WHEN it comes to guaranteeing equality for its citizens, the Virginia General Assembly fails dismally.
In the last year alone, the General Assembly churned out a slew of legislation that had the sole purpose of marginalizing Virginia's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Among the bills proposed were such regressive notions as a ban on gay-straight alliances in high schools and the issuance of license plates with interlocking wedding bands over hearts reading "Traditional Marriage."
It should come as no surprise that archaic state law also sanctions discrimination against faculty, staff and administrators at the University. Indeed, the University continues to lag behind competing institutions through denying domestic partner benefits to its employees.
Domestic partner benefits can include medical, dental and life insurance; tuition assistance; pension benefits; family leave and inclusion in work-related events for partners of employees in fully committed and long-term same-sex, non-married heterosexual relationships.
The policy of denying these benefits is an injustice not only to the employees who suffer from it, but to the entire University community and subsequently, the Commonwealth.
In Virginia, all benefits are defined only by marriage and the status of dependent children. This makes a significant portion of compensation unattainable for LGBT workers and heterosexual couples who choose not to marry.
The University is one of only three of the top 25 universities to deny partnership benefits to faculty. The other two, Notre Dame and Georgetown, both answer to the Catholic Church. In addition to 22 of the top 25 national universities, every single one of the Big 10 schools and Ivy Leagues offer domestic partner benefits.
What does this mean for the University? We are losing highly sought-after professors due to such discriminatory and outdated policy. There is a disincentive to work here if another institution offers health insurance benefits for partners while the University offers none.
Claire Kaplan, Sexual Assault Education Coordinator and a member of the University's LGBT faculty association, UVA Pride, affirmed in an e-mail that "We have lost some of our key faculty and grad students, or failed to recruit some much sought-after scholars because the University does not offer domestic partner benefits."
The University should be competing to offer the best support and benefits for all our faculty, staff and administrators.
As more and more universities begin to offer the benefits (the number has risen from 183 in 2003 to 295 this year), the University will become less attractive to potential faculty and staff. Keeping our professors and attracting new ones are certainly in the best interest of the University as a whole.
According to Kaplan, "It costs a significant number of faculty, staff and administrators to work here, because we must find other ways to pay for health insurance for our partners... In some cases, such as my own, our partners are simply uninsured, which is very frightening. There are children who are uninsured."
As for the University's responsiveness to the issue, UVA Pride member and Systems Engineering Prof. Ellen Bass believes the University has been receptive to the faculty's concerns "even at the highest levels of the administration... The Faculty Senate voted in favor of giving us the benefits but the state does not allow it."
Opponents argue that domestic partnership status is ambiguous, and that allowing benefits would lead to abuses of the system, enabling short-term partners to cash in.
However, domestic partnership can be clearly defined by a contractual agreement to include long-term commitment, co-residency for a specified period of time and financial interdependence in addition to the requirement that the employee inform the employer if the relationship ends.
None of this can happen until the state recognizes the value of providing equal employment benefits to its citizens. The University has sought reform through discussions with alumni, parents and the Board of Visitors. Through denying domestic partner benefits, the state is actively undermining the rights of Virginia citizens and jeopardizing our education in the process.
Sophia Brumby's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at sbrumby@cavalierdaily.com.
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