Signal Safe Space WU

Petition for the Board of Trustees to Adopt a Non-Discrimination Policy for LGBTQ+ Faculty and Staff

Authors of This Petition

We are a transparent, informal, student-led group that believes in clearly stating who is involved in the creation of each statement we release. In collaboration with other student leaders and faculty mentors, this document was primarily researched and authored by Annaclare Splettstoeszer, Cienna Dumaoal, Katelyn Koch, and Anneka Siems. 

Who We Are

We are a student-led group (Signal Safe Space WU) advocating for Whitworth University to change its current hiring policy for staff and faculty to include protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. 

We also advocate for Whitworth University to reckon with its current campus climate regarding LGBTQ+ issues. In our efforts, we strive to use the stories of those who have lived experiences that are directly affected by the official statements and positions that the university takes on these issues. One of our next steps as a group is to circulate student stories in a hard-copy chapbook in anticipation of the Board of Trustees meeting in April. (See the bottom of this document for more information about how to be included.) We know that our campus already houses communities which provide safe space for joy, love, and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. But simultaneously, we believe that our campus is capable of doing more. 

What We Believe

To formally adhere to the mission of the university, and to send a clear message that LGBTQ+ members of the Whitworth community are welcome at this institution, the Board of Trustees must vote to change the hiring policy. Whitworth is “a different kind of Christian school” in that it does not require its faculty and staff to sign a preexisting statement of faith.[1] Rather, it allows each faculty member to write their own statement of faith. For many students, faculty, and staff, this concept is what has drawn them to Whitworth over other faith-based institutions: the wide variety of Christian beliefs in this community. If Whitworth’s only faith-based hiring requirement is that a faculty or staff member be a professing Christian, we believe it is not Whitworth’s place to dictate how an individual practices their Christian belief. Indeed, for many Christians, following Christ means affirming the LGBTQ+ community as children of God, created that way on purpose. We would additionally like to acknowledge that queer students at Whitworth who do not adhere to Christian beliefs are harmed by Whitworth’s lack of representation and security for queer faculty and staff under the guise of Christian doctrine. 

We are not advocating for the ousting of all non-affirming community members; we simply posit that those who are affirming deserve personal and professional security here. Part of the beauty of a liberal arts education is the chance to encounter a multitude of opinions. As of now, a significant portion of the Whitworth community is being silenced. 

Students at this university deserve to know that their professors, mentors, and supervisors do not live in fear of being fired due to their sexual orientation. In our conversations with queer students, it has become clear that not being able to interact with out and/or affirming professors has had a damaging effect on students. Representation matters, as does transparency. No one at this institution is foolish enough to believe that Whitworth has never had faculty or staff who identified as LGBTQ+; these members of the Whitworth community just did not feel empowered to be honest about their true identities. We feel that this truth means the current discriminatory policy is doing students a grave injustice. 

The negative impact of un-affirming Christian role models in the lives of queer young people is well documented. Research has shown that queer students benefit from having on-campus mentors who share similar life experiences. [2] Furthermore, a 2015 study found that parents’ religious beliefs about homosexuality being sinful were associated with double the risk of attempting suicide in LGBTQ+ youth aged 18-24. [3] It is, in some cases, a matter of life or death that queer students at Whitworth hear from those around them who share in their life experiences that they are loved, valued, and not a mistake. How can they hear this message if the faculty and staff at this university live in fear of sharing their authentic selves?

It is also undeniable that there are implications for prospective students at this university if the Board of Trustees holds to their non-affirming hiring policy. Students in this current admissions cycle have been changing their college plans as states pass anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.[4] Clearly, young people are thinking about this issue as it pertains to where they will spend the next four years of their education. If they believe that Whitworth is a safe space for them, whoever they are, they are more likely to choose to invest in this community. 

Why We Exist 

We strive to continue the efforts of the many individuals, organizations, and faculty at the university who have worked to change the hiring policy in the past, and to publicly show their efforts and how those efforts have been ignored. We ask that the Whitworth University Board of Trustees finally fulfill the non-discrimination clauses that these groups have fought for. Below is an explanation of a few of those efforts. 

