Family Attorney

A makeshift shantytown that was raised on Feb. 6 in the shadow of the administration building at the University of California at Irvine is challenging a new policy that bars non-traditional couples, including homosexuals and lesbians, from living together in housing for married students.

A makeshift shantytown that was raised on Feb. 6 in the shadow of the administration building at the University of California at Irvine is challenging a new policy that bars non-traditional couples, including homosexuals and lesbians, from living together in housing for married students.

Students set up a row of cardboard boxes and tents, occupied by a varying number of men and women, along a sidewalk to protest Chancellor Jack Peltason’s decision to delete a set of provisions from a housing manual that allows unmarried couples to live in family dormitories.

Under the revised regulations, students whose partners do not attend the university and are not married to them are excluded from living in the residence halls. For the last year and a half, three lesbian couples were admitted by a more permissive policy that allowed them to live together if financial need could be proved.

With that section of the rule now deleted, university officials are insisting there has been no change in standards, and that gay and lesbian partners never qualified for family housing. In a letter to Chancellor Peltason, Horace Mitchell, the vice chancellor for student affairs, explained that the couples allowed in under the old policy were admitted as roommates.

Domestic Partnership

‘’Under the situation at U.C.I., two single gay or lesbian students can live together without it being an issue,'’ he wrote. But the university will recognize only couples with a marriage license, he said.

The change in the housing manual also prompted about 100 students to stage a sit-in inside the administration building. Eight students who were allowed to meet with the Chancellor were told that the university would recognize only legal marriages, not homosexual partnerships, for married student housing.

More than 400 students and faculty members have signed a petition asking the university to validate domestic partnership, a term usually defined as a contract between two persons who are dependent on each other, not relatives and unmarried. Supporters of the move say university recognition would give homosexuals the same rights and benefits as legally married couples.

Students have occupied the flimsy shantytown shelters around the clock for more than a week, contending with 30-degree temperatures and strong winds at night. ‘’It was going to be a 24-hour vigil,'’ said Holly Huckeba, a second-year history graduate student from Los Angeles. ‘’But there was such overwhelming support that we decided to keep going.'’

List of Demands

On Tuesday morning, the occupants were awakened by four men who pelted the shelters with raw eggs and fled. At another point an administrator told the protesters to leave the site immediately and called on campus facilities managers to remove them. But Ronald R. Wilson, the campus ombudsman, intervened on behalf of the demonstrators.

‘’As students at the university they have a right to be there,'’ Mr. Wilson said. ‘’They will be permitted to stay on campus indefinitely.'’

On Friday, the protesters gave a list of demands to the Chancellor that included recognition of domestic partnership, the creation of a fee-financed gay and lesbian student center and recruitment of openly homosexual faculty members.

John Smith, an associate professor of German, said the Chancellor may be bowing to pressure from other University of California administrators who see Irvine’s previous policy as too permissive. Supporters of domestic-partnership housing also say the city of Irvine, where voters last year passed a measure removing the word ‘’sexual preference'’ from a nondiscrimination bill, is reacting to the issue of gay and lesbian rights.

‘’The university does not want to recognize domestic partnerships,'’ Mr. Smith said. ‘’They do not want gays and lesbians seen as married people.'’

More : query.nytimes.com