UW-Madison is losing out on attracting and retaining quality lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender faculty and staff due to outdated employee benefit policies that often fail to extend to domestic partners, according to Joe Elder, chair of the faculty senate committee on LGBT issues.
According to Elder, the UW-Madison Faculty Senate will present a review tonight of the university's progress on LGBT issues since 1997.
\[Lack of domestic partner benefits] is probably is the greatest failing since 1997. We had hoped that within a short period of time it would be possible for Wisconsin, like other major Big Ten universities, to provide the domestic partner benefits,"" Elder said.
Calling UW-Madison's policies ""archaic"" and ""medieval,"" Elder said he thinks administrators could do more to curb the damage such policies cause to the quality of faculty and staff on campus.
However, Associate Vice Chancellor Bernice Durand said the university controls only some employee benefits and the state Legislature controls the rest. She added UW is already in the process of altering its policies to include domestic partners and that only the state is lagging behind. Additionally, Durand said university administrators have tried to convince state representatives to change their practices.
""The UW System has tried for years and years to get [domestic partnership] added. Madison has lobbied for it. We've met with the governor's staff because they think it should be added, but it's controlled by the legislators,"" Durand said.
She added she could not speculate as to why legislators would not vote to add domestic partnership benefits.
Yet Elder contended that many UW-Madison administrators have used the state as a scapegoat and that this leads to an overall lack of domestic partnership benefits.
""[The situation is getting worse] to the extent that more and more colleges and universities are providing these benefits so we're falling further and further behind in the race to get the very best faculty and staff,"" Elder said.
The Faculty Senate will deliver the complete report tonight at 7p.m. TITU.
