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Deal providing domestic partner benefits, raise of 3 percent voted down 63 percent to 37 percent
By Carol Biliczky
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Thursday, May 01, 2008
The Kent State University faculty union has voted down a one-year contract extension that would have included domestic partner benefits.
The union voted 63 percent to 37 percent against the proposal, which also would have included a 3 percent raise and maintenance of health-care costs and benefits at current levels.
Lee Fox, president of the KSU chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said many faculty wanted a higher salary increase. She declined to say how much.
''At this point we aren't going to talk about that,'' said Fox, an associate professor of psychology at KSU's Stark County campus.
Eric Mintz, an assistant professor of biological sciences who handles the union's statistics, said the average full professor at KSU is in seventh place statewide; associate professors, eighth; and assistant professors, seventh, when compared with their peers at the nine other tax-supported universities in Ohio that award doctorates.
''It's a dramatic change from seven years ago, when we were second in full professors, second in associate professors and third in assistant professors,'' Mintz said.
Fox said the AAUP asked the administration to provide the domestic partner benefits separate from the contract extension, but the administration declined.
Associate provost Gayle Ormiston declined to comment.
KSU faculty have sought domestic partner benefits for at least 10 years. Several other state-supported universities in Ohio — among them, Youngstown State — provide them.
The Kent State proposal would have covered domestic partners in both same-sex and heterosexual relationships who could prove their relationship by joint bank accounts and other verifiable means.
The benefits would have included medical, dental, life and personal accident insurance and tuition remission.
The AAUP leadership recommended that its members vote ''no'' on the extension because of the salary issue. That was upsetting to Molly Merryman, an associate professor of justice studies at the Trumbull County campus.
She resigned as the AAUP action chair when the executive committee declined to allow her to present a minority viewpoint on the domestic partners benefits to the membership.
''With a council recommendation and very little information about both points of view, it dictates that the vote would go the way it did,'' said Merryman, who represents the KSU LGBT Allies and Friends Committee.
Jay Sloan, an assistant professor of English at the Kent State-Stark campus, said the recommendation silenced the voices of sexual minorities.
In the past, he said by e-mail, the union has bargained away domestic partner benefits and seemed poised to do so again.
Now the administration and AAUP will begin talks for a new contract to replace the three-year one that expires in August. These talks are for faculty in tenure-track positions, which offer virtually lifetime appointments.
Nontenure-track faculty have been offered the same extension, which they will vote on later this month.
Carol Biliczky can be reached at 330-996-3729 or cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com.
The Kent State University faculty union has voted down a one-year contract extension that would have included domestic partner benefits.
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