Homosexual University employees who live in on-campus apartments as part of their housing contract with GW can now share campus housing with their domestic partners, according to a GW policy that went into effect July 1.
Under the policy’s new terms, an unmarried heterosexual couple also can share a campus apartment, which was not permitted under the old policy.
However, the University still does not extend health and life insurance or tuition benefits to its employees’ domestic partners, said Gaby Tagle, a senior benefits specialist in GW’s human resources office.
Full-time professional staff members, such as community directors, benefit from the new housing policy, but it does not apply to community facilitators or other part-time residence hall staff, said Jan-Mitchell Sherrill, associate dean of students.
The domestic partner housing policy, which builds on previous University regulations that allow full-time professional staff to share on-campus housing with their spouses, has been in the works for several years, Sherrill said.
Several years ago, the University’s residential life administrators found that candidates for employment in GW’s student services division frequently asked if the University had domestic partner benefits, he said.
“We found we were losing some of the best candidates to other schools because we didn’t have the policy in place,” Sherrill said. “You have to be able to give them something other schools can’t.”
When residential life staffers brought the idea to the next echelon of the University administration, Sherrill said the plan immediately was accepted.
“It was something we would have fought for, but we didn’t have to,” he said.
To share campus housing, a GW employee and his or her partner must be legally married or registered as domestic partners under D.C. law or the law of any other state, according to the policy. Also covered under the policy are adults who are each other’s “sole domestic partner” and “are not related by blood to a degree of closeness” that would prohibit them from being legally married.
Sherrill said one engaged couple and one married couple share on-campus apartments, but so far, no gay couples have taken advantage of the new policy.
But when the University begins to interview candidates for residential life administrative positions this spring, the new policy will be an important draw, Sherrill said.
According to a 1997 American College Personnel Association survey of housing and residential life offices at 74 colleges and universities, 33 schools reported they offer live-in benefits to their employees’ domestic partners. Another nine institutions said such a policy was under discussion or expected soon.
At GW, the new housing policy is unrelated to the benefits offered through GW’s human resources office, Sherrill said. He said the decision to extend campus housing privileges to employees’ domestic partners was made by the University’s Student and Academic Support Services division, with advice from GW’s General Counsel’s Office.
Thomas Rogers Jr., director of GW’s human resource services department, said the issue of benefits for the domestic partners of University employees “is something that has crossed our paths.”
In the “dynamic” world of benefits, however, he said the issue comes and goes and is not under discussion.
“The employee partner insurance issue has come up,” Rogers said. “It’s one of a number of topical issues that comes up from time to time.”
The University offers health insurance benefits to its employees’ spouses and dependents through its insurers – Blue Cross Blue Shield, Capital Care and GW Health Plan, Tagle said.
Spouses of employees also receive a 50 percent discount on tuition during the employee’s first five years at GW, and a 75 percent discount thereafter.
Rogers said “it is hard to say” whether the issue will come up again soon, and how the University will react if it does.
“I believe the administration at this University has done a really good job of looking at the marketplace of fringe benefits and made some good decisions,” Rogers said.
