Email note to:
Rhynette Hurd, Chair, UT Board of Trustees Academic Affairs 
and Student life Committee
Andrea Loughry, Vice-Chair, UT Board of Trustees

Re: UT Non-Discrimination Policy

Date: March 22, 2007

From: Louis Gross, UTK Faculty Sewnate President
cc: John Schommer (UTM Senate President), George Cook (UT Memphis 
Senate President), Gavin Townsend (UTC Senate President), Larry Pfeffer 
(UT Board of Trustees), Deseriee Kennedy (UT Board of Trusetees), 
Chancellor Loren Crabtree, Vice President Robert Levy, President John Petersen 


Rhynette and Andrea,
      I am attaching a resolution passed today by a UTK Commission that
reinforces the arguments and expressions of concern made by the UTK 
Faculty Senate (as well as the Graduate Student Senate and the Student
Government Association) regarding the need for modification of the 
UT Non-Discrimination Policy to include sexual orientation. This issue 
has been mentioned briefly at the AA&SL Committee, it has been 
the subject of a formal UTK Faculty Senate Resolution (in 2003 and 
reinforced many times with the UTK administration by various Senate 
officers -  http://web.utk.edu/~senate/SexualOrientation.html ), and
this is a formal request to you in your roles on the Board of 
Trustees Executive Committee to bring this matter to their attention
and urge the simple inclusion of two words "sexual orientation" in the 
formal UT policy on non-discrimination.
     The attached resolution is based on an outstanding effort of the 
Commission to obtain the facts regarding these policies at our peer 
institutions. The fact that, of the 62 AAU Universities, 61 include
sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies, clearly 
places UT as an outlier and behind-the-times in this regard. Both 
President Petersen and Chancellor Crabtree have reiterated numerous
times that a goal is AAU status for UTK. Of the AAU and our other
peer group institutions, only Texas A&M and Alabama do not include
sexual orientation in their policies. A fully documented set of 
information on this issue is on the Commission web site at
http://lgbt.utk.edu/ndp.html 
     Please feel free to discuss this matter with me. I am ccing the
other UT Faculty Senate Presidents as they may be interested in 
the data collected and may have similar resolutions from their 
campuses.  
     Thank you for all you do to enhance education in the State 
and build a more beneficial fUTure for all Tennesseans. 
     Cheers,
          Lou

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Response from Rhynette Hurd of March 23, 2007:
(cc Andrea Loughry, Robert Levy)

Lou,

Thanks so much for your email.  Please note that all proposed changes to
policy should come to the Board through the administration.  

I appreciate all efforts on the part of the Faculty Senate and
Commission to help us meet our goal of providing quality education to
Tennesseans.

Rhynette