Nominations for new members will be made at the LGBT commission April meeting, but March will be the most important month for recruitment, as new members are sought and current members re-sign.

Slots up for election include two faculty, three staff, two administrator, two alumni and four student positions. Student positions are for one year, and faculty/staff positions are for two years. All are renewable.

One open position is that of chair Jennifer Gossett, who left the University earlier this month. She did, however, return to campus to lead the commission’s most recent meeting, Feb. 20 in the Administration Building.

Gossett’s departure means the commission has neither a chair nor a chair-elect (a position that has been vacant all year). Gossett expressed her hope that a returning member would fill either the chair or chair-elect position in 2001-02, and that a new person would take the other slot.

Gossett said the chair’s two main responsibilities are leading meetings and soliciting agenda items.

The chair also sits on committees and is involved in extracurricular efforts (she cited her work with the campus climate survey; another member noted she took on the additional role of commission secretary when that office was vacant earlier in her term). But Gossett stressed the chair has a lot of leeway in determining her or his workload.

Commission members will be getting the word out about membership in the coming weeks, and they hope to post a downloadable application on the web. Interested faculty, staff and students are encouraged to contact commission membership committee representatives Luis Cosme (lcosme@emory.edu) and Ike Parker (IkeP50@aol.com).

In other news, Gossett said all three President’s Commissions are working together to come up with questions for a Emory-only survey that will replace the Campus Climate Diversity Survey originally scheduled for distribution in late 2000.

The commissions hope to come up with a total of 20 or 30 questions. Gossett said they will be submitted to Susan Frost, vice provost for institutional planning and research, who will compile the final survey. It isn’t expected to be distributed until fall.

Gossett asked that a committee be formed to work with the other commissions in this effort. Cosme and staff representative Erin Mooney volunteered.

In the absence of a chair, ex-officio representative Saralyn Chesnut volunteered to run LGBT’s next meeting, which will be held in the dean’s dining room at Oxford College, March 20. Faculty representative Amy Lang offered to run the commission meetings in April and May.