The president's commission on lesbian, gay, and bisexual issues was an important step, but getting a resource center and domestic partner benefits are much more vital. Both groups worked closely in drafting the proposals, but the students were shut out of the critical decision-making process once the Administration was deciding what to do. The Administration only called the faculty-staff association, leaving us to wonder what happened. Perhaps if we had tighter connections with the faculty-staff group, we would have known what was going on even if administration wanted to ignore us. Based on that, I would advise other student groups to not only keep pressing their administration about the issues they want heard, but to also really get to know their faculty-staff organization.
Solid connections can only help in the future.