GAY PEOPLE'S

Chronicle

Ohio's Newspaper for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

QUALITY FUT

SETH MARKS

John Carroll University student Miriam McGinn had a message for the school's board of directors.

John Carroll board asks Niehoff to include gays in bias rules

by Anthony Glassman

University Heights-The board of John Carroll University has asked the school's president to develop a non-discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation, following a month of protests over the lack of such a rule.

Tensions between LGBT advocates and the Jesuit college's administration became visible with a sit-in at a February 3 basketball game. Just over a month later, a second non-violent protest prompted the board's move.

Over 300 people went to the Lombardo Student Center for a rally coinciding with the board's March 9 meeting. They were supported by the Cleveland LGBT Center, Equality Ohio, the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland,

the Cleveland Stonewall Democrats, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, the Human Rights Campaign and gay-straight alliances from Cleveland State University and Case Western Reserve University.

The rally began at 7:30 pm and went until 11 pm. Bands played, people were photographed with tape over their mouths to symbolize the silencing of LGBT and allied voices, petitions were signed and people wrote their personal stories, which were given to the board the next morning.

Attending the rally were students from John Carroll, CSU and CWRU, along with JCU faculty members and alumni dating back to the class of 1969.

In the month before the March 9 meeting and the rally, 65 people

Inside This Issue

signed up for a rolling fast to keep a visible presence in the student center, and 30 people held a silent fast on the day of the rally.

Within days, the board met with students who had spoken before the Academic and Student Affairs subcommittees, and asked university president Fr. Robert Niehoff to develop a nondiscrimination policy that includes sexual orientation.

Niehoff then sent a letter to the Cleveland suburban school's students, telling them, "The board wholeheartedly supports our continued efforts to create a safe environment for all which includes members of the LGBT community. Remaining faithful to our Jesuit Catholic character, we seek Continued on page 7

Volume 25, Issue 20 March 26, 2010

New center director has a familiar face

Jan Cline was associate director in the early part of the decade

by Anthony Glassman

Cleveland-Within four months of the departure of Sue Doerfer, the Cleveland LGBT Center has found a new executive director, although he is a familiar face to those who went to the center years ago.

Jan Cline originally joined the center's development department in the late 1990s, rising to associate director and then interim director when Linda Malicki left in 2002.

He will assume the role of executive director on March 29, although he is already "helping out and learning things."

After he left the center in late 2002, Cline headed to Portland, Maine, where he was the executive director of Outright Maine, an LGBT youth leadership development organization. He followed that with a stint in grant writing and public relations for the Food Bank of Eastern Virginia in Norfolk before returning to Cleveland.

"Before I left, I heard people say time and again, 'Oh, you'll be back," he recalled. "I guess I'm a northeast Ohioan at heart, because I needed to be home."

For the last year and a half, Cline has worked for the Gordon

community things, more as a spectator," he said. "I know being in this role will change that."

"Certainly my involvement so far will help me, and my previous experience working at the center gives me insight into how community centers work," he continued.

In addition, he now brings nearly a decade of additional know-how to the position.

"I have direct executive director experience that I didn't have [when he left], I have a deeper understanding of grants, grant management and foundational experience,” he noted. “I would say that eight years ago I would have been barely prepared, and now I feel completely prepared."

Part of that preparation is having his priorities in order. Cline said that he will hit the ground running, "as anyone in a small non-profit has to."

"Of course I have a priority of making sure the center stays as a viable non-profit, as Sue turned it around to," he continued. "I'd really like to work on some strategic movement for the community. Part of the success of our center being around since 1975 is that its focus has adapted as needed while staying as a community-based center."

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