The pressure is mounting on the University Board of Regents to add a clause to the University bylaws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression.

This time, the prodding is coming not only from the LGBT community on campus, but from University faculty.

The faculty senate Assembly will vote Monday on a resolution passed 6