Jim Andris, Facebook

Initiative to Include Homosexuals into the SIUE Affirmative Action Plan (1974)

The 1974 efforts of Students for Gay Liberation (SGL) were to have a synergistic influence on awareness of the lack of homosexual rights on the campus at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIU-E). In particular, and though many were eventually working behind the scenes to help him, one young assistant professor, James Andris, launched a relentless campaign to raise awareness of the need for protections of gay rights in the affirmative action plan then being developed. He was the sole "out" professor to do this. Privately, he had made enough social connections to know that there were at least 55 gay faculty members on campus. In fact, they made up the greater majority in some departments.

Andris and his then domestic partner, David Jonathon Miller, had taken Larry Whitsell, President of SGL, into their home as a student roomer. Andris had many conversations about gay rights with Larry and his student colleagues as they planned Gay Awareness Week and afterwards. Andris met and talked to national figures Franklin Kameny and Barbara Gittings about the problems faced on his campus while those two were speaking and guiding workshops at SIUE. It would not be inaccurate to say that the students raised the professor's consciousness sufficiently to awaken him to the need for action.

Gay liberation was part of the intellectual atmosphere of the times. Hundreds of lesbian and gay student organizations and a significant number of lesbian and gay faculty organization had emerged across the unversities of the Western World. As Andris interacted professionally with his collegues, he occasionally discussed these matters. He was patient to point out that there were real and serious problems of discrimination against homosexuals on our campus. He quoted the statistic that one tenth of the students and faculty were gay. He talked about how very hard it had been for him to be open about his sexual orientation. He spoke of the need to have affirmative action educational seminars for chairpersons, student advisors and medical personnel on ways to be supportive to those with homosexual orientation.

Having come out to several of his colleagues in 1972 at the age 34, Andris was well-acquainted with very negative and wide-spread attitudes toward homosexuality on campus. After Andris was hired in 1970, he found out through conversation with faculty members that another male candidate for the position for which Andris was hired was taken out of consideration because someone thought that he (the other candidate) was too effeminate. In his field of education, there was much concern professionally about how a gay professor might "fit in" in a school environment. Two of the Foundations faculty had told him that they could never support him for Chair because of his open sexual orientation. One spoke of "the possible embarrassment to the department." The other asserted with a deep blush and perspiration-laden upper lip that these "sexual matters needed to be kept private." Andris continued to pursue this matter vigorously. He was gaining a reputation on campus as a gay rights activist.

On Feb. 6, 1974, John S. Rendleman, the colorful and effective Chancellor of SIU-E, had issued an important memo to the University community with subject, Affirmative Action Policies. Rendleman reminded the community of the charge given the Affirmative Action Task Force in December, 1973 to develop a written Affirmative Action Plan, of the University's standing commitment to assisting minorities, and that the commitment now includes "matters involving prejudices founded in sexual considerations as well as those involving matters of race, religion, color, or national origin." It was a detailed memo that announced the appointment of important people, that signaled that a major effort was underway, and that left no doubt that the University intended to root out discriminatory practices in hiring, firing and in its daily business. It certainly was welcomed by women and minorities on campus.

There was a lot of work to do, and people worked hard and sincerely on this process. Institutional data had to be collected and analyzed. Procedures and forms for recruiting minorities and women had to be developed and put in place, and people had to be trained and encouraged to use them. Effective grievance procedures had to be improved and disseminated. The campus community, administrators, faculty and students had to be educated and sensitized to, for some, a new range of problems, issues, and expected changes in behavior. Countless hours of meeting times were spent and reams of paper printed and disseminated.

If no one had also raised the question of where gay rights was in all of this, still, a lot of good needed to be done and was eventually done. But someone did raise that question tirelessly, consistently, and in the end, with some degree of effectiveness. That person was James F. Andris, and this story is necessarily focused through his eyes, because those were the eyes that saw the enormous problem and set out with strong odds against him on a solitary quest to a distant goal.

For his own part in this, Andris had read the Feb. 6 memo from Rendleman carefully, and had been trying to get a clarification as to whether the phrase "sexual considerations" included a concern for gay rights. Chancellor Rendleman had made his staff member, John Paul Davis, Chairman of the Affirmative Action Task Force. Davis' staff title was General Legal Counsel. On May 3, Andris sent a memo to Davis requesting a clarification of how the Affirmative Action program will affect gay rights. Andris concluded the memo with

"… if the gay minority is not already included within the perview of the Affirmative Action program, it should be so included, and clearly. In other words, prejudice against and discrimination toward a person for preference of sexual partner or role is just as morally wrong as is prejudice against and discrimination against women and other minorities.

By early June, Andris was able to arrange a meeting with Davis to discuss this issue. Also present were two other members of the Chancellor's office. Davis, an attorney, took a legal view of the situation: the matter was still being litigated, and he thought eventually gay rights would become a protected category. He also informed Andris that the President's Office would not clarify the phrase "sexual considerations" unless there was support from the Faculty Welfare Council of the University Senate. When a memo from Davis confirming the occurrence of the meeting arrived on August 9, it included the following statement: " … enlightened attitudes of the University can be trusted to ameliorate the effects of discrimination against such persons [homosexuals], where such discrimination is invidious and not work-related."

