University of South Florida to offer Domestic Partner Benefits
9/10/09-by Paula Brooks
The University of South Florida has announced it plans to start offering full domestic partner benefits to both heterosexual and gay employees at the university.
“We believe it’s the right thing to do, and we’ll work to make it happen this year,” said USF president Judy Genshaft during her annual state of the university yesterday.
The USF system has about 13,000 employees with campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota and Lakeland and about 6,000 of those employees would be eligible for domestic partner benefits.
When LGR contacted USF this morning, we were told that the details of the benefits and eligibility requirements are still being worked out, but were also told the DP benefits would indeed cover both heterosexual and same-sex couples.
The schools administrators and faculty members have been discussing the issue of benefits for domestic partners for about two years now, but Wednesday’s announcement by Genshaft is the first public acknowledgment that the USF is committed to providing those benefits.
A study done by USF prior to yesterday announcement showed that many large national research universities with whom the school competes for faculty members already offer domestic partner benefits, and to attract top educators USF needed to do likewise.
Similar benefits are also currently offered at the University of Florida in Tallahassee.
South Florida officials don’t know how much the added benefits will cost, but told us state funds cannot be used. They also said they expect “to hear some feedback” on their decision to provide the benefits by some residents of the State.
The University of South Florida is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and was 14th among the nation’s top 20 “up and coming universities” in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report college rankings.
USF serves more than 46,000 students across its various campuses.
Judy Genshaft during her annual state of the university address
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will i hope everyone going to take there first steps to legalize this all over the u.sa. way to go
I’m so excited that my alma mater (USF) is going to be doing this! Just one nit-picky point on the article: University of Florida (UF) is in Gainesville. Florida State University (FSU) is in Tallahassee.
Thank you for the correction… but I also have to give a bit of a chuckle here… Because I got the location of UF from my contact at USF… and I did not do a back check thinking, after all she does work for a University.