No shared rooms for unmarried partners on school trips, school says

Published: 2006-04-25

ST. PAUL, Minn. (CNS) -- In an effort to "maintain the integrity of the university's Catholic nature," the University of St. Thomas will not allow faculty or staff who accompany students on trips off campus to share a room with an unmarried partner, the university's president announced April 19. Father Dennis Dease said in a column for Bulletin Today, a St. Thomas online publication, that the new policy "is not about the private lives or consciences of faculty and staff." "Rather, it is about the University of St. Thomas, in its institutional acts, being what it purports to be: a Catholic university," he wrote. "While the institution is committed to respect the right of individual members to hold values not in harmony with Catholic teaching, it also expects that those individuals will respect its right as a Catholic university to refrain from endorsing such values." The dispute at St. Thomas has revolved around what's more important: St. Thomas' right to uphold moral policies based on its identity as a Catholic institution, or its efforts to treat all people with tolerance and without discrimination.

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