LAST WEEK while conducing endorsement interviews for Queer & Allied Activism, I was shocked when a candidate for the Honor Committee asked me if I supported Student Council's resolution supporting domestic partner benefits, implying that it might have been an effort to make members of Council look good before elections this spring. QuAA researched, wrote and found a sponsor for the resolution, so of course we support it!
How could I expect a candidate for Honor to know this when the Opinion page of the Cavalier Daily continues to misrepresent the resolution and its purpose? Despite accurate coverage in the News section and my letter to the editor correcting the first misinformed Lead Editorial, the opinion articles continue to make the same specious arguments: the resolution is redundant, it won't sway the General Assembly and Student Council should ask for cooperation from other student groups like QSU and QuAA.
In 2004, Student Council did approve a resolution pertaining to the University's ability to offer domestic partner benefits, but it did not support domestic partner benefits generally; it only supported HB 1016, which died in committee in the Virginia Senate. A past resolution supporting a failed bill that would have allowed the University to offer domestic partner benefits doesn't mean much now.If the former resolution were still relevant, Council could have simply affirmed it but there was a need for a new resolution to demonstrate official student support for domestic partner benefits.
The second criticism that Student Council expects the resolution to sway our homophobic General Assembly misrepresents our strategy. We are neither so arrogant nor so naïve as to think that the University's Student Council could single-handedly overcome the strong personal prejudices that many of our legislative representatives in Richmond constantly display.
However, we recognize both the great influence that the University has at the state level and the success that the private sector had last year in a landmark decision to allow private companies in Virginia to extend health insurance benefits to the domestic partners of their employees. Virginia was the last state in the nation to pass such a law. Thus, our aim is to win public support for domestic partner benefits from the highest levels of administration at the University such as from President John T. Casteen and Board of Visitors to help change the current law. Neither would endorse such a resolution without the expressed support of Student Council, the General Faculty Council and the Faculty Senate. The resolution has already been introduced to the General Faculty Council and I hope that it will be proposed at the Feb. 28 meeting of the Faculty Senate.
Criticizing Council for not working with QuAA and QSU would be completely valid, were it true. No representative body should ever attempt to address the issues of a minority community without first consulting that community and collaborating with it. But in the case of this resolution, Student Council did collaborate with the queer community and in fact did exactly what we asked of them, only to be lambasted by critics for not cooperating with us.
Instead of condemning Student Council for doing its job, why not critique those who are not doing theirs? In 2001 the Faculty Senate of Virginia endorsed a resolution supporting domestic partner benefits, in 2004 a student referendum overwhelmingly supported domestic partner benefits and just last year the President's Commission on Diversity called the University's lack of domestic partner benefits "a disadvantage with its peer institutions on issues of benefits" and recommended that the University "improve benefits in areas such as ... health benefits for domestic partners." Yet our administration has never publicly supported these benefits. Why hasn't the administration responded to the concerns of its own students, faculty, and staff?
Now our administrators have their chance to prove their commitment to diversity and the fair treatment of all University employees. They should sign a resolution that expressly supports the ability for the University to offer domestic partner benefits.
Seth Croft is a third year in the College of Arts and Sciences.
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