The Graduate Student Senate will debate whether they should augment the graduate student insurance policy to include equal benefits for all domestic partners.
After listening to a presentation by representatives for the Faculty Senate and the Commission for the LGBT People on Thursday, GSS voted to begin debating on whether to make changes to the insurance policy for grad students.
The changes that could potentially be made would be similar to ones that the Faculty Senate have been trying to look into with their own insurance, which is to expand the married partner benefits to be available to both heterosexual and homosexual non-married domestic partners.
The proposal to discuss such changes was shot down by UT Chancellor Jimmy Cheek and Agriculture Chancellor Larry Arrington. The initial response from Cheek was a three-paragraph letter stating that the proposal would not be in compliance with the State of Tennessee’s laws, and therefore there was nothing UT could do as a state university. Cheek stated on Oct. 22 that he is reconsidering the proposal and will have a new response in the coming weeks.
Amanda Sanford, president of GSS, believes there is a chance that GSS could actually get benefits for all domestic partners because graduate students are not considered state employees but simply employees of the university, and therefore would not necessarily be beholden to laws of the state.
“We are university employees, not state employees,” said Sanford. “It’s kind of a loophole sort of thing. It’d be a little easier to go through.”
An additional argument brought in support of changing the insurance policy was that it would actually bring revenue to the university. Under the graduate student insurance policy, which is a separate package than the one given to faculty, married grad students have to pay to get benefits for their spouses.
By expanding the partner benefits to include domestic partners, the university could potentially be making even more money.
Whether GSS will take any action will be debated at their next meeting on Nov. 15. If the senate approves of taking action, legislation will be drafted and then presented to senate again, possibly in January.
Then Sanford would take the legislation through administrative channels.
Sanford said that even if everything goes smoothly, it wouldn’t be until the insurance contracts are renewed before any changes are actually seen. She also predicted the administration might be slow to move before approving any changes.
“It’s something that we would have to push if we want to see it happen,” Sanford said. “And we’re going to have to push pretty hard about it.”
The senate voted almost unanimously in support of starting the debate for making changes. Initially the vote had been to start drafting legislation immediately, but there were some in the senate who were concerned that there were aspects that needed to be discussed before a legislation could be fully written.
Thus, the vote was changed to have a debating process first, which passed through smoothly.
Faculty Senate and the LGBT Commission presented the case for making changes to the grad student insurance policy.
Representing the Faculty Senate were associate professors Donna Braquet and Bharat Mehra. The two detailed the history of the Faculty Senate’s proposal.
Representing the LGBT Commission, Jenny Moshak, associate athletics director for sports medicine, said she was there to give the perspective of the struggle from the LGBT side.
“I’m here to put a human face on all of this,” Moshak said.
Braquet, Bharat and Moshak all argued that by not having a more inclusive insurance policy for either faculty or grad students was counter-intuitive to the university’s Top 25 initiative and potentially hurting UT’s recruitment of good students, professors and researchers, also noting that most of the Top 25 universities all have some benefits for domestic partners.
“Are we going to stay behind or be a leader?” Moshak asked the senate. “… Let’s join forces and do what’s right.”
