Issue date: 5/4/05 Section: Opinion

When gay or lesbian students run into trouble at Sacramento State, they know that Bonnie Sugiyama is there to help. Sitting in her office across the breezeway from the library -- sharing space with the Women's Resource Center and Multicultural Center -- Sugiyama has spent the last year supporting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students by providing counseling resources, advice and a friendly sounding board for their concerns.

Beyond simply supporting gay and lesbian students, Sugiyama has brought in nationally known speakers to inspire hope in a largely invisible minority of the campus community. She works closely with the Queer Straight Alliance and professors, organizing panel discussions in classes, where gay and lesbian students explain what it was like to "come out" and discuss what it's like to be gay or lesbian at Sac State.

Sugiyama has even organized outreach to gay and lesbian youths in area high schools -- students who drop out at rates four times the national average and suffer suicide rates even worse -- to show them that it is indeed possible to beat these obstacles and achieve success in higher education.

Yet next year the program that employs Sugiyama may not exist. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Allied and Queer program will be cut off from the financial support of Associated Students Inc. if its latest budget proposal is passed. Last year's grant from ASI of about $7,000 was enough to start the program by paying half of Sugiyama's part-time stipend as a gradate student assistant. The Department of Student Affairs paid the other half and seems willing to put up the money again this year, but it appears that ASI is balking at paying its share. Without that funding, according to Dr. Patricia Grady, Coordinator of the Women's Resource Center, Sugiyama's program will not survive.

The budget proposal introduced at the ASI board meeting on April 27 listed all of the external grant proposals received by ASI with the corresponding amounts it proposes to give. After handing nearly $3 million of its $9 million budget to Hornet athletics, the finance and budget committee found a total of $260,000 to grant to programs dedicated to outreach, retention, multiculturalism and recreational sports. The grants total is smaller than last year's despite a total budget that has increased in size. One crucial example of the grants shrinkage is the complete cut of Sugiyama's program, which showed a zero on its budget line.

However, not all of ASI's external grant recipients are hurting. The clubs run under recreational sports, which receives nearly all of its funding from ASI, received $50,000, a $5,000 increase from last year. ASI's Vice President of Finance James Shelby II defended the increase, stating that it would help pay for recreational sports teams wishing to travel to games outside the area.

Understandably, many students feel angry and betrayed by their representatives on the board. About forty students, faculty and staff filled the public seating area of the board's meeting room last Wednesday to protest the cut of Sugiyama's program. In less than 24 hours, the students collected 152 letters of support from the campus community. The protestors addressed the board in increasingly emotional and heated statements.

The session reached a peak when some students stormed out of the room with Vice President of Academic Affairs Luke Wood's statement that he had voted to fund the program last year despite having "moral objections" to the program being on campus. In the end, both the audience and the board were insulted and hurt, yet the sad irony was that neither group actually intended to antagonize the other.

This conflict is a troubling one because of the severity of opinions involved. There is no doubt that some board members -- including Shelby -- feel that their religious beliefs justify the effective removal of Sugiyama's program. Yet there are other, more courageous individuals on the board as well. Some have set aside their prejudices and approached the issue with an open mind.

Some strongly question the cut. Others have expressed dismay at the deliberate exclusion of gay and lesbian students. In the upcoming board meeting -- today at 1:30 p.m. in Sequoia Hall -- the vote on whether Sugiyama's program lives on will be a heated and close one.

Yet no matter how the board decides the issue, the discussion it sparks is one we must all take part in. Deciding the spending of $9 million in student funds is not something to be done clandestinely or with concealed intentions. Go to the meeting and speak your mind. After all, it's your money.

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Sean Catanese can be reached at opinion@statehornet.com

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