A survey conducted in 2013-2014 by Halualani & Associates revealed that three percent of surveyed faculty and staff at Whitworth University identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. While these numbers have likely changed over time, the survey’s results were the impetus for the 2014-2015 Associated Students of Whitworth University (ASWU) student government to make the issue a focus of their 2014-2015 school year. ASWU held multiple events during that academic year to discuss the issue, inviting a host of speakers with theological expertise, lived experiences as gay people on campus both with public and private identities, and knowledge of the history of views on sexuality within the church to speak.  A survey conducted after these events showed that of 559 students surveyed, 72.5 percent reported that they were in support of adding “sexual orientation” to the list of protected identities. Furthermore, a random sample was taken of each residence hall community “resulting in a 95 percent confidence interval that the true proportion of the on-campus community who agree with the statement, ‘sexual orientation should be added to the list of protected identities’ is between 66.79 percent and 79.32 percent.” [5]

This all culminated in a 13-1-1 vote [6] by the ASWU Assembly to pass a resolution [7] asking that the administration add “sexual orientation” as a protected class to the Employee Handbook for Faculty and Staff. After all of these events, the ASWU Executive Team presented the results of their efforts and the resolution to the Board of Trustees at their spring meeting as a formal request that the Board implement their resolution. While the Board listened to the students it had invited to speak, it took no action. The Whitworth President at the time, Beck Taylor, came to an ASWU meeting in April of 2015 and told the ASWU Assembly that “our Board was so impressed with the presentations, they walked away encouraged by thoughtfulness and transparency for those presentations…” and “[the Board] take this very seriously— the opinions of students.” [8] However, he stated that the Board had only listened, and that voting on the issue was “never the intended outcome” of the Executive Team’s visit.

In the years since, individual students and student groups have privately held many discussions with the Board of Trustees about this issue and why the Board should vote to change the policy. The number of these discussions, and the content of them, is completely unknown to the public due to the extreme lack of transparency on this matter from the Board. However, recent events have made these conversations highly public once again.

This controversy reached new heights when the New Yorker published an article on June 30, 2022, which detailed the story of former political science professor, Kathy Lee, who retired from Whitworth after the 2021-2022 academic year.[9] Lee recounted how she kept her sexual identity a secret during her decades-long career at Whitworth out of fear of losing her job. The response to this article from Whitworth students and alumni was very strongly in support of Lee. [10] A subsequent letter calling for the university to become openly affirming gained over 600 signatures from undergraduate and graduate alumni, former ASWU presidents and vice presidents, current students, a professor emeritus, and other community members whose relationships with the university span from 1966 to 2023. [11]

Around the same time in the spring of 2022, Seattle Pacific University students organized a protest against their Board’s anti-LGBTQ+ hiring policies. At graduation, they handed their president pride flags instead of shaking his hand, and later that same year, they took their school to court for violating civil rights.[12] While different circumstances surrounded SPU’s protest, the point remains that there is a larger context of students at religious institutions taking issue with their schools’ discriminatory practices. [13] Some of these stories can be found in the court case reference at the end related to this very issue, and reader discretion is advised due to the highly discriminatory nature of what these students experienced. [14]

 

What We Ask

We ask that the Board of Trustees change their stance to include protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. We believe that doing so aligns with the mission of the university to honor God, follow Christ, and serve humanity, as well as its purpose to minister to both the mind and heart of its students. It is clear that Whitworth claims to be a community that honors diversity. [15] But we posit that in order to actually become the kind of community that not just accepts, but fosters and celebrates diverse opinions and identities, the climate for queer students, faculty, and staff must change. This change starts with the Board of Trustees voting to protect those on faculty or staff who identify as varying gender identities and sexual orientations. Doing so would finally make Whitworth an explicitly safe space for LGBTQ+ members of the community. Doing so would actually honor God, follow Christ, and serve humanity. 

