It’s been nearly a year since Student Senate voted against adding a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) special interest seat to their ranks.
But significant changes in the makeup of Senate have caused the seat’s advocates to once again take up the issue. This time, they say, it seems likely that the legislation will pass with the needed two-thirds vote.
“I think last year, a lot of senators voted based off their beliefs or their views more than their constituents because I think the campaign that was done by Tom Elliott and everyone else who helped him was a pretty strong campaign,” Lyle senator, Claudia Sandoval, said. “I think this year’s senators are more in tune with their constituents and more in tune with what they actually have to do.”
Visitors and senators have brought up the LGBT seat issue during the past three Senate meetings.
While last year’s debate focused much of its attention on the issue of double representation, this year’s questioning has revolved around the legal logistics of identifying and counting LGBT students, since the University can’t ask students about their sexual orientation during the admission process.
Freshman Harvey Luna is spearheading the efforts to get the seat installed. Luna, an openly gay student, is working closely with senators Grant Barnes (Perkins), Aden Abiye (Dedman I) Sam Mansfield (Dedman II) and Sandoval (Lyle).
“There seems to be much more support this year in terms of the political climate in Senate to pass the legislation,” Luna said. “All we’re doing right now is working on logistics.”
While many senators acknowledge that the LGBT community faces numerous issues, such as discrimination, they question whether installing a special interest seat would be the most beneficial way to help the community.
“When you open up the idea for the LGBT seat, how many other seats do you open up for others?” Mansfield said. “If this goes on, then you need to be careful about the precedent that you set. But right now, in my gut feeling, this community has a very special concern. I believe that there is enough of them on this campus to have their concern voiced.”
A recent vote from the Diversity Committee determined that they were against adding the seat, with five against and one person in favor. Diversity Committee chair, Jasmine Carr, said the committee had concerns over the legal logistics of adding the seat.
“That red tape is something that the senators had a concern about,” Carr said. “We’re highly behind seeing the need and knowing that there needs to be some type of representation, and the question now is the best way to do that. Is it supplying one seat on the Senate floor or is it going by another means?”
Carr said the committee voted so that Student Senate and the student population could decide how the student population feels about the seat when legislation is eventually introduced.
Seat proponents hope to have a bill ready for presentation to Senate before Winter Break.
“I know that the conversation in Student Senate has been looking towards having a new special interest seat,” Carr said. “Even though that legislation hasn’t come out yet, we still want to be open to finding” other options.
Sandoval is one of the senators writing legislation. She said her bill will focus on the logistics of counting LGBT students, since that seems to be the area in which most senators are concerned. She said she thinks there’s a great chance the bill will pass.
“I think one thing is we’ve already seen the issue last year,” Lyle senator, Claudia Sandoval, said. “And if it’s coming back around a second time, I think it’s because we all know our students really want it, and Student Senate is here as a voice of the student body.”
Luna argues that the LGBT community needs the seat. He said an LGBT senator can work 110 percent on issues facing the community.
“I know there are senators who say, ‘Well we can present the legislation ourselves,’ but there’s no guarantee that they will put a lot of time and all the effort to make sure that the legislation they do support will be passable,” he said. “So having that senator will make sure that the legislation passes.”
Cece Cox, director of the Resource Center of Dallas, spoke to Senate at their Tuesday meeting about her time at the Dedman School of Law as an openly gay student.
Cox argues that the LGBT community needs the seat.
Cox works for the Resource Center for Dallas, which works with the LGBT and AIDS community. Cox stressed that an LGBT senator would work on issues that are particularly relevant to that community, such as AIDS testing and harassment.
“What I am suggesting about the LGBT special Senate seat,” she said. “There are mental health issues… health issues… safety issues and feeling part of the community issues,” concerning which the LGBT senator would be the best to deal with.
Luna agreed with Cox, explaining that having an LGBT senator would let students in the community feel like they have someone who is working for them.
He said one of the things the senator can do is make “sure that there is a more efficient way to file possible hate crimes or file ways to report harassment.”
“I know SMU is a great partner with the LGBT community as far as providing services to those students, but at times the students have this fear of being discriminated against because of the perception that SMU is too conservative,” he said.
“Having an LGBT senator would alleviate some of those concerns and will make sure that there is a student who is willing to represent them if there were to be any implications when a student files a harassment claim,” he said.
Sandoval, who was the Hispanic-American senator last year, said that special-interest seats are needed for minority populations.
“People just don’t realize the specific issues a community can face on a campus where you’re—out of 6,000 students you’re only 800, and out of those 800 you only see 100 faces that look like yours,” she said. “Sometimes you’re the only person in the classroom by yourself, and they just don’t realize the effect that that can have on a person.”
If the bill passes, proponents of the seat face another hurdle: getting the student body to ratify it.
They would need to do so within three weeks after Senate approves the bill because it would amend the Student Body Constitution. If the bill is not ratified, then it fails.
SMU has a reputation for being conservative on social issues, which suggests that getting the student body to ratify an LGBT seat could be difficult. The Princeton Review ranked SMU 16th in the nation in homophobic schools.
“The problem isn’t just homophobia,” Mansfield said. A lot of SMU’s social problems take their own form in a lot of different ways. There’s a lot of social trouble on this campus. There’s some funny, strange, but very intense, bias on this campus.”
Luna said he’s seen a lot of support for the seat, but he agrees that there is a perception of SMU as conservative. This, he said, is one of the things an LGBT senator can work to fix.
“If there’s someone who’s out there who is constantly advocating for the LGBT community, then the perception quickly changes,” Luna said.
“If we do not have somebody who we can see in the public eye who says ‘Oh, this senator is supportive of the LGBT community…’ If there’s not that perception, then it’s very easy for the student body to continue on the path of not being as open because of the fear of the unknown,” he said.
