Apr 11, 2008  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

Once he realized that he was gay, Ayush Gupta said his life fell apart.

An immigrant from India and research associate at the University of Maryland in College Park, Gupta said he had no idea where to turn or whom to ask for advice.

“I was really struggling,” he said. “You don’t get queer-positive signals in the engineering department.”

Fearing that being outed could endanger his funding or trigger his deportation, Gupta kept quiet. He said there was one person on campus, though, in whom he could confide.

Shiva Subbaraman, a fellow immigrant and associate director of the school’s LGBT Equity office, helped Gupta come out, he said, and ultimately made him “comfortable being a queer student on campus.”

Gupta said her advice and perspective were invaluable.

“If you are a person of color and you are undergoing this really stressful time,” he said, “you really need a person who can understand your issues.”

But the campus could soon lose Subbaraman as budget woes have left renewal of her $65,000 salary position in doubt. Students and faculty at College Park are scrambling to save Subbaraman’s job, circulating petitions and penning letters of support that emphasize her accomplishments.

The appeals also echo Subbaraman’s concern that the LGBT Equity office would not be as effective at half staff.

“You cannot do the work of this office with one person in it,” she said. “You can’t even do it with two, and to take away half is completely unrealistic and completely unfair to a vulnerable population.”

College Park Provost Nariman Farvardin said in a letter last month that he was “unable to make commitments involving positions and funding,” but the LGBT Equity office “remains a high priority” for him.

Luke Jensen, the office’s director, said the letter did little to encourage him or Subbaraman.

“This just reads to me like he’s preparing us for the worst,” he said. “We have over 25,000 undergraduate students and we’re going to have one person in the LGBT office? This makes no sense. This tells you something about the priorities.”



‘Absolute need’

Subbaraman, a 52-year-old lesbian who came to College Park two years ago, said she would hate to leave the campus.

“What keeps me getting up in the morning and doing this work is I personally believe I am, as far as I know, the only full-time staff member of color who is out on this campus,” she said. “And that terrifies me, because it tells me that there is absolute need for my presence, and my public presence, on this campus.”

Jensen said Subbaraman is the only woman of color employed on campus who’s willing to place her name on the Out List, an annual directory of gay faculty and staff.

“The fact that one woman of color is willing to self-identify says something nasty about racism and sexism and homophobia,” he said. “And to say we might lose that person because the provost can’t find the money is shocking.”

Kandice Fields, a College Park junior who’s fighting to save Subbaraman’s job, agreed.

“She’s competent and capable and there’s a need for the position,” said Fields, a lesbian. “I just don’t understand why they would cut such an important position. They should be adding another one.”

Jensen said his struggle to keep Subbaraman is reflective, though, of the school’s handling of gay issues.

He said that “queers get the short end of the stick” from university administrators, and the LGBT Equity office has become “the last priority, over and over again.”

Jensen said college administrators have reminded him Subbaraman’s job was only guaranteed to exist for two years and wouldn’t necessarily be renewed.

“But what Farvardin fails to understand is by withdrawing this resource, it isn’t a failure to get something, it’s a withdrawal of support,” he said. “He exacerbates the longstanding problem that many LGBT faculty see, and that is a lack of support for LGBT folks on campus.”

Subbaraman said she’s worked to remedy that problem during her two years on campus.

She’s shepherded programs that educate students and faculty about gay topics, forged new ties between the LGBT Equity office and several student groups, and worked to strengthen recognition of key events, like National Coming Out Day.

But there are some institutional problems, Subbaraman said, that she can’t remedy.

“We don’t have domestic partner benefits, and we don’t have gender identity and expression, still, in our non-discrimination policy,” she said. “So we will be falling further and further behind. And we used to be the leaders around this.”

Joshua Lynsen can be reached at jlynsen@washblade.com.