Position unfilled

After the departure of program coordinator for the Office of Excellence and Multicultural Student Services Fatima Pervaiz, her position has remained unfilled, raising concerns from members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and ally/asexual community.

Pervaiz previously worked in the Office of Excellence and Multicultural Student Services and several of her duties related closely to the LGBTQA community. Because of this, the LGBTQA advisory board referred to her as the Director of LGBTQA Initiatives.

Pervaiz declined comment.

“…a lot that she did was protecting them [LGBTQA students]. She was an advocate for them, a very strong advocate for Spectrum…she was a voice for them when they needed something from the administration, she would put her neck out a number of times for the students, and now they’re missing that,” said Isabel Escobar, chair of the LGBTQA advisory board.

After Pervaiz took a position elsewhere this past summer, her position as program coordinator remained unfilled. Several members of the LGBTQA advisory board had concerns about how this would affect the LGBTQA community.

Melissa Brodsky, student member of the LGBTQA advisory board, said she worried about how the environment on campus would change, and how the university’s positive rating for LGBTQA student treatment would change.

“Every year, the [Human Rights Campaign does] an equality index where they rate college campuses based on how friendly they are to the LGBTQA community. The reason we’ve rated so highly is because we had Fatima, because we had someone in this position who specifically handled the gay community on campus,” Brodsky said.

Sherry Tripepi, a member of the LGBTQA advisory board, said she believes it is important for the position to be filled.

“LGBTQ students need a safe contact, support, and advocate on our campus who understands the struggles and discrimination often faced by LGBTQ students,” Tripepi said. “I believe this to be true based on the Univeristy of Toledo 2012 Student Climate Survey in which it is clear there is a differentiation of treatment between LGQ students and straight students.”

In 2012, the survey found that 43 percent of gay students, 33.3 percent of lesbian students and 46.2 percent of queer students experienced discrimination. In comparison, only 0.9 percent of straight students reported having experienced discrimination.

Other members of the board shared concerns that LGBTQA students on campus would feel negatively affected.

Cyndee Gruden, a member of the LBGTQA advisory board, said, “My main concern is just student safety and student comfort, and the impression that this leaves to LGBT and questioning students who are at the university or may be coming to the university, that we don’t think that’s important, that we don’t value their individuality, that we can just group them with anybody else, and anybody can handle them.”

Safe Space training was one of the advisory board’s most-discussed issues.

Sharon Barnes, interim chair of the women and gender studies department and member of the LGBTQA advisory board, explained that Safe Space training is a voluntary training hosted for faculty, staff and students who want to be able to create ground-level knowledge on supporting LGBTQA students, including using appropriate language and recognizing homophobic behavior.

Pervaiz led this training previously.

Barnes said Pervaiz delivered training to 831 students, faculty and staff between March 2011 and February 2014.

This year, the training is conducted by Jeff Whit, the associate dean of students.

The LGBTQA advisory board and Spectrum composed a memo explaining their concerns and sent it to Interim President Nagi Naganathan on July 31, 2014.

According to the memo, “The LGBTQ student organization, Spectrum, stated that the Director of the LGBTQ Initiatives Office serves as an advocate, a defender, and most importantly an ally. These activities are crucial to maintaining a healthy and welcoming environment for all students.” It ended by requesting that Naganathan approve of the position and prevent any future changes to the scope of the position.

The correspondence between Naganathan and the board resulted in a meeting with Escobar, Naganathan and Senior Vice President for Student Affairs Kaye Patten Wallace.

At the meeting, five individuals from the OEMSS were identified as taking on the duties previously held by Pervaiz.

“We wrote a memo, and we sent a memo, we met, and at that meeting, Dr. Kaye Patten Wallace said that they had five people at the office that were handling all issues related with all of the individual, diverse groups, that these people were able to handle all different communities within them,” Escobar said.

After the meeting, the administration and the advisory board stayed in contact, which led to a second memo sent from the LGBTQA advisory board and Spectrum to Patten Wallace and Naganathan on Oct. 10. The memo expressed that they felt the administration’s response to the meeting had not been adequate.

“[Patten Wallace] promised that she would meet with Spectrum, and that these five people, between all of them, would attend all Spectrum meetings, and officers’ meetings…” Escobar said. “To date, one of the people from the office, only one went to one Spectrum meeting … we really have not seen the response that we were promised at that meeting.”

The second memo said the board felt their opinions had been dismissed despite attempts to continue dialogue on the issue, and that administration had not yet put in the required effort to solve the issue.

“We were deeply disappointed with your assertion that you weren’t interested in meeting with us to hear our concerns about your imposition of the Safe Space training responsibilities on the EXCEL/OEMSS staff,” the memo said, “This disrespectful behavior is the very antithesis of shared governance and transparency.”

The memo went on to say that the advisory board members are requesting that administration shift the responsibilities of Safe Place training from OEMSS to the Office of Equity and Diversity. OEMSS staff members are identified in the memo as having the best of intentions, but not yet prepared to offer and host the training “by their own professional assessment.”

The director of OEMSS, David Young, commented that he would let the statements made by Patten Wallace and Tamika Mitchell, dean of students, stand as representative of the viewpoint of the office.

Patten Wallace said the core cause of the disagreement is one of philosophy; while the board has asserted that it would be better for a single person to be in charge of the LGBTQA initiatives, administration believes it would be best for several people to share the responsibilities in order to facilitate their handling in the most efficient way possible.

“…We realized that part of the diversity, part of the experience of education for students is to be able to work and appreciate students and staff of diverse backgrounds, and so we want to demonstrate that in the way we serve students,” said Patten Wallace, “so we intentionally decided not to have isolated staff or isolated populations, so philosophically, we believe that’s the best way to educate students, and help them appreciate and value the differences and diversity we offer.”

Jon Strunk, assistant vice president of university communications, agreed with Patten Wallace.

“Philosophically, you don’t want a single person doing one single thing,” he said, “… you want the entirety of the staff to be well-educated on LGBTQA Initiatives.”

Patten Wallace said that this is the direction the university has been moving in for some time now.

Mitchell said there were no duties that were entirely exclusive to Pervaiz, and that the duties were split up even before she left.

“The programs and the services are still going…” Mitchell said. “Fatima wasn’t the only person that completed those tasks, she worked along with the entire staff of the Office of Excellence and Multicultural Student Services, so they all worked together…Fatima, she was a great piece of that, but when she left, those services, they continued.”

The board is meeting again on Nov. 10 with Patten Wallace and Larry Burns, the vice president for external affairs.

“We’re not looking for a fight, by no means,” Escobar said. “We do not want to fight, we want to work closely with the administration, with Dr. Patten Wallace, we want to work closely with everyone, because we want a better community at the university.”