UT Students Rally for DP Benefits

By Trudy Ring

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AUSTIN X390 (COURTESY CREDITED) | ADVOCATE.COM

Students at the University of Texas at Austin rallied Thursday to call for domestic-partner benefits for faculty and staff members.

The students say the university is moving too slowly to provide benefits for the same-sex partners of professors and other UT employees.

Staff member Karen Landolt told Austin’s News 8 that the lack of partner benefits “hurts the university’s credibility” and “ability to recruit the brightest and the best, and to retain staff as well.”

In April, Deborah Vargas, a UT assistant professor whose partner has health problems, cited the benefits policy as a reason for her resignation to take a job at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Reader Comments

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Name: Kendall G.
Date posted: 11/22/2009 6:43:07 PM
Hometown: Austin, TX

Comment:
Unfortunately, whinging about Texas won't do much to help the queers who live here. I'm really glad to see the Advocate covering the rally. It's amazing how engaged the students at UT Austin are, and how supportive are their faculty and staff. The president of the university has said he supports offering domestic partner benefits, but shirks the responsibility for recruiting and retaining top faculty, staff, and graduate students by blaming the legislature for the university's failure. But public universities in four other states including Arizona that have DOMAs or "marriage" amendments offer domestic partner benefits. It's not impossible or illegal--but it does take getting serious about furnishing equal benefits to all the universities employees.
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Name: David
Date posted: 11/20/2009 11:38:23 PM
Hometown: Vancouver, WA

Comment:
Actually, Austin is a "blue" island in a sea of "red". Austin is very liberal, especially considering the neighbors in the rest of the state. The Texas legislature will not allow UT, or any other state-funded entity, to provide benefits to unmarried same-sex or opposite-sex partners. I would bet a million dollars that if it were up to UT istself, the administration would immediately adopt a policy to include same-sex domestic partners in its benefits package. The administration knows they are at a significant disadvantage in recruiting top talent due to the bigoted, hypocritical, homophobic evangelical "christian" conservative republican-controlled state legislature. Just look at their idiot governor - Rick Perry - who has said he wants to secede from the US because of the Obama administration's stimulus plan. That should give any sane person a pretty good idea what the Texas legislature is all about.
Back to top Post a Comment Report Abuse
Name: Thomas
Date posted: 11/20/2009 5:02:30 PM
Hometown: FloriDuh

Comment:
Sadly, UT is located in the red (neck), white (trash) and blue (not) State of Texas... Where (like my state of Florida) bigotry is ever present in its GOP controlled state government and less then enlightened (and educated) southern populace...

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