It would be an interesting world wherein proof of an interoffice affair resulted in loss of health benefits.

When the city of Los Angeles enacted domestic partnership benefits, we were adamant about allowing it for same sex registered domestic partners, by way of making the point that family structures are not one size fits all, not just that one other size now fit. Simplified things.

The Ohio State University offers same-sex partner health benefits. I believe that is a winning argument anywhere in Ohio.

Maybe this affidavit can serve as a model.

http://hr.osu.edu/Forms/Ben/ssdpaffidavit.pdf

Are you unionized? The college I know best in your state went for it for staff but not faculty (separate unions) AFAIC. I think the AAUP had some position papers I saw back when this was being discussed locally, but I'm not easily finding them on their site.

One thing to consider is whether the school will reimburse the tax hit people who insure their domestic partners take thanks to DOMA, because people need to know about that. Um. I don't think I have any actual useful input.

Apparently Cbus State is taking this up (apologies if you're not who I assume you are and this is your school and I'm outing you) and I know when OSU and others were at the forefront in the early part of the decade, there was litigation and obviously the policies were upheld.

I don't think you can get around the fact that it will increase costs a bit. It probably depends mostly on the social/political views of the committee, right? If they believe generally in equality (not necessarily gay marriage), they can probably come around to saying "we need to do this despite the expense, and the expense is minor."

Also perhaps it could be justified as helping attract good faculty - you could name some universities you compete with for talent which do offer these benefits.

CA's school, which is one of the small liberal arts colleges that are thick upon the ground in Ohio, offers same-sex benefits. They're always pretty broke, but also informed by the progressive values that inform many of OH's SLACs, so they make it work. I know for certain that his school *only* offers domestic partnership benefits to same-sex couples.

To the cost argument, you should be prepared to make the point that there are costs to not extending the benefits. You will lose some of the best applicants to colleges that offer benefits. (Maybe find out which "peer" institutions offer them.) There are also costs to same-sex partnered employees if they don't get benefits, and arguably things like financial and psychological stress on the part of these employees can be bad for the institution as a whole. These costs are hard to quantify, but it's useful to have a counterpoint to the "it will be too expensive" argument.

I think Bave gets it exactly right. Find some "peer institutions" that offer those benefits, see if you can find something like "the top 20 schools in our category all offer these benefits, so if we aspire to moving up we have to do so as well."

Along those same lines, if by not offering the benefits you discourage gay partnered applicants in favor of straight married applicants, you haven't actually made a profit -- you're still offering benefits to the same number of partners/spouses. The only world where it's cheaper to not offer the benefits is the one in which enough gay, partnered employees who would work for you if you offered benefits will still work for you even without them. In practice, you might save money not offering them, but you can't count on it.

Brainstorming based on policies from where I've worked:
a) being able to offer s-s partner benefits makes your school attractive to s-s couples, and might allow you to punch above your weight when hiring.
b) if you want it to be available to all domestic partners, you can do things like require proof of shared residence & co-mingled finances. Better than swearing monogamy.
c) it would be good to be able to estimate how much it will in fact cost, because otherwise we end up in ticking-time-bomb fantasy land pretty quick, where the Controller will assume that every single faculty member will immediate find a partner with end stage cancer and sign them up. So I'd see what you can find out about colleges who have done this, and how many people took advantage of it, and what the cost was. Odds are pretty good that you're not talking about a lot of people.

Oh, yeah, and "peer institutions" are helpful bludgeons here. Better if you know someone there and can get them to write you a letter.

It's funny, I can see the intent of 'swearing monogamy', even though that's clearly not the right way to go about it -- that you want to formally exclude short-term relationships and restrict it to relationships equivalent to marriage. For a jurisdiction where marriage or legal domestic partnership isn't available, I wonder if requiring a statement that "we consider our relationship equivalent to marriage" or something along the same lines would serve the same purpose. (Obviously, not meaningfully binding, but also obviously people can get married and divorced in a couple of months, so this is all kind of on the honor system anyway.)

If AL's school is a private SLAC, I can put him/her in touch with CA. (Or even if it's not a SLAC, if it's helpful.) They've had the benefits for a long time though, so CA wouldn't know anything about the implementation.

It's interesting that so much of the discussion is about convincing them this will be good for recruiting, etc. Is there really no chance that a simple "look, we have an obvious ethical obligation to do this" would convince people?

I guess I don't have enough experience with dealing with college administrators, but I feel like academia is a generally liberal enough environment that people should get this.

I could see effectively framing it as (a) it's obviously the right thing to do, so we should, and (b) for all the reasons discussed earlier in the thread, we can afford to. Lead with the ethics, but then hammer on the prestige/recruiting/not-that-expensiveness of it.

16 is reasonable.

