SPOKANE — Pops of color frequently disrupted the steady stream of capped and gowned students who received their diplomas at Whitworth University last month as dozens of students handed University President Scott McQuilkin pride flags.
The act of protest over the university’s hiring policy, which currently does not offer protection to LGBTQ+ faculty and staff, was delivered with smiles and waves.
It unfolded about a year after the university’s board of trustees first publicly said it would review the hiring policy. The board has not made a decision.
More than two dozen trustees contacted by The Spokesman-Review did not respond to requests for comment, including board chairman Brian Kirkpatrick. The university declined to make anyone available for an interview or answer questions about the board’s decision-making process.
The graduation display followed a semester of activism in support of LGBTQ+ employees, led largely by students. Members of the school’s Pride Club drew chalk art supporting queer people across campus and hung posters throughout the semester, according to reports in the student newspaper, the Whitworthian.
In March, a new round of petitions began circling in the community, one with more than 230 signatures opposed to adding sexual orientation as a protected class. The petition had no listed author, and it’s unclear who organized it.
In response, students created a counter-petition under the name “Signal Safe Space WU” advocating for LGBTQ+ protections. It garnered nearly 1,700 signatures.
Last month, the group raised funds to print a student-produced zine advocating for LGBTQ+ protections, which they sent to the 36 members of the board of trustees, along with other members of university leadership.
Recent graduates Cienna Dumaoal and Urvashi Lalwani, along with Annaclare Splettstoeszer, who will be a senior in the fall, created Signal Safe Space in hopes of making Whitworth a more affirming place before they graduate.
After the board of trustees declined to meet with Signal Safe Space ahead of the April board meeting, the group felt demonstrating at graduation was a good next step, Splettstoeszer said.
“It felt important for graduating seniors to feel like they made a mark on the university,” Splettstoeszer said. “Not all protest has to be angry or sad, but that it could be joyful and something that you could take pride in.”
Handing out the flags was inspired by the viral 2022 TikTok of Seattle Pacific University students handing their interim university president Pride flags. Lalwani, along with an anonymous donor, purchased 200 flags for the graduation ceremony that were handed out to students and their families, she said.
“It was really nice to see the president accepting them,” Lalwani said.
Throughout the graduation ceremony, Signal Safe Space’s work was brought up directly by one speaker and more indirectly by others.
Professor Erica Salkin’s speech centered on students doing a “small act of courage,” a phrase inspired by a Smithsonian Magazine article on Mary Beth Tinker, who as a student protested the Vietnam war by wearing a black arm band with a peace sign on it to school. When school officials forced Tinker to remove the armband, she, along with the ACLU, filed a lawsuit that made it all the way to the Supreme Court and created the “Tinker Test” giving students more First Amendment rights in school.
Whitworth’s graduating class is prepared to go into the world courageously through what they learned in the classroom, resident halls, clubs and other aspects of their student experience, Salkin said.
“The world needs your small acts of courage,” Salkin said.
Ongoing evaluation
The university, through spokeswoman Trisha Coder, said in July that the board of trustees had appointed an advisory committee to examine the school’s hiring language, which doesn’t restrict or protect LGBTQ+ faculty or staff.
Sparked by retired professor Kathy Lee’s coming out in a New Yorker story last June that detailed her struggles as a gay professor at Whitworth, the university’s community members have pushed for change.
Hundreds signed a petition asking the university to affirm and protect queer faculty and staff.
The controversy at Whitworth mirrors other universities that belong to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, a prominent group of evangelical Protestant schools.
Most notable is Seattle Pacific University, which faces lawsuits and reduced enrollment over its employee lifestyle expectations policy that states employees are expected to refrain from same-sex sexual activity.
Some schools have become affirming, such as Eastern University in Pennsylvania, which was summarily put on hold by the conference last year pending a review. Other schools have left the conference dating back to 2015 over their policies affirming LGBTQ+ staff and faculty.
Whitworth trustees have said there’s no timeline for a policy decision. The board of trustees meets twice a year but can convene any time, Coder said.
Following their regularly scheduled April meeting, university leadership updated faculty and staff. The committee examining the issue has made a recommendation to the broader group of trustees, Coder said.
Lalwani and Splettstoeszer said despite repeated efforts to talk with administrators, they don’t understand the process the board of trustees is using to evaluate the issue.
“There has been absolutely no communication with students about what the process is,” she said.
The trustees’ meeting minutes aren’t public, Lalwani added.
“It’s genuinely so hard to know how these meetings operate at all,” she said.
The majority of the information Splettstoeszer gleaned about the process has come from Coder’s statements to the media, she said.
“It leaves students feeling like they don’t have a direct way to speak to the board about something as important as this,” she said.
Lalwani and Splettstoeszer feel they’ve done their best to make their voices heard.
“I am just feeling like we’ve done everything in our power and more to make this issue loud,” Lalwani said.
