Subject: GayNet Digest Volume 2 Issue 23

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 20:37:17 -0400

In this issue:
                            Rutger's Report

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Date: Sat, 15 Sep 90 20:28:30 EDT
From: [email-masked]
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.)
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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.

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End of GayNet Digest
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