Out In The Mountains : News - Middlebury College Adds Trans to Policies

Middlebury Professor Kevin Moss

     The Middlebury College Board of Trustees last month voted to add protection against discrimination for its transgender employees and students. The change in policies, effective as of July 1, was announced in a June 3 memo sent to all faculty and staff of Middlebury College by Secretary of the College Eric L. Davis.
       The college’s non-discrimination statement now reads:
      “Middlebury College complies with applicable provisions of state and federal law which prohibit discrimination in employment, or in admission or access to its educational or extracurricular programs, activities, or facilities, on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, marital status, place of birth, service in the armed forces of the United States, or against qualified individuals with disabilities on the basis of disability.”
      The other change made to the policy was replacing the phrase “Vietnam veteran status” with “service in the armed forces of the United States.”
      The initiator of the policy change was Professor Kevin Moss, who teaches Russian, chairs his department and is the self-identified “ranking fag” member of Gay and Lesbian Employees At Middlebury (GLEAM). He forwarded a proposal on the wording to the Faculty Council and to the student group, Middlebury Open Queer Alliance (MOQA), who took it to the Student Government Association (SGA). “The Council passed it in early April, without much comment,” he wrote in an email in response to questions.
      Student Government President Ginny Hunt presented the proposal to the SGA. “I was present at the meeting April 13,” Moss wrote, “and there were a few questions, but it passed unanimously. The students actually pointed out that we also needed to change the harassment policy to include ‘gender orientation and expression’ as well.”
      Moss’s inclusive language was first passed as a resolution by the Faculty Council (of which body he is an elected member) and then was passed unanimously by the faculty as a whole. According to a statement from the Secretary of the College, reporting on the Board of Trustees’ action, “The changes in the non-discrimination statement were approved without objection. ...[T]he full board accepted the proposal unanimously.”
      Asked whether there had been any history of bias incidents or harassment of transgender faculty / staff or students at Middlebury, Moss responded, “We have at least one trans person who works part time for the college, and I don’t know if there have been any incidents of discrimination.”
      Rather than a response to specific incidents, Moss indicated that his motivation, “aside from the fact that it’s the right thing to do, has been to counter Middlebury’s (unfortunately justified) reputation as a fairly conservative place. We were one of the last elite liberal arts colleges to add sexual orientation to our non-discrimination clause. In that case, there was an attempt in 1986 which failed to win the vote of the trustees; I reintroduced it in 1990 and it passed.”
      Moss also wrote, “I’m hoping to get at least some mileage out of this new change, since we are in fact the first of the colleges we usually compare ourselves to that has adopted such language. And we’re a year or so ahead of [the State of] Vermont, which could send a potential message that we really mean it.”
      According to Moss’s resolution message to the faculty, “‘gender identity and expression’ is not protected in non-discrimination laws in the state of Vermont, though it is included in the hate crimes law (1999). The states of Minnesota and Rhode Island protect gender identity, as do a number of municipal jurisdictions. Some 10 colleges and universities include ‘gender identity and expression’ in their non-discrimination statements as do about 15 Fortune 500 companies.”
      The colleges Moss cited include Rutgers (NJ), Brown (RI), DePauw (IN), and Lehigh (PA). Among the 70 companies he said prohibit discrimination against transgender people, Moss listed Aetna, American Airlines, Apple Computers, Bank One, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Intel, J. P. Morgan, NCR, Nike, Verizon Wireless, Walgreens, and Xerox.
      About 2200 students matriculate at Middlebury College during an academic year, with about 1000 staff and faculty members, according to Phil Benoit, director of public affairs for Middlebury College. There are 28 trustees, including those identified as “charter,” “term,” and “alumni,” of whom two live in Vermont.