Tuesday, July 16, 2002
University of Illinois employees call for domestic partner benefits
A story published today by the New-Gazette reports that University of Illinois employees will push for health insurance benefits to domestic partners during the public comment period of UI board of trustees meeting.
"It is for us a matter of both equity and competitiveness in the
marketplace," said Karen Alston, an educational policy studies professor and
director of UI's Women's Studies Program Alston. "We want to have a pool of
the very best people and not have external obstacles to hiring people or
keeping people who have given service to the university."
Alston said each of the three campuses' senates have passed two
resolutions, and the University Senates Conference passed a resolution in
1998, all requesting that domestic partner benefits be made available to UI
employees.
She said the Chicago campus' senate passed the first resolution seeking
domestic partner benefits for same-sex couples, then passed another one
later that included unmarried heterosexual partners. The Urbana and
Springfield senates passed resolutions last year reaffirming their support
for such benefits.
Alston said President James Stukel's office asked the University Senates
Conference to make a presentation on the issue. She is optimistic about the
issue being on the board's agenda for discussion.
"We have a group of quite rational and pragmatic people as our trustees,"
Alston said. "The perspective I'm trying to offer is: It's a reasonable
approach. I am hopeful that we can approach this from a pragmatic level of
analysis."
Alston said most Ivy League schools and large state universities offer domestic partner benefits, including six Big Ten universities: Iowa, Michigan, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Michigan State University and Indiana University
