CHUL Refuses to Allow Gays' Pamphlet in Packet

Amidst confusion over parliamentary rules of procedure, the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL) yesterday pushed aside a request by the Gay Students Association (GSA) to include a pamphlet on homosexuality in next semester's registration packets and instead adopted a proposal to provide a second set of registration envelopes in which all official student groups may place information about their activities.

CHUL's decision angered more than 50 GSA members and other students who came to the meeting to protest discrimination against gays and lesbians at Harvard and to urge CHUL to accept GSA's request.

"The idea of two registration packets is fine, but it's not an acceptable solution to the discrimination issue," Gaye Williams '83, president of the Radcliffe Lesbians Association and an organizer of the protest, said after the meeting.

"The whole reason" GSA brought its request to CHUL is because the group believes Archie C. Epps III, dean of students, and other University administrators discrminated against gays and lesbians last month by ruling that no student groups may include information in the regular registration packets which all students must pick up in Memorial Hall on the first day of each term, Williams added.

Many student groups, including Phillips Brooks House, Room 13, the Student Assembly, the Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Women's Clearinghouse have received permission to place information in registration packets in past years, but "because we're the GSA, when we asked for the same privilege this year, the administration initiated this new policy." Williams said, adding that "it's blatant discrimination."

CHUL's final vote on the issue followed a ten-minute dispute over Robert's Rules of Order in which Dean Rosovsky, chairman of the committee, accepted a ruling by Dean Fox that allowed CHUL to consider the proposal for two registration packets as a substitute for the GSA request, although CHUL had not voted on the request itself.

The unusual procedures, although valid under Robert's Rules, confused several CHUL members, who said after the meeting they did not realize they were voting to table the GSA request when they voted to consider the second registration envelope.

Elizabeth E. Ryan '81, a CHUL representative from Quincy House and author of the proposal for the second packet, said after the meeting, "It's too bad we voted in the order we did because we had a moral commitment to allowing GSA to use the packets just like other groups."

Epps and Margaret E. Law, registrar of the Faculty, both told CHUL yesterday that their ban does not constitute discrmination against gays because the University's policy has always been not to allow student groups access to the packets, which contain confidential information such as grades and study cards.

"The few times" when student groups have been allowed to place information in the packets have been "mistakes" or "exceptions." Law said, adding that it would be "logistically impossible" to allow all student organizations to use the envelopes.

Practice and Policy

Michael G. Colantuono '83, a GSA and CHUL member, disagreed with Law's contention that few groups have used the packets in the past, showing as evidence four registration packets from as long ago as 1966 that contained information from student groups.

Colantuono then drew applause from the students at the meeting when he added that "even if denying students access to the packets may have been a past policy, it was certainly not past practice, and if you change that practice now, it's going to look like discrimination."

Robert J. Kiely, master of Adams House, urged CHUL to accept GSA's request despite "whatever fear there might be that it will appear that the College is condoning something."

"We would not be advocating a specific lifestyle," Kiely said, adding that "they're asking us to advocate tolerance for diversity and understanding, and that's what I think we ought to do."

Since CHUL spent more than an hour discussing the registration packets, the committee did not have time to consider several other issues, including Epps' recommendation that the University fine seven student groups for violating the new regulations prohibiting the placement of posters on walls and fences