Cornell both slid to a D, worse than their
previous grades in the study.

Other schools in the 2002 study
included Indiana (B+), NYU (B+), Michigan
(B), Texas (B-), Duke (C), USC (C-), and
Virginia (C-). The University of Vermont’s
business school, with 70-75 students, was
not surveyed.

The study examined schools and
awarded points based on ten criteria: _
whether the school had a sexual orientation
nondiscrimination policy (45 points), an
lgbtq business school student organization
(10 points), specific lgbtq job recruiting
opportunities (10 points), domestic partner
benefits for staff and faculty (5 points) and
for students (5 points), whether lgbtq infor-
mation was included in admissions materials

- (7.5 points), if there were any openly les-

bian, gay, bisexual or transgender professors
(5 points), if an undergraduate lgbtq student
organization existed on campus (5 points),
whether there was a business school lgbtq
alumni organization (2.5 points) or general
university lgbtq alumni organization (2.5
points), and whether transgender people
were included in policies or represented on
campus (2.5 points). A perfect score would
be 100 points.

- The “A”-list schools all scored at
least 93.75 points, with the highest score
being 97.5 (Harvard, Stanford, and the
University of Pennsylvania). MIT’s Sloan
School made the biggest move upward, ris-
ing from a D+ grade to an A.

According to UVM School of
Business Administration Dean Rocki-Lee
DeWitt, UVM doesn’t specifically recruit
glbtq students. “We’re the university,” she

u Ing Into Dwerslty
Consu tant Jason Lorber teaches business
schools to reap the benefits of gay recruitment

BY EUAN BEAR

gay man with a mission to show busi-
ness schools why it’s in their best inter-
ests to make their schools glbtq-friendly and
recruit glbtq students. He doesn’t wear a
cape and tights — well, not during business
hours — but he carries the ultimate in
weapons: market research.
“I was not just a business major, I
wanted to create change,” Lorber said in a

Jason Lorber is a man with a mission, a

’ recent interview over lunch in Burlington. “I

was going to use the fact that I was a gay
man at_a top business school [Stanford] to
dispel the myths and stereotypes — that gay
men are all hairdressers and florists or truck
drivers.”

‘ He wanted to take a different
approach, he said. “How can I get The New
York Times to report on gay and lesbian
issues beyond AIDS and the annual parade,”
he asked himself in 1994.

I After considering and rejecting a
few other ideas, he reasoned that ranking
business schools would work, because it
makes use of the competitive impulse. But it
would be a “business-minded, factual rank-
ing,” not just a survey of how accepted gay
students “feel” at their schools. He wanted
his project to be a tool that activists could

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use, enabling them to ask, “Other schools
have these procedures, why don’t we?”

Now, as of December 2002,
Lorber’s own national research and consult-
ing finn, Aplomb Consulting — with offices
in South Burlington and San Francisco — has
updated his original 1995 study to reflect A
today’s realities. And, while B-schools may
never be a warm and fuzzy place for queers,
the top schools have improved their glbtq
friendliness — at least as measured by the cri-
teria Lorber used.

In 1995, only three schools rated an
“A” or an “A-”: Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.
In 2002, "eight more schools joined them:
Pennsylvania’s Wharton (prior grade: B+);
Dartmouth’s Tuck (C); Northwestem’s
Kellogg (B-); UCLA’s Anderson (B-);
Columbia (B-); MIT’s Sloan (D+); UC-
Berkeley’s Haas (B-); and the University of
Chicago (C-).

Lorber’s 1995 study identified
Perdue as the least gay-friendly business
school. Perdue’s B-school dean insisted that
his school was not anti-gay. “We don’t dis-
criminate against anybody,” the dean was
quoted in a 1995 Business Week article on
the study. . '
In 2002 Perdue didn’t make the
list. The new goat is the Kenan-Flager
School of Business at the University of I
North Carolina. Camegie Mellon and

said. “Of course we’re proactive and glbtq-
friendly. We strive to create a welcoming
educational climate, an expectation of civili-
ty and respect. I have a responsibility to
reach outito all students. Any preferential
program always comes at the expense of
another group.”

DeWitt, who came to UVM in
January 2002 from Penn State where she
was the Associate Dean for Professional
Masters’ Programs, said there were plenty of
“Ally” stickers on doors at the business
school, “so it’s not just gay students saying
‘you’re safe here.”’ She pointed out that the
university is bound by state nondiscrimina-
tion laws and offers policies that confonn to
those regulations, including domestic partner
benefits for civil union couples.

However, no lgbtq-inclusive or
nondiscrimination policies are mentioned on
the UVM Graduate College’s general infor-
mation web pages. There is a brief mention
of “spouses” on a health insurance page . I
linked to the Graduate College page. A refer-
ence to “diversity” and “sexual orientation”
was found several screens down on the page
for the university’s Center for Health and
Wellbeing, the student health service.

There is no lgbtq student or alumni
association for the business school, although
a general one has recently been formed for
alumni of the university as a whole. The uni-

versity supports the Center for Cultural
Diversity, where glbtq students — primarily
undergraduates — find a welcome.
Admissions materials for UVM’s undergrad-
uate colleges include mention of lgbtq issues
and policies, but the online admissions mate-
rials for the business school do not.

Accordingly, UVM’s, small busi-
ness school would appear to score a 67.5 on
Lorber’s survey, a D+.

DeWitt suggested that perhaps
some of the policies and procedures listed in
the survey could be instituted, given time,
but the businessschool has just begun the
process of raising a $15 million endowment
fund and does" not want to alienate potential
donors by emphasizing lgbtq-friendly poli-
cies.

Lorber makes the case that major
corporations '— Deloitt, Goldman Sachs, JP
Morgan Chase, Motorola, and Hewlett-
Packard, among others ~ are looking to hire
the best lgbtq B-school students. Target mar-
keting beyond booze and cigarettes has at
last come to recognize the gay market as a
lucrative one, with brand-loyal consumers.
Likewise, some Fortune 500 companies rec-
ognize the power of affinity groups among

‘employees to increase employee satisfaction

and production. According to the 2002
Aplomb report, 71 percent of the business
schools surveyed had hosted employers who
were specifically recruiting lgbt students.

Are we there yet‘? If “there.’,;‘i_s_,m:
absolute equality, the answer is no. s"o‘m‘é
schools offer health or life insurance, tuition
assistance, or housing only to heterosexual
student spouses. Out professors and students
make up less than 2 percent of tire popula- .9
tion at any given business school. Or as
Lorber writes, “discrimination, homophobia
and the closet persist at the nation’s top B-
schools.”

But are we getting there? That
answer, says Lorber, is a qualified yes. As
more lgbtq students and‘faculty are comfort-
able being out at their schools, more of us —
and more schools — will recognize opportu-

nities in business careers and demand lgbtq-

friendly policies, benefits, and opportunities.
In order to compete, schools will have to
"evaluate their own standing and make
changes to catch up.

If “there” is Lorber’s personal goal
of getting national press and the leverage" to
pressure top business schools to move

toward lgbtq-friendliness, the answer is defi-

nitely yes.

“And with capitalist competition to
fuel the flame,” concluded Lorber, we
should “expect the trend toward increasing
lgbtq-friendliness to gain momentum.” V

 

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