Fourth in a four part series about LGBTQ issues at Georgetown

While many of Georgetown’s LGBTQ faculty members say the environment for openly gay members of academia has improved over the years, others believe that Georgetown is losing top talent because of its current benefits policies.

Georgetown does not give benefits to the domestic partners of gay employees. Over 200 of Georgetown’s non-Catholic peer institutions, including all eight Ivy League schools, offer some form of domestic partnership benefits, at least two Catholic institutions, the Dominican University of California and the University of San Francisco, give benefits to unmarried partners.

And while those universities also offer benefits to spouses of the same gender, Georgetown’s policies toward married same-sex couples are ambiguous.

University spokeswoman Julie Bataille said last week that “historically Georgetown has provided benefits eligibility to employees and their legal spouses and dependent children.”

But according to the university’s online employee medical benefits plan, legal spouses must be “of opposite gender” to qualify for medical benefits.

Bataille said yesterday that the online version of the policy was changed in 2001 without university administrators’ knowledge.

“The online changes resulted from a staff editorial effort intended to clarify existing policy and did not go involve the consultative or legal review that a policy revision would have warranted,” she said.

Officials were instituting a “process to review the issue and determine whether any changes are needed at this time,” Bataille added.

Bataille also said that she did not believe any married spouses of the same gender have previously petitioned the university for benefits eligibility.

Many universities have groups similar to Harvard’s Gay and Lesbian Caucus, which advocates for gay faculty, students and alumni. Other universities have special programs which offer mentorship services to LGBTQ community members.

Georgetown has only a small group for LGBTQ staffers, founded in 2003, that is not university sponsored.

Bataille said that she “is not aware of any university wide services for a niche group of faculty or staff” but added that community members can participate in Georgetown’s more general staff assistance program.

Tommasso Astarita is the director of the university’s undergraduate history program and helped co-found the group called GU Gay and Lesbian Faculty. It is a small group dedicated to coordinating activities with other campus organizations such as GU Pride and discussing issues of common interest. Today GUGLF has about 12 members who communicate over an e-mail list-serve.

Astarita said that the group has never received funding from the university, although he added that he was unsure whether its members have ever requested assistance in the first place.

He said that Georgetown is violating its own policy of non-discrimination by denying benefits to same-sex partners.

“I believe that this situation unless it is rectified will increasingly and negatively affect GU’s hiring and retention of faculty members,” he said.

According to Dana Luciano, an associate professor of English, that’s already happening.

“For my part, it was tough to accept a position here given the lack of domestic benefits,” she said. “For many other people, this issue is an absolute deal-breaker.”

The issue of benefits is not the only issue hampering faculty retention, Luciano said. She pointed to programs at institutions like Hamilton College, where the university-funded LGBTQ faculty group welcomes new professors each semester with a special reception. Luciano also said that she would like to see an LGBTQ resource center as well as a comprehensive program for sexuality studies.

“I’ve talked to employees at other Catholic institutions where more positive steps have been taken to support LGBTQ faculty, staff and students, and there’s no reason why we can’t take the same steps here,” she said.

While faculty members like Luciano argue that Georgetown is losing academic expertise because of its “discriminatory” policies, others argue that the university is simply falling in line with Catholic doctrine.

Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, an organization “dedicated to the renewal of Catholic identity in Catholic education in the United States,” believes that providing benefits to gay faculty members is “wholly inappropriate.”

“It’s not a good thing because it recognizes their unions on the same level as heterosexual unions,” he said. “I would say that any faculty members who chooses to work at a Catholic university and chooses not to respect Catholic doctrine would not be a good employee for that university.”

But people like SFS assistant dean Brendan Hill (GRD ’04) argue that Catholic doctrine on homosexuality is not always clear and said that Georgetown has a responsibility to treat all community members alike, regardless of sexual orientation.

“This is not only a Catholic university but a Jesuit one as well. Part of our mission is to reach out to a diverse community,” he said. “I’m not advocating that the university must recognize domestic partnerships, but when it comes to legally wed partners I’d like to make sure this is something the university recognizes regardless of sexual orientation.”

Hill said that the environment for gay university employees has been improving over the years but said that “there continues to be a long way to go.”

“I have never been afraid to be openly out here and I’ve especially felt that members of the religious community have been accepting,” he said. “But there are always institutional issues which can be addressed.”