University Considers Giving Domestic Partners Benefits

The domestic partners of Harvard's gay faculty and staff members may receive spousal benefits, depending on the findings of a Universitywide committee now being formed.

Provost Jerry R. Green said yesterday that a committee on the domestic partners issue is currently being put together. He said the scope of the committee and its composition have yet to be determined.

Green will chair the committee.

The city of Cambridge recently voted to extend domestic partnership benefits to municipal employees and to parents in city schools. The partner of a city employee will be able to receive health insurance coverage that was previously reserved for spouses of married, heterosexual employees. And the domestic partner of a child's parent will be able to see the child's city school records.

Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs John H. Shattuck said the Harvard committee will consider domestic partnership benefits as they relate to all employees of Harvard--faculty, administrators and both union and non-union staffers.

Shattuck said domestic partnership benefits are "a very complicated issue." He said, though, that it is "an issue that Harvard is very interested in pursuing."

The issue has been a major unmet demand of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, an obstacle in efforts to renegotiate the union contract which expired July 1.

Union officials, unavailable for comment yesterday, have spoken out strongly in favor of the benefits. But it is unclear how a drawn-out committee discussion will be received by a union anxious to sign a new contract and already sure of its position on partnership benefits.

It took Cambridge months to consider and pass its domestic partners ordinance. Green and his yet-to-be-named committee are just starting out.

Green still has to decide whether the committeewill confine itself to health insurance orconsider other benefits. And Shattuck said therehas so far been not even a preliminary estimate ofwhat the benefits would cost Harvard.

Shattuck said the committee hopes to have itsfirst meeting in mid-October

Green still has to decide whether the committeewill confine itself to health insurance orconsider other benefits. And Shattuck said therehas so far been not even a preliminary estimate ofwhat the benefits would cost Harvard.

Shattuck said the committee hopes to have itsfirst meeting in mid-October