Vice President for Student Affairs Juan Gonzalez announced the creation of a new Special Assistant to the Vice President to review the services provided by the University for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
“Regardless of sexual orientation, I want to make certain we are fostering the intellectual, personal, moral, spiritual and emotional development of all our students,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez outlined the role of the new administrator in a letter to student publications. “The new staff member will be expected to advise Student Affairs and assist the University on how to best support and further dialogue around the topic of sexual identity for all students within the context of Georgetown’s Catholic, Jesuit identity,” Gonzalez said in the letter.
Gonzalez emphasized the difference between the new position and a staff member for the proposed resource center.
“I wasn’t going to have an entity, either staff or center, that could fall into the potential advocacy role. I thought that fine line would be crossed if the institution were to support that type of structure,” Gonzalez said.
The creation of the position comes after months of dialogue between Gonzalez and the resource center supporters, as well as recent meetings with D.C. City Council Member David Catania (SFS ‘90).
“The resource center proponents specifically asked if I would consider the hiring of a staff member. My promise to them was that I would consider the request, that I would look at it as honestly and as hard as I could, so I did,” Gonzalez said.
The idea for an LGBT administrator was first proposed in the Ad Hoc Committee report, written in August 2001 by a group assembled by Gonzalez to address LGBT concerns on campus.
“A point person [should] be hired to work with LGBTQ students in a half-time position (initially),” recommends the report by the committee.
The report also states that the administrator should be familiar with both Catholic and Jesuit teachings and the Church’s views on sexuality issues.
Although Gonzalez stated that he could not support a resource center that could possibly advocate practices that contradict church teachings, he said that he feels that the new administrative position will not compromise Catholic identity.
Resource center supporters were surprised by the creation of the new administrative position.
“We are thrilled. We had discussed this option before and it didn’t seem to be any more likely to happen than the resource center. It is encouraging to see that Gonzalez and the administration in general are committed to making it work,” resource center supporter Anthony House (CAS ‘02) said.
Council member Catania, who was present during the final meetings between resource center organizers and Gonzalez, said that he was also pleased with the decision.
“I am very satisfied with the compromise that has been reached … It was gratifying to play a role in bringing students and the administration together, but ultimately the decision was Dr. Gonzalez’, and he should be credited with it,” Catania said.
GU Pride Co-President and Voice staff member Joe McFadden (CAS ’ 02) said the decision has changed resource center supporters’ plans for the future.
“We are taking a step back for now. We are going to put on hold other activities we had planned for the resource center. We want to spend time on getting the right person in the position,” McFadden said.