Several years ago I had a dinner with a few other physicists and one of them was defending the idea of torturing terror suspects for information. We had a conversation where we all tried to meet him on his terms, talking about how the information is often unreliable, and so on, and he argued back on all of this. Then after a while someone said "there's a better argument: torture is just wrong". And that seemed to shame the torture advocate, and he backed down.

So maybe it's worth keeping in mind that really blunt ethical statements sometimes get to people.

17: I agree with everything that you've said, with one caveat. My own experience suggests that when policy discussions are framed in explicitly moral terms, the debate quickly ossifies. The side that believes it holds the moral position won't give an inch, because giving an inch would mean giving in to immorality. And the side that's being accused, even implicitly, of being immoral digs in and hates the accusers forever.

Also, and again this is based only on my own experience, future debates tend to play out along those same lines: with each side working impossibly hard to cast every issue as a moral absolute and trying to seize the high ground. "You want to hold one of our three required office hours online? You've turned your back on pedagogy and must hate our students." "You want to higher a Europeanist rather than Africanist? You're a rank imperialist and have your boot on the neck of the subaltern." In other words, it's a hard bell to unring and can have longterm repercussions for group dynamics. Still, in a case like this one, I think you're right.

I'd assumed they were making the ethical argument, but essear's point is excellent.

hire rather than higher, please

I'd blame my phone, but the problem runs deeper than that.

I get my insurance through my BF. The company's policy continues to exist despite gay marriage being legal. They don't gross up his pay to cover the tax hit. They do for immigration expenses.

Bave's 8 and LB's 10 are correct, and they are the most promising arguments to make in this situation -- if we stipulate that the quality of faculty is important to the administration. If this is Last Chance Community College we're talking about, there is little chance that the proposal will go anywhere barring unusual circumstances (say, the chancellor is gay and wants benefits for his own partner). Any advantage in the labor market will be swamped by the expense. And make no mistake, this is going to be expensive for the institution. There's no getting around it. Partner benefits are notoriously prone to adverse selection effects (for instance, there are plenty of senior people at health insurance companies who are not insured by their own employer, because their spouses are employed by a state or municipality that offers more generous benefits).

The "it's the right thing to do" argument could carry some weight on its own if the relevant decision-makers are enlightened liberals and the institution is in a comfortable financial position. I'd be nervous about a proposal that hinges on that particular conditional probability.

As the news of the day tells us, the best strategy is to make sure everyone on the committee has or believes s/he has a gay child. This may be tricky.

Then after a while someone said "there's a better argument: torture is just wrong". And that seemed to shame the torture advocate, and he backed down. So maybe it's worth keeping in mind that really blunt ethical statements sometimes get to people.

IMX this is more likely to occur when the cost of backing down is limited to the loss of pride that comes with losing an argument. If you are an administrator responsible for a personnel budget and you're looking at a couple hundred thousand dollars of additional benefits expense, turning a deaf ear to blunt ethical arguments is part of your job description.

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Has someone already said NMM to Harry Reems? This one might be difficult.

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"succumbed to organ failure"

One other thing: As a matter of justice and fairness, I'd rather that employers offer identical benefits to same sex partners. As a practical matter, the same sex partners will not necessarily be better off for receiving the benefit. Depending on their income level and the generosity of the employer-sponsored benefit, it could be more financially attractive to get coverage under Obamacare, the eligibility for which will be extinguished by being eligible for coverage under an employer-sponsored plan (provided that plan meets certain loose standards for adequacy and affordability). It's not so dissimilar from the actual existing phenomenon of happily married people getting divorced so that a disabled spouse will become eligible for Medicaid.

the best strategy is to make sure everyone on the committee has or believes s/he has a gay child. This may be tricky.

I want to see the screwball movie of it, though.

Terrible alternate strategy: propose revoking all spouse and partner benefits, on the grounds of too expensive and every tub on its own bottom and researchers devoted to their work wouldn't be distracted by family anyway. Of course, someone might take you up on it, or replace all your doctors with goldendoodles.

I forgot which thread this originally came up in, but: "labradoodle" came from "labrador" + "poodle", so I get that. But what's the excuse for goldendoodle? Golden retriever + poodle should be "goldenoodle", obvs.

I prefer to pronounce it "mutt".

Jammies' parents got two yellow labs last summer. They're doing an absolutely terrific job illustrating, on my behalf, why owning a dog sucks monkey-butt. One of them keeps needing surgery because it keeps eating so much gravel. One of them is already having hip and knee problems as a freaking puppy. They both destroy socks and furniture and toys. They totally suck in all the ordinary dog ways.

22.1 I disagree, in that the two other major city's CCs are looking into or implementing similar proposals. No reason Last Chance shouldn't join in.

it keeps eating so much gravel

That one's new to me.

"succumbed to organ failure"

Also, "seminal porn film" and "thrust into the role".

Though the rest of it isn't much distinguishable from having children.