On June 21 Andris sent a detailed memo to Dickie Spurgeon, Chair of the Faculty Welfare Council. It is a dense and carefully argued memo the purpose of which

is to call to the attention of the Faculty Welfare Council the fact that gay rights are not currently adequately assured by the Affirmative Action program at SIUE, and to propose that the Faculty Welfare Council take the position that gay rights are protected by Affirmative Action.

In the memo, Andris sharpens the identified affirmative action category: "by "gay" I mean either a preference for a sexual partner of the same sex or a preference for a sex-related role usually adopted by a member of the opposite sex."

Incidentally, in July, another issue came to a head. Eight discrimination complaints against SIUE had been filed with the Illinois Fair Employment Practices Commission and nine complaints were before the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Chancellor, concerned that the University competently handle these cases from the standpoint of maintaining the tradition of University self-governance, had suspended normal-grievance procedures and instituted a different set of Interim Procedures, in the interest, he thought, of resolving these matters fairly but promptly and most of all internally. Several people were not happy with this change, mainly because they had concerns about how fair an internal examination of their grievances would be. But the work on the Affirmative Action plan continued, dispite this unsettling situation. Throughout the summer and early fall of 1974 many members of the University community continued to work diligently on completing the Administrative component of the Affirmative Action Plan.

On October 17, Davis, the Chair of the Affirmative Action Task Force sent a memo to all Faculty and Staff announcing the availability of four copies of the Administrative Article component of the Affirmative Action Plan (one each in Academic Affairs, Business Afairs, Office of the President, and Civil Service) and invited comments from concerned members of the University community. Andris was one of the faculty who went over the document with a fine-toothed comb. He found no mention of the issue of protecting gay rights in the document, despite the fact that he had received backing from the Welfare Council and the Faculty Senate. He responded on October 28 with a three-page memo arguing that the University had a moral responsibility to deal with this issue in its complexity and proposing two pages of detailed amendments to the document.

The next day the Chair of the Welfare Council sent the Senate President five resolutions. Four had to do with implementing the Affirmative Action Plan, and the fifth was a resolution stating that "the University's commitment to Affirmative Action with respect to prejudice and discrimination founded in sexual considerations [a phrase used by the Chancellor initially that his office had clarified as NOT including gay rights] extends to protection for members of the University Community because of either a preference for a sexual partner of the same sex or a preference for a sex-related role usually adopted by a person of the opposite sex."

When Andris learned that he had been appointed to one of the two existing permanent Senate Welfare Council subcommittees, the Equal Employment Opportunities Committee (the other being the Status of Women subcommittee), he immediately (November 18) wrote a one page letter to President Rendleman summarizing the progression of the petition for inclusion of gay rights protections into the Affirmative Action Plan, reviewing the facts that made this a moral imperative, presenting cases where presidents of other Universities had added versions of such protections to their Affirmative Action plans, and reminding the President that how this matter turns out "is really up to you."

On November 27, 1974, the Affirmative Action Task Force, chaired by John Paul Davis, met. During that meeting it was clarified that even though many persons had worked on and with the Task Force, only the six appointed by the President were voting members. Several small but significant changes were made. Concerning the five resolutions of the University Senate, the first four would be incorporated. Concerning the resolution regarding gay rights, there would be a meeting on December 4, and Andris would be permitted to make a presentation to the Task Force concerning that topic.

At the December 4 meeting of the AA Task Force, Davis introduced Andris to the task force, and Andris distributed and read to the assembled a 1500 word article entitled "Why Gay Rights Must Be Guaranteed by the SIUE Affirmative Action Program." In the handout, Andris asked not only for the nondiscrimination policy be included in the AA plan, but also

"efforts must be undertaken to remove the discrimination which exists. Deans and Chairmen must become sensitized to the issue. Some sort of information on the scope of the problem must be gained. Despite the fact that it would be psychologidally and socially more comfortable, a legitimate place must be found within Affirmative Action for clearing the air about this matter. I am convinced it requires a clearly specified representative for gay rights. Otherwise, the topic will simply be swept under the rug and not discussed."

In the end, the Task Force approved all of the University Senate's proposals except for the one concerning gay rights. The Task Force academic affairs representative actually moved to approve the nondiscrimination clause, but the motion did not pass because (according to the minutes) there was consensus that the Task Force is not a policy-making body.

That same day that the AA Task Force failed to recommend the gay rights provision be included in the Affirmative Action plan, Andris fired off a memo to President Rendleman stating that the issue was "clearly at your door." The sternness of his two paragraph memo was enough to get a young professor in deep trouble. Andris not only demanded a meeting with the President, but also stated his intention not only to picket the University, but also enlist the support of still more organizations and wage a public campaign in the media. President Rendleman's terse but humorous memo in response was to identify Andris' memo as threatening and to offer the use of the University graphics shop to Andris for the preparation of any picket signs. Andris sent one more memo to President Rendleman in response, stating his clear intent to explore only legal avenues of protest and documenting his extensive efforts to get a hearing with the President.

In mid-December a final list of affirmative action coordinators and officers was circulated by Academic Affairs, and President Rendleman called for the Senate to offer a public hearing on the plan with the intention to put it in place by March 3, 1975.

This story is continued in Initiative to Include Homosexuals into the SIUE Affirmative Action Plan (1975).