UCI Rejects Demand by Students : Campus housing: Administration says it won’t take any other action now regarding its policy on ‘non-traditional’ families.

Students protesting a ban on housing “non-traditional” families and couples at UC Irvine delivered a letter to university officials Monday requesting an apology for “incorrect assertions” about the school’s housing policy, but university officials rejected their demand.

In a written response to the students, the administration said it was “not prepared to take any other actions at this time” to satisfy students who have been protesting the university’s refusal to allow gay and lesbian and other “non-traditional families” to reside in campus family housing.

Judy Olson, vice president for internal affairs of the Associated Graduate Students, said student protesters will occupy until Friday a cardboard “shantytown” constructed outside the administration building last week, and will reconstruct it “in a couple of weeks” if negotiations with the administration fail.

“We’re disappointed,” Olson said. “It’s not really a response at all.”

In the students’ letter, the Shantytown Committee and the Gay and Lesbian Student Union demanded that Chancellor Jack W. Peltason retract a statement he made last week saying that gay and lesbian couples never qualified for campus family housing and that he reinstate a trial housing policy that had been in effect since September, 1988.

“There are two short-term goals to which we expect an immediate response,” the letter stated. “First, we respectfully request an apology to the (UC Irvine) community for your incorrect assertions about the 1989-90 Verano Exceptions Committee Policy.

“Second, we expect you to reinstate the definition of non-traditional family units outlined in Vice Chancellor (Horace Mitchell’s memo of Feb. 15, 1989, per your original intent to address the needs of lesbian and gay couples for Verano family housing.”

The first demand refers to a Jan. 31 statement issued by Peltason to the campus community in which he said the university never had a policy exception that allowed homosexual or other unmarried couples to room in Verano Place, an 860-unit apartment that currently houses at least three lesbian couples.

“The policy has been and remains that housing is available only to students and, in the case of family housing, to students, their spouses and/or any of their dependent children,” Peltason said in the statement. “Gay or lesbian couples living together in a domestic partnership or an unmarried heterosexual couple living together do not qualify for family housing.

“Marriage is defined by public policy by the state, and that relationship is the only relationship that qualifies couples for family housing without going through the exceptions process,” the statement continued. “This has been our policy and remains so.”

Student protesters said that statement contradicted the Feb. 15, 1989, memo from Mitchell detailing a pilot program that allowed exceptions to the housing policy based on financial or other hardships. The memo, in part, read: “It is possible for gay and lesbian couples (when one member is a non-student) to be considered under this procedure on a case-by-case, exceptional basis. However, the criteria do not include the recognition of a domestic partnership agreement.”

The second demand in the letter sent to Peltason on Monday asks for the reinstatement of the exception procedure. Eleven non-traditional families--including three lesbian couples, four sibling families, three students living with their parents and one extended family--were accepted into Verano Place during the pilot program.

In the response to the students Monday, Mitchell said that while the university regrets “that there has been some misunderstanding with respect to our housing policies and procedures,” the administration is “not prepared to take any other actions at this time.”

“We’re disappointed that the response came from Vice Chancellor Mitchell,” Olson said. “We’d like to see some sort of acknowledgment of our position from the chancellor himself.”

Peltason and Mitchell could not be reached for comment Monday.

Olson said students will hold a planning meeting Wednesday to discuss the next step in the demonstration. She said “the possibility of civil disobedience” was among the options to be discussed.

Danica Kirka contributed to this report.