If this is Last Chance Community College we're talking about, there is little chance that the proposal will go anywhere barring unusual circumstances

Since this is work related, I don't want to compromise presidentiality, but the people I'm going to be negotiating with are far more likely to teach practical trades than anything taught at essear's school. This means that I can't count on any kind of default liberalism.

Depending on their income level and the generosity of the employer-sponsored benefit, it could be more financially attractive to get coverage under Obamacare,

I could spin this as an argument in my favor, though--its a reason to think that fewer people will take advantage of it, and costs will stay lower.

Another way dog ownership sucks? My formerly completely sweet dog has now decided that any dog he didn't know from before the last time he was bit is best approached by barking and lunging. It's made walks a lot more stressful. Still worth it, though.

After 14 years of being flawlessly housetrained, Dogbreath is losing it a bit in her old age. I love her, but I don't know that I ever want another dog.

37: Dogbreath's never been aggressive, but I've been told that this is a problem that treats work really well for. A strange dog starts approaching, and you start dishing out bits of liver or whatever, whether or not your dog has started freaking out. The liver is distracting, and the association makes strange dogs a happy, cheerful experience.

It doesn't work if your dog is too keyed up to notice the treat, but if he's not too excited to eat, I think it's worth a try.

That's my plan. I fear our days of heedlessly approaching strange dogs, tail wagging, ready to play are over, though.

Dora the Cat was the lowest-maintenance creature imaginable until age 10 at which point she became expensively diabetic. It's not that big a deal except when I travel, and the bad part is that, like eggplant's dog, she has a long but generalized memory. There was one incident of a really bad cat-sitter and now she won't let most people near her. I have one neighbor she's ok with and I can't ask her all the time. This is why I'm back down to about 50/50 on Unfoggedycon.

My dogs growing up were barely house-broken up until they were 6 years old or so. Then they became senile. Then they lived to be 15 years old. They were the worst.

40: Oh, just bring Dora.

Not loving dogs is morally repugnant.

35 to 34.

It would be an interesting world wherein proof of an interoffice affair resulted in loss of health benefits.

"Based on the five extramarital affairs documented above, we have determined that your so-called marriage is a marriage of convenience for the purpose of receiving partner benefits."

"No! I love my wife! I'm just an asshole!"

"Unfortunately your status as an asshole is a preexisting condition which means we cannot cover any wives or children you may have accrued in the years since your diagnosis as an asshole."

Depending on their income level and the generosity of the employer-sponsored benefit, it could be more financially attractive to get coverage under Obamacare

Possibly, but given all the uncertainty surrounding costs and quality of Exchange plans, if I were a domestic partner of an employee, I'd appreciate the security of an already-understood plan somewhat.

42 gets it right. The long, overgeneralized memory is a problem, probably related to him never learning to read other dog's body language.

38: My nearly 14 year old dog was also starting to lose it with the housetraining last summer, but the vet put her on medication to control her hormone levels and it has worked miracles. Good luck!

far more likely to teach practical trades than anything taught at essear's school
essear's school: the institute of impractical studies.

29: The correct name for a poodle and labrador combination is poobrador.

A Shih-tzu and a poodle make a Shih-tzapooh.

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One hypothesis is that John Yoo recently made a $50 bet with someone that he could be a bigger jackass than McMegan.

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51: Another possible hybrid.

52- Please tell me someone asked Yoo when he planned to share his knowledge of how to resurrect half a million people, give or take. I suspect if he could do that everyone would gladly return Hussein's family (or even Zombie Saddam, bring him back too) to power.

54

... Please tell me someone asked Yoo when he planned to share his knowledge of how to resurrect half a million people, give or take. I suspect if he could do that everyone would gladly return Hussein's family (or even Zombie Saddam, bring him back too) to power.

This is incorrect.

You're probably right, Yoo isn't a level 8 Mage as far as I can tell.

Yoo isn't a level 8 Mage as far as I can tell.

Even if he had the power, the paradox would far too great.

Some resources for Abe here.

40, 42: yes, bring her! I've become quite expert on giving insulin shots to kitties (ugh--another glucose curve tomorrow).

Abe: a colleague successfully led this fight at my institution. I just emailed her for details, if you'd like to drop me a line.

She would love to meet all of you* but is very very very automobile-averse. There are people associated with my vet who do a $20 a visit thing but that's $100 for the weekend so I'm still looking around.

*except Bob's dogs. And actually I'm lying because she mostly likes me.

My kitty doctor skills are limited to subq fluids. Holla, kitties with renal failure!

58: Thanks! Five schools in the state university system, which is good. They don't list any cc's, though.

62: I double checked and the one here seems to cover both faculty and staff and has been in place for several years. If you'd like me to get you in touch with the chief negotiator to discuss how the conversations progressed, I'd be glad to.

There are people associated with my vet who do a $20 a visit thing but that's $100 for the weekend so I'm still looking around.

That's what the Paypal donations are for!

62: Yeah, I wondered if those links would be any help after reading 36, but I'm glad they're of some value to you!