 

Below— we invite all Whitworth students, alumni, faculty, staff, parents of students, former Board of Trustee members, and broader community members who are affiliated with Whitworth who believe in this document to sign their names in solidarity with us. Please sign your name, and state your connection to the university, if any, in a comment.

Additionally, all community members with a story about how they have been affected by Whitworth’s culture surrounding LGBTQ+ issues are invited to submit their story though this link: https://forms.gle/qVgQSbgUCVM8p4dU7  (copy and paste it into your browser). Submissions to this form will be developed into an informal print publication which will be hand-circulated around campus, and all submissions will be delivered to the Whitworth Board of Trustees. If you have a broader comment which you wish to make related to this issue, please also submit it through the form. 

You can also follow us on Instagram for updates and to learn other actions you can take to support bringing about this long overdue change: Signal Safe Space WU Instagram.

With Love, 

The Signal Safe Space WU Team

Our sources: 

[1] Whitworth Employee Handbook for Faculty and Staff as of March 31, 2023. https://www.whitworth.edu/cms/media/whitworth/documents/administration/human-resource-services/employee-handbook.pdf  

[2] Study: “A Unique Support for Sexual-Minority Identity Development: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of a Long-Term Formal Mentoring Relationship Between an Adult and a Youth From the Gay Community” by Christian L. Rummell at Portland State University in Fall of 2013 http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2486&context=open_access_etds

[3] Research from The Trevor Project: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/religiosity-and-suicidality-among-lgbtq-youth/ 

[4] NBC News, “Students switch up college plans as states pass anti-LGBTQ laws.” March 4, 2023. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/students-switch-college-plans-states-pass-anti-lgbtq-laws-rcna67875 

[5] Source of random sample survey done of residence halls: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kJ_95GVlY1sMhkJeGK69FU7Srlwk7brZ/view?usp=share_link 

[6] ASWU Assembly Meeting Minutes from March 18, 2015 when Resolution 2014-2015.01 was passed: https://www.whitworthaswu.com/_files/ugd/233032_e4288c2027314927927768c3aaeed7ee.pdf 

[7] Full text of ASWU Resolution 2014-2015.01: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kJ_95GVlY1sMhkJeGK69FU7Srlwk7brZ/view?usp=share_link 

[8] ASWU Assembly Meeting Minutes from April 22, 2015: https://www.whitworthaswu.com/_files/ugd/233032_64c4cac627c74866bf7367c2c6b02c41.pdf 

[9] The New Yorker, “ The Hidden Life of a Christian-College Professor: For years, Kathy Lee, a professor at an evangelical university, kept her sexual identity a secret. Then she decided to come out.” June 30, 2022: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/the-hidden-life-of-a-christian-college-professor 

[10] The Spokesman Review, “‘Disappointed but not surprised’: Whitworth declines to define position on LGBTQ employees after first openly gay professor shares concerns,” July 15, 2022: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/jul/15/disappointed-but-not-surprised-whitworth-declines-/ 

[11] Alumni Support Letter written in support of Dr. Kathy Lee: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O0TIo6xlFMPHxXnvc6oVcaMkgYOJHaGT6PI7usbO-G4/edit?usp=sharing 

[12] NPR, “Seattle Pacific University leaders are sued for anti-LGBTQ hiring practices.” September 13, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/09/13/1122477006/seattle-pacific-university-lawsuit-lgbtq-hiring-practices 

[13] The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Stuck in the Closet: LGBTQ students at religious colleges are ramping up their fight for recognition." March 28, 2023. https://www.chronicle.com/article/stuck-in-the-closet 

[14] The Washington Post, “First Amended Complaint - Hunter v. DOE.” Updated Jun 8, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/first-amended-complaint-hunter-v-doe/e9b50945-3de7-4fa4-a24c-dbb23b5495fb/ 

[15] Whitworth’s Christ-Centered Rationale for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. May, 2016. https://www.whitworth.edu/cms/administration/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/christ-centered-rationale/ 

[16] Share your experience here: https://forms.gle/qVgQSbgUCVM8p4dU7