ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Housing Flap: UCI Needs Candor

How did it come to this at UC Irvine, a campus that has never been comfortable with protest? Gay and lesbian activists have taken down their cardboard “shantytown,” with threats of more protests to follow.

For one thing, the university ought to be clearer about its policies and be willing to admit when it has bred confusion. There also should be an understanding that the university retains the right to decide eligibility for family housing in a manner consistent with other campuses in the University of California system.

The administration at Irvine issued a memo last year that detailed a pilot program allowing gay and lesbian couples to be considered for married-student housing. Then the university did an about-face this year, saying that there never was a shift in policy--only a misunderstanding. There wasn’t any misunderstanding at all, which explains why the activists were so upset.

The administration should own up to its reversal and acknowledge that it hadn’t thought through its trial balloon. Then it must get on with the business of improving the climate of communication between the university and its constituencies. It’s never too late for candor. While it’s about it, UCI should affirm priority status for married students with children, a group that now has to make a case for hardship to move up the housing waiting list.

As for the larger issue of “non-traditional families,” you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Look no further than to the Census Bureau, which announced last week that it would attempt to count the number of people who consider themselves “unmarried partners.” Complexity 1and all, society’s leading institutions eventually are going to have to come to terms with changing definitions of the modern family unit.