With recent talks about affirmative action sweeping across the country, Karen DePauw is making sure sexual minorities are not being forgotten.
Yesterday afternoon, a crowd of about 20 people gathered in the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center to hear DePauw, the graduate dean at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, talk about the experience she and her partner Shelli Fowler had to face -- a situation many attributed to discrimination against sexual orientation.
In April 2002, DePauw was offered the position of graduate dean at Virginia Tech. As part of the employment package, Fowler -- who at the time was an associate professor of English and Comparative American Cultures at Washington State University --was hired. In June, Fowler's offer was revoked, officially because of budget constraints. However, no other personnel cuts were made.
Allegedly, the reason behind Fowler's revocation was an anonymous, anti-gay e-mail -- sent to many of the members of the university's Board of Visitors -- that urged the school not to hire the couple.
"It has put me in a pretty awkward position," DePauw said.
Since then, the incident has provoked a great number of protests, from both the campus community and many minority groups across the country.
"We have all kinds of protests -- people with duct tape over their mouths as a sign that they have been silenced," DePauw said. John Rocovich, head of the board has "got a lot of people upset right now."
Once she finished recounting her experience, DePauw stressed the importance of speaking out against discrimination.
She also proposed the formation of a general coalition, bringing together all those groups that oppose discrimination due to gender or color.
"Your silence will not protect you -- I believe that," DePauw said. "We need to have allies, and we need to be who we are."
When offered the chance to ask questions, students were eager to know what kind of contributions they could make, besides writing letters of protest.
"I would like to see a lot of energy put into what you are doing here," DePauw said, referring to the LGBT Center.
She also invited students to openly talk about cases involving discrimination and to fight homophobic jokes, "so that [this situation] never happens again."
Members of the audience were anxious to share their views on the matter.
"We must not become complacent," LGBT Center Director Robert Schoenberg said. He added that he could not imagine Penn ignoring its gender discrimination clause, but nonetheless, "there are many battles that still need to be fought."
DePauw supported these statements, saying that discrimination against sexual preference could hardly be limited to her experience at Virginia Tech.
"This is a bigger issue -- all of our rights are being threatened," DePauw said.
She concluded her talk by saying that, despite all the pressure, she and her partner had no intention to leave the university.
"I am not going to leave, and I am not going to sue," DePauw said. "We signed two contracts, and we would like the university to honor both contracts."
The presentation was well-received by the audience.
"I was really pleased. She really echoed the mission of our organization," said College senior Sara Fernandes-Taylor, who is also co-chairwoman of ALLIES -- a student organization that serves to educate the Penn community about the issues that face both the LGBT and straight communities.
ALLIES Secretary-Elect and College sophomore Joshua Wickline -- who first contacted DePauw and invited her to speak at Penn -- said that her experience "really hit me in the face."
"I wanted to know on a personal level what it felt like to go through all that," he said. "And I think it went really well."
