DP exemptions down, no change in policy

No changes are currently expected in the College's current Domestic Partnership (DP) policy, after the number of applications fell this year. A Student Life Committee (SLC) subcommittee was recently formed to look into DP.

Perceived abuses in the College's current student Domestic Partnership (DP) policy compelled the Housing and Dining Committee to examine the policy last year in an attempt to reduce the number of abuses.

Last spring, Manager of Housing and Dining Assignments Sandra Hougland announced that the College loses about $300,000 to students who have off-board and off-campus housing priveleges due to DP exemption. Most of the money is lost through the off-board priveleges granted.

Hougland said people have become more aware of what the DP policy is, and that's why fewer students are applying for it.

But after the number of people to apply for DP exemption dropped from 44 applicants last year to 29 applicants this year, members of the Housing and Dining Committee decided not to change the policy, but to continue to see if, with continued education, the number of applicants would drop further.

"That's an improvement," Hougland said. "But it's still pretty high." "Education worked amazingly well," said junior Chapin Beninghoff, SLC co-chair. "It's simply that heterosexuals abusing the policy didn't understand that they were belittling the concept of DP."

The high number of people on DP is not only a budgetary issue, but an example of disrespect for the the lesbian, gay and bisexual community, people said.

The DP policy currently allows students to live off campus with roommates of the same gender. The spirit of the policy allows students to enter into marriage-like relationships with people of the same gender, but many heterosexual students use it as a means to obtain off-campus and off-board living status.

The DP policy also stipulates that domestic partners be 18-years-old and have a strong emotional attachment to each other that is similar to a marriage committment.

Compared to the x students on DP, there are only seven married students - a number Hougland said is higher than usual.

Hougland said that she, Associate Dean of Residential Life Deb McNish and sophomore Student Senator Nicole Johnston formed an SLC subcommittee a couple weeks ago to discuss DP. The three have decided to invite LGB students and members of the Lesbian, Gay Men and Bisexual Concerns Committee (LGBCC) to join the subcommittee.

"We're going to talk about how to expand the group and then define what [the group will do]," Hougland said.

Johnston said that they want to open the committee up to people who are affected by DP. She said the LGBCC has been doing research on DP and should be involved with the subcommittee.

Last spring, two different proposals were authored by Sandra Hougland, manager of housing and dining assignments, and concerned students. Under Hougland's proposal, which was voted down by the Student Life Committee (SLC) last May, students would have had to require more documentation of their relationship together. Students later drafted their own proposal. But, neither proposal was ever implemented.

Hougland and Beninghoff said that with any policy there will always be abuse. "There will always be jerks," Benignhoff said.

But, he added, "It is always best to solve problems through education."