Diversity Session on Sexual Orientation

The following is a report of the planning leading up to a diversity session for employees in the University of Michigan's Information Technology Division (ITD). It was originally posted to the news group soc.motss on Apr14/90 as message-id <1990Apr14.163855.14676@terminator.cc.umich.edu>.

First, some background. The University of Michigan has a division called the Information Technology Division, or ITD, which is responsible for all the computers on campus (directly or indirectly). Though recently reorganized into new "functional" units, the old organization is easiest to explain. ITD was the "parent company," so to speak, of the Computing Center (CC, in charge of all student, faculty, and some staff computing), Center for Information Technology Integration (CITI, a research unit), and the Office of Administrative Systems (OAS, in charge of all administrative computing, such as payroll and transcripts and registration). Since the people who work within ITD are of a diverse background (different genders, ethnic origins, ages, sexual orientations, veteran status, etc.), the Powers That Be in management decided to implement a "diversity program" to educate the 700+ employees in ITD about such issues.

I was then a student/temporary employee within ITD, so I was understandably surprised when, in mid December (1989) I got an e-mail message from one of the senior managers asking for my input on an upcoming session on sexual orientation. (All previous sessions had dealt with issues of race and culture (black/white, anglo/hispanic or anglo/asian, etc.) I tenatively agreed to attend a meeting of the Diversity Steering Committee, as did other gay people (to be more accurate, as did three lesbians), and on January 17th we all met.

The committee itself included a lesbian, a bisexual woman, and a man who thinks he's bisexual. We got to know each other, as a group, and got down to the serious work of planning a session to educate 700 or so people who didn't want to be educated on gay issues (especially in the workplace).

The planning went really well. The last few days before the session itself were hectic, as we tried to get everything finalized for the program finished (with two members of the committee out of town, and one of the co-chairs out of the country on a two-week vacation). Nevertheless, we managed to pull it off.

The session itself (there were three during the course of the day) was structured as follows:

• Pre-session — Provided handouts for each of the 200-plus seats in the room:
  • An agenda
  • Answers to commonly-asked questions about homosexuality
  • Policy handouts, including:
    • The Standard Practice Guide page on discrimination based on orientation
    • The (UM) Presidential Policy on Discrimination
    • The student policy ("code") on discriminatory conduct
  • A list of resources on campus for more information
• Introduction — Announcements about the next session and introduce the speaker
• Opening Remarks — "Why we're here," by the man in charge of the day-to-day operations for all ITD
• University Policies & Language — A manager explained the UM policies, procedures, etc. relating to gay issues; the new funeral leave policy, where the "domestic partner" can take time off for a funeral or illness; definition of "coming out," "straight," and similar terms
• One Liners — Seventy (10% of staff, get it?) short blurbs are read to illustrate some of the similarities between heterosexual and nonheterosexual people
• Skits — The ITD Theatre Troupe wrote, produced, and starred in five short skits that actually have happened in our workplace. Changing names and endings (to make things a bit more positive), we went through the scenarios of:
  • Two men talking about their weekends
  • A disgruntled man who didn't get promoted because his boss allegedly only promotes lesbians
  • Two gay employees discussing if they'll bring their partners to the small office party next week
  • An employee who needs the next day off for his partner's mom's funeral but has a big presentation that day and he isn't out
  • A wedding shower where everyone says "Cindy's next!" even though she's been in a relationship with her partner Diane for about eleven years
• Panel Presentation — Two gay men, two lesbians, and two people from PFLAG, the Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, spoke about their experiences and then took questions from the floor
• Small Group Discussions — 15-20 minutes around the tables in the room we had
• Closing — The same man who read the opening remarks read a letter to all ITD staff from the ITD gay/lesbian/bisexual staff

An optional third hour was provided to meet the panelists and discuss further any issues or questions that remained.

We were understandably anxious about the program, especially since we knew there are several people with very religious backgrounds, and a lot of closed-minded people in ITD. However, much to our surprise, the sessions went astonishingly well. The post-session evaluations indicate that a lot of people learned new things, were apprehensive before but pleased after the session, found the session helpful, and so on. In fact, only about 10 to 15 of the 500 to 550 evaluations that were turned in were negative; the rest were overwhelmingly positive.

Apparently, ITD was the first unit at the University (and possibly the country) to hold such a session for an audience this large. We're really excited about how well this went. Time will tell, at the workplace, what sort of changes will actually take place based on this session.