Arabic lecturer Uri Horesh ended his hunger strike Sunday against UT's non-discrimination policy with a liter of Very Veggie juice, a couple of granola bars and a cheeseburger.
Horesh began his strike last Monday because of the University's refusal to provide health care benefits to employees' same-sex partners on the grounds of Texas law. The strike ended on the seventh day. Horesh said his body began to break down on the sixth day from the lack of food. He lost 15 pounds this past week, he said.
Horesh said a leading factor in ending the hunger strike was the impact it was having on completing his dissertation for the University of Pennsylvania. He had been spending too much time talking to the media and responding to e-mails during the time he had initially set aside for research, he said.
"I am ending my hunger strike," Horesh wrote in an e-mail Sunday. "I do so with some guilt and a lot of frustration that my measures have not served as leverage with the powers that be at UT to urgently move for a change that would ensure equality in our community."
Horesh said he did not know what to expect when he started his hunger strike. His ideal goal - to put enough pressure on the UT administration to take immediate action on the issue - was not necessarily met, though others were, he said.
"There was a lot of media attention," Horesh said. "It was exciting to an extent to see my name in the paper, but more importantly, it brought the matter to daylight."
Horesh said he received a job offer this past week from a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania but is not sure if he is going to take it. This college would offer domestic partnership health benefits and sponsor a green card for him to stay and work if his contract were to extend past his work visa, which UT does not offer for a non-tenure-track lecturer.
Horesh began applying for positions at other universities when his initial complaint against the University's non-discrimination policy was denied in November by Linda Millstone, associate vice president for institutional equity and workforce diversity.
Lynne Milburn, co-chair of the Pride and Equity Faculty Staff Association, said she thinks a positive outcome of Horesh's actions is the association's new collaboration with Equality Texas to bring same-sex benefits to the UT campus.
"Different people have different strategies to make change," said Milburn, who expressed a strong and supportive relationship between the association and the administration.
The association has been researching national trends in relation to benefits for domestic partners for about a year and collecting narratives from faculty and staff who have been affected by these rules, said Milburn, who also chairs the domestic partnership benefits subcommittee.
Milburn said she does not feel pressure from the media attention brought on by Horesh's hunger strike.
"I feel it's important to do this in a way that's most effective. It's the difference between a marathon and a sprint," she said. "When you're making social change, it's a marathon, and we understand that."
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