Mission

The President's Commission on LGBT Concerns (PCLGBTC) serves as an advisory body to the President of Emory University, and derives its au thority from the President. It is one of three Presidential Commissions funded through the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs, the other two being the President's Commission on the Status of Women and the President's Commission on Race and Ethnicity. The PCLGBTC meets monthly during the academic year and submits a report to the President at the end of each year.

Members of the President's Commission on LGBT Concerns are appointed by the president upon recommendation by the group itself, with a certain number of slots for faculty, staff, administrators, students, and alums. Students, alums, and faculty are appointed for one year, while staff members serve two-year terms; all terms are renewable. For a list of current members, see Members of the Commission, 2006-2007.

According to its by-laws, the President's Commission on LGBT Concerns has four main purposes: 

• To serve as a focus for matters of concern to LGBT persons across the University.
• To monitor the work begun by the previous LGB Committees [see History] and to advise the President on the implementation of their recommendations, including those concerning the University’s Equal Opportunity Policy, benefits for domestic partners, the campus Office of LGBT Life and LGBT studies. 
• To develop and support programs at Emory to reduce homophobia and heterosexism. 
• To conduct studies as needed to address these concerns. 

The incident to which the Wheel article refers involved two male students who were seen kissing one another in their residence hall and subsequently taunted and harassed by other residents. Assisted by staff in the Office of LGB Student Life, the two students filed a complaint under Emory’s Discriminatory Harassment Policy. However, the lgb community on campus was dissatisfied with Emory's administrative responses to the complaint, and on March 2, 1992, several hundred students and employees marched through campus, briefly occupied the Office of Residence Life and the Office of the President, and presented the president with a list of demands.

The task force appointed by Laney to assess the campus climate for lgb people became a more formal Committee on Lesbian/Gay/ Bisexual Concerns, and in a report issued March
27^th, 1992, this committee recommended to Laney seven measures the university should take to improve the climate for lgb people who work and study here. These measures included, among other things, that the university  include sexual orientation as a protected category in its Equal Opportunity Policy (EOP), that the Office of LGB Student Life be expanded and headed by a full-time director, and that full benefits be granted to the domestic partners of Emory students and employees. 

1992-1995: The President's Committee on LGB Concerns 

Under this committee’s guidance, the first of the original committee’s recommendations to be implemented was the expansion of the Office of LGB Student Life. A search for a full-time director began in the summer of 1992, and the name was changed to the Office of LGB Life to reflect that the office would address not only student concerns, but those of faculty and staff as well. Saralyn Chesnut was hired as Director of the office in October 1992, to assume her duties as of January, 1993. She joined the committee and worked with its other members to secure implementation of additional recommendations included in the report to President Laney.

The next of these recommendations to be implemented was the revision of Emory’s Equal Opportunity Policy (EOP) statement to include sexual orientation as a protected category. Members of the Committee on LGB Concerns researched and wrote a revised EOP, which was then revised again by Emory’s General Counsel, the late Joseph Crooks. Members of the committee also met with members of the Board of Trustees in order to raise this group’s awareness of lgb issues and the need for a revised EOP. In July 1993, the Board of Trustees approved the revised EOP statement written by Mr. Crooks; the revised statement took effect immediately and has been in force ever since. 

With the revised EOP as a basis for arguing that equal compensation packages, including benefits, should be offered both heterosexual and homosexual students and employees at Emory, the committee focussed next on securing domestic partners benefits. Saralyn Chesnut and Professor Pamela Hall researched and co-authored a proposal that the university offer benefits to both opposite-sex and same-sex partners of employees and students, equivalent to those offered to husbands or wives. In June, 1994, the proposal was submitted to Interim President Billy E. Frye. Chesnut and Hall subsequently discussed the proposal with groups including the Fringe Benefits Sub-Committee of the University Senate, the Employee Council, Deans and Directors of the University, and the Faculty Council. 

In the fall of 1994, both the Faculty Council and the Fringe Benefits Sub-Committee of the University Senate voted to approve the proposal by the Committee on LGB Concerns regarding domestic partners benefits. In November 1994, the University Senate voted to "recommend in principle" the provision of benefits to same-sex domestic partners of employees. The group did not, however, recommend the provision of benefits to opposite-sex partners, arguing that opposite-sex partners have the option of legal marriage. Finally, in July, 1995, the executive committee of the Board of Trustees voted to approve a policy statement that authorized "the president to establish, through the Human Resources Division, procedures that would allow properly certified unmarried domestic partners of the same sex to receive all University benefits now accruing to married domestic partners" (Emory Report, 7/31/95). In January, 1996, domestic partners benefits went into effect at Emory. 

Also during the years 1992-1995, the committee, in support of additional recommendations made by the original group, 

• voted to initiate a campus-wide Safe Space program, to be implemented by the Office of LGB Life; 
• worked to identify ways to develop faculty expertise and course offerings in lesbian/gay studies; 
• continued to monitor implementation of the original committee’s recommendations, for example by urging the hiring of additional staff for the Office of LGB Life (the original recommendation was that two full-time professionals staff the office); and 
• issued reports to the president on the progress the university was making, in its view, toward improving the campus climate for lgb people who work and study at Emory. 

1995-1999: The Committee Becomes a Commission and Adds "Transgender" 

The commission adopted by-laws in March, 1995, and beginning in the 1995-96 academic year, was granted an operating budget under the general budget of the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs. With a budget, the group decided to take over from the Office of LGB Life responsibility for the annual Pride Banquet, held on or near March 2 each year to commemorate the student demonstration that led to the formation of a President’s Committee on LGB Concerns. To promote the development of a lesbian/gay studies program, the group voted to sponsor prizes for outstanding undergraduate and graduate work in lesbian / gay studies, to be awarded at the Pride Banquet each year. 

By 1996, most of the recommendations of the original Committee on LGB Concerns had been implemented, and the President’s Commission focussed on issues related to the enforcement and purview of these recommendations. From 1996-spring 1999, major concerns of the Commission included: 

• whether or not Emory is publishing a correct and current version of the EOP in all of its publications;
• the need for a campus climate survey of some sort to provide baseline data on what the current climate is for lgbt students and employees; 
• whether Emory can and will require vendors and contractors with the university to comply with our EOP; and 
• the need for a gay center, on the model of the Women’s Center, where lgbt students and others can congregate and hold meetings and events. 

Another notable event in the life of the commission occurred in Fall Semester 1998, when the President’s Commission on LGB Concerns became the President’s Commission on LGBT Concerns, with the approval of President Chace. At the same time, the Office of LGB Life became the Office of LBGT Life. Before proposing the change, the commission discussed whether any policy changes would be necessary in order to insure that transgender individuals have the same rights and protections that lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals have at Emory. However, Dr. Robert Ethridge, Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs and an Ex-Officio member of this commission, assured the group that transgender people are protected by the EOP statement’s protection against discrimination on the basis of gender.

**Additional details on the commission's activities and goals during the 1996-97 and 1997-98 academic years may be found in the reports to the president dated October 1997 and August 1998, available upon request to the co-chairs.