The United Fund campaign is now underway in our community.  Soon faculty
and staff on this campus will be receiving solicitations for donations.
Unfortunately, those requests should give us pause this year.

As most of you probably know, the umbrella organization of the National
Boy Scouts last year chose to specify that gays would not be acceptable as
troop leaders.  A recent issue of Newsweek magazine reported that several
United Fund chapters in the Northeast, New England, and California have
responded to that discriminatory policy by withdrawing financial support
for local Boy Scout councils.  This has not happened in our area.  Our
United Fund will continue to give money to the Cherokee Council of the Boy
Scouts.

We are required by law at UTC to adopt policies that do not discriminate
against persons on account of gender, race, religion, and other
characteristics.  We have gay and lesbian students and faculty.  What the
Boy Scouts has done is insulting to them.  It smacks of bigotry.  I am a
former Boy Scout myself.  I do not believe that what the leadership of the
organization has done is in the best tradition of scouting.

All of us will have to decide on the basis of our own consciences what is
the right thing to do in these circumstances.  Personally, I have no
attention of giving directly to the United Fund this year.  Nor will I
give in the future until either the Boy Scouts changes their policies or
the United Fund withdraws its support of the Boy Scouts. Since I recognize
that the United Fund benefits many worthwhile local charities, I intend to
adopt a different policy.  I will give to one of the charitable
organizations they fund what I would have otherwise given to the United
Fund.  But I do not think that business should go on as usual for the
United Fund.

Mike Russell