ARCHIVE - September, 2001

The Enemies of Excellence
Tom Mayer, Department of Sociology

Every once in a while something happens that quickly but irreversibly defines the nature of a social institution. The refusal to extend employee health benefits to domestic partners is such an event. While the CU Board of Regents may someday reverse its pernicious decision, the damage done to the University of Colorado by the vote of September 6 will long endure. The injustice to gay and lesbian people by the denial of domestic partner benefits is obvious to any fair minded individual. The link between the Regents’ decision and our country’s shameful history of homophobia is also apparent. Less evident, however, is the stunning blow dealt by this refusal to CU’s aspirations for greatness and to hopes of building a culture of excellence at this university.

I learned about the rejection of domestic partner benefits just prior to hearing Chancellor Byyny and President Hoffman speak, with unquestionable sincerity, on how they proposed to make CU great. They both dwelt at length upon economic resources and research effort. Yet if resources and effort could themselves produce a culture of excellence, then excellent universities would be relatively common. Academic greatness is not made by bread and sweat alone. Another indispensable element is an ethos that ignites the imagination and encourages creative fire. This involves stimulating unconventional thought, inviting experimental practices, and welcoming non-standard individuals. The Regents’ decision fundamentally assaults these preconditions of academic greatness. It signals that unconventional thinking, experimental practices, and unorthodox individuals are not really accepted at the University of Colorado. Deeply creative spirits will probably feel ill at ease at an institution that declines treating gay and lesbian people with fairness and respect.

A great university imbued with a culture of excellence assiduously protects vulnerable minorities not only because this is the right thing to do, but also because vulnerable minorities are a potent source of creative energy. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people have an outstanding record of intellectual and artistic accomplishment. I do not think this results from any genetic characteristics of GLBT populations, but from the particular nature of their social marginality. A marginal individual is less wedded to standard thinking and also more cognizant of unacknowledged cultural assumptions. The experience of vulnerability often induces a collective intellectual alertness as a defensive measure to cope with real or imagined dangers. Such alertness is readily transferred to the academic realm, which helps explain the impressive intellectual achievements of marginalized people including gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered individuals.

A university truly ambitious for excellence would treat its GLBT population as a precious resource. The University of Colorado’s failure to do so indicates that it is unwilling and/or unable to follow the path of greatness. Our hard working and well meaning administrators do not really understand where this path lies. On the other hand, the regents who voted against domestic partner benefits – Tom Lucero, Norwood Robb, Jerry Rutledge, and Peter Steinhauer – as well as the regent who abstained – Maureen Ediger – are clearly enemies of excellence. They oppose excellence not because they deliberately reject progress, but for two other reasons. Their thinking about university affairs, as may be seen by their own statements, is suffused with a deep and seemingly irremediable banality. And, notwithstanding their protests to the contrary, they remain entangled by the tentacles of a homophobic culture.

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The opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors, and do not represent those of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, CU faculty at large, or the University of Colorado.

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