urlington — It might have been any
committee meeting of any board
for all the notice apparently taken
of the 15 silent protesters standing behind
the table. But it wasn’t. It was the
Diversity Committee of the University of
Vermont’s Board of Trustees, and the issue
closest to the hearts of the placard-wearing
Free to Be students ~ gender identity and
expression — had mysteriously been
removed from the committee’s agenda.
When committee Chairman (and
Republican former state senator) Tom
Little called the meeting to order and invit-
ed a review of the agenda, all but one of
the protesting students pulled out white
cloths and tied them around their mouths,
conveying their sense of having been
silenced.
The students remained standing
silently for all of the nearly two hours of

' the meeting. Their placards contained

points on a timeline dating from five years

i ago: meetings held, promises made, studies

and commissions activated, all to add four
words to the “Equal Employment
Opportunity/Affirmative Action Policy” of
the University. Those four words are “gen-
der identity and expression.”

Also at issue for the students and
supportive faculty and staff in the audience
is a new draft of the policy issued by A
UVM President Dan Fogel. In part, the
policy reads, “applicants and employees
shall be treated in employment matters
without regard to unlawful criteria, includ-
ing race, color, religion, ancestry, national
origin, sex, sexual orientation ....”

The administratively revised ver-
sion clarifies the policy with a footnote
after the word “sex”: “The prohibition on
sex discrimination shall be interpreted to
include discrimination on the basis of gen-
der identity or expression, in a manner
consistent with governing law.”

At the end of the meeting,
Chairman Little invited the students to
“become voiced.” Ethan Fechter—Leggett
removed his gag, passed around informa-
tional handouts, and made a statement.
“We have been silenced by the commit-
tee’s failure to act,” he said. “Ten months
ago, the policy proposal was on the agen-
da, but there was no discussion. And today,
we are off the agenda entirely.”

Fechter—Leggett invited all of the
committee members to attend the
Translating Identity Conference on March
5. The conference provides basic informa-

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Mlnorlty

Case for UVM Gender Policy
T by Euan Bear

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tion on gender and its permutations to
attendees as well as legal and health infor-
mation and support for transgender and
transsexual individuals and their loved
ones and allies.

Committee Vice Chair Senator
Jim Leddy said he was “trying to under-
stand” the need for a policy change, while
offering himself as someone who is “well—
intentioned but ignorant” on the issue.
“Why is [gender identity] different from
‘sex’?” he.asked.

LGBTQAA Services staff mem-
ber Eli Clare, a self-identified transman,
responded from the audience. “The foot-
note is a good stepping stone and has an
important impact on me personally and

professionally,” he began.

Clare addressed the “political and

' cultural paradigm shift” wherein concepts

of sex and gender seem the same to non-
transgender people: male equals man,
female equals woman. “But for transpeo—
ple this relationship is very complicated.
Some of us are female and men, others are
male and women. For us these concepts ,
are connected but not synonymous.”

Little thanked the students for .
their dedication and courage in demon-
strating their concerns. He denied that any-
one had approached him to put the issue
on the meeting agenda. Leddy said that the
meeting had impressed him: “The message
about not wanting to be treated as a foot-
note was a very powerful statement.”

Dorothea Brauer, the director of
the LGBTQAA Services Center at UVM,
left at the end of the meeting frustrated
with the committee’s delaying tactics and
what she characterized as “gatekeeper
abuses of power.”

“Students are here for four
years,” she fumed. “I know students who
have graduated after spending hours and
hours working on this issue, sometimes to

the detriment of their academic careers.

It’s not fair to them for a committee to sit
on its hands for a year.

“This is the Diversity Committee!
It’s the committeeis job to prepare an issue
for the board, not to delay it from the
board,” she added. “When Tom Little says
no one has brought the [gender identity]
issue forward, it’s really that no one who
trumps his authority has brought it for-
ward. If that’s where your politics are, you
need not to be chairing a committee as
important to marginalized people as this
one.” V