The associate director of the university’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Equity Office resigned after months of not knowing if the university would find room in its budget to keep her job in place, leaving the LGBT office with only one full-time staff member remaining and its future in question.
Shiva Subbaraman decided not to risk unemployment, so in May she accepted a job as the first director of Georgetown University’s LGBT center. Subbaraman’s departure means Luke Jensen, the director of this university’s LGBT office, will have to try to single-handedly mitigate the harm being done to his department’s student services.
“She has made such an outstanding contribution to this office that we have moved ahead exponentially,” Jensen said. “Her departure means that movement will slow down dramatically.”
A seven-year veteran at the university, Subbaraman first became the associate director of the LGBT office in 2006, knowing the job was only going to be funded for two years. She said then-provost Bill Destler agreed to make her position permanent if she could prove to be worth the money.
But Destler resigned as provost to become president of the Rochester Institute of Technology in July 2007. When Nariman Farvardin filled Destler’s vacancy, there was almost no money left in the budget, meaning he could do nothing to give Subbaraman’s job permanent funding, said Associate Provost for Equity and Diversity Cordell Black.
This year, Farvardin ultimately decided to make Subbaraman’s post permanent after he found out in May that the university had enough money, Black explained. But by then, it was already too late.
“If the provost gave me a decision in December, I would not have looked for another job,” Subbaraman said. “All I wanted was security for a job I was already doing.”
Jensen said Subbaraman made many significant accomplishments while serving as his associate director. Because she is a woman of color, she made minority students feel more comfortable seeking help and support. She has also expanded numerous LGBT programs and increased participation rates dramatically.
Subbaraman said the university’s inability to persuade her to stay on the payroll indicates its lack of commitment to LGBT issues on the campus. She also cited the lack of office space as further proof.
“Look at this office. I don’t even have a private office. You tell me one other associate director at this university who does not have a private office,” Subbaraman said. “That tells me that when it comes to LGBT issues, we don’t matter.”
Not only is the LGBT Equity Office’s space too small, it is also hard for students to find – it sits in the depths of Cole Field House, Subbaraman said.
“It takes a GPS to find our office,” she said. “How is an LGBT student going to find us?”
But Black said finding a new place for the LGBT office is not as easy as it sounds.
“Space on this campus is one of the most political aspects of life. Everyone is vying for space,” he said. “I feel confident that we are going to find better space. I’m certainly going to push for it.”
Subbaraman’s new job as director of the LGBT center in Georgetown is an upgrade from her position as associate director here on campus, with a better salary, more space and more personnel. She said this university made a big mistake in allowing her to slip away.
“The irony is [the university] trained me and I’m going to take my training somewhere else,” she said. “If I have stayed, I would have moved this office to another level.”
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