ATTENTION: ALL LGBTQ CORNELL STUDENTS!
PLEASE READ: This is a Call to ACTION-- LGBT Student Resources are at stake.

Three years ago LGBT Students had the following staff resources...
    - A permanent, full time Director of the LGBT Resource Center
    - A second permanent full time staff member, Assistant to the Director
    - A third, permanent staff member- Asst. Dean to LGBT Students; who advised Haven- along with the sponsored groups that fall within Haven- CU Gay Straight Alliance, LBQ, Zap!, OUTReach, Mosaic, Ga'avah, and FaQ (lgbtqcornell.blogspot.com), each of which bring social and educational programming and outreach to the community with the help of the Asst. Dean

Today LGBT Students have the following administrative resources...
    - ONE Temporary staff member (hired in the Fall)-- an Interim Director for the LGBTRC who has had to take on the task of minimally advising student groups because of an obvious inability to take on three jobs as one person.

*The Permanent Director position was not/has not been posted, even before the University wide hiring freeze
*The full time LGBTRC Asst. position was not/has not been posted, even before the University hiring freeze
*After over a year and a half of meetings with the Dean of Students and many other administrators/staff, the Assistant Dean position for LGBT Students, despite strenuous and largely behind the scenes efforts by myself and other student leaders, has not been filled. The position was not even posted until a year after the former Asst. Dean left. Attempting to push the process along at a faster pace, for the sake of our community, has been an incredibly frustrating process, which at many points has been disempowering for the students involved. We have been told to wait. We have been told to be patient. And we have been told, at some points, that we do not know what is best for our community... that administrators, not us, are more capable of understanding our position within the University and what benefits us as a community.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.

(read on!) 

On Tuesday, as the United States broke one barrior by electing the first African-American president of the United States, voters in California, Arizona and Florida chose to amend their constitutions to institute discrimination against gays and lesbians in a blatant betrayal of the principals of equality. While all hope is not lost and we will eventually get the equality we deserve, that goal has without question been pushed just a little further back.

"Struggles over civil rights never follow a straight trajectory, and the ugly outcome of these ballot fights should not obscure the building momentum for full equality for gay people, including acceptance of marriage between gay men and women. But the votes remind us of how much remains to be done before this bigotry is finally erased."
Equality's Winding Path, New York Times

More on the challenges to Proposition 8 .