Minority groups at the University of California are still reeling from the regents’ ax job on campus affirmative action.
But already, the regents are gearing up for another major debate — benefits for domestic partners of U.C. staff and students. And the American Jewish Congress, a civil rights group, wants to make sure they get it right this time.
It is simply “a matter of basic fairness” to extend the same health, retirement, survivor and housing benefits that are regularly granted to spouses of U.C. employees to same-sex partners, AJCongress board member Martin Kassman told the regents during their regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday of last week.
Though there never has been a domestic partner program in the nine-campus U.C. system, faculty and staff have been requesting one since 1994.
At least two dozen people at the meeting voiced their support for a policy. Another 100 crowded the room to listen.
Kassman called the testimonies “eloquent and moving stories” of gays and lesbians who feared losing their jobs and benefits to workplace discrimination without their partners’ benefits to fall back on.
U.C. President Richard Atkinson presented to regents an outline of what a domestic-partner policy might look like as well as options for the regents to consider. The options ranged from doing nothing to offering full benefits to same-sex partners as well as unmarried opposite-sex partners. That latter would cost the system up to $20.4 million from its general fund, financed by taxpayers.
Atkinson said he would require domestic partners to file affidavits to certify their relationship and joint financial responsibility.
Several regents voiced both the need to be fair and to stay competitive with other universities that offer such policies. Many other regents, however, were more reluctant.
At the San Francisco offices of AJCongress, Executive Director Tracy Salkowitz vented her frustration over the dwindling of resources and opportunities for minority groups on U.C. campuses. She also questioned the regents’ ethics.
“Ten percent of the population is gay, which means that 10 percent of Jews are gay,” Salkowitz said. If the regents fail to pass the domestic partners policy, “10 percent of those on campus [will be] discouraged from being who they are,” she added.
“If [the regents] are trying to let the community know that they’re promoting a very white, old-boy university [system], they’re doing a good job.”
Pointing to this year’s enrollment of only one African-American freshman at U.C. Berkeley’s Boalt Law School, Salkowitz said the U.C. system actively discourages minority applicants.
“If we can’t trust our institutions of higher education with some sort of moral values what can we hope to teach our future leaders?”