightening and threatening to so many people. Solving the problems of bigotry will require thorough research and serious scholarship. If lesbian and gay people are to become full participants in public life, society must be allowed to discover the contributions that lesbians and gays have made to science, history, literature, and art; they need creative research which allows them to recover and create the science, history, literature, and art which is their own. FIVE FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIVES FOR RUTGERS The Select Committee sees five objectives as central to accomplishing its goals. After examining the research and surveys we commissioned, after participating in a University-wide dialogue and numerous meetings, we believe that these objectives provide the best strategy for implementing the principles just outlined. The following five objectives deserve the immediate attention of the University: 1. The establishment of an Office for Lesbian and Gay Concerns with at least one full-time staff person. A central University office provided with staff and resources and advised by a committee of faculty, staff, students, and alumnae/i is needed to provide a visible, prominent focus for the long-term work of implementing this report's recommendations. Someone is needed to act as a voice for the issue who is undistracted by other necessary concerns and complicated problems which currently confront university administrators; at least one person needs to have ultimate responsibility for responding to specific problems or incidents. At present, responsibility for combatting homophobia is shared by everyone and held by no one. A full-time coordinator would act as a gentle reminder of what needs to be done, what hasn't been done, and what should be done. Also, a professional is needed with the skills, expertise, and time to serve as a clearhouse for effective strategies and creative programs for change and to prevent duplication of efforts across the university. 2. The creation of incentives for the integration of the "new curriculums." Scholarship and learning are expanding as new social groups with new experiences, different cultures, and unexplored histories take their place in our public life. Some of the most exciting and innovative scholarship, expecially at Rutgers, is interdisciplinary work taking place within such new arenas as women's studies, Africana studies, American studies, and lesbian and gay studies. These emerging areas of scholarship, these "new disciplines," need to be better integrated into our existing teaching curricula and our standard pedagogy. This can only be done through the allocation of new resources by the university to support and encourage the development of "new curriculums" that are inclusive of not just the lesbian and gay experience, but also of other underrepresented groups. Incentives, such as release time or rewards in the tenure and promotion process, must be created so that faculty members who take time from their current teaching, research, and service to revise the curriculum they teach are not penalized in the tenure and promotion process. Faculty members who are doing creative research in these areas and who are developing inclusive curriculums need to be provided forums, such as discipline-based colloquia, for sharing these advances with their colleagues. The inclusion of lesbian and gay people in the intellectual discourses of the classroom is crucial to combatting homophobia and heterosexism, since it demonstrates the intellectual and academic legitimacy which lesbian and gay issues deserve. 3. Combatting homophobia through distinct, tailored sensitivity programs. We must develop programs and educational activities in a variety of formats on homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, and heterosexism on all campuses, particularly for new students during orientation; for students in residence halls, fraternities and sororities; and for faculty, administrators and staff, especially in such areas as health care, campus security, residence life, and counseling--the entire student life area in general. Anti-homophobia education and training can be integrated into existing anti-bias activities throughout the university, especially as they relate to other forms of prejudice such as racism, sexism, xenophobia, and prejudice directed towards members of religious or national groups. 4. The creation of safe space. All public space at the university should be safe space free of racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic bigotry. This is an ambitious project which will take many years to achieve. However, until the time arrives when two women or two men can safely walk arm in arm through campus and show their affection for each other publicly, as so many opposite-sex friends do, we need to create a space where lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and their friends can interact and develop supportive communities. We need to protect the vulnerable for now. We are not suggesting the creation of an exclusive space, just space free from harassment and hostility. 5. Ensure equity in access to benefits and services. Currently lesbians and gays are denied access to benefits and services which are in principle said to be supplied to all employees. The most egregious and serious example of this exclusion is in the area of employee health benefits. Until the university provides equal health insurance benefits to the domestic partners and children of lesbian and gay employees it is not meeting the requirements of its own nondiscrimination policy. ---------------------------------------------------------- End of GayNet Digest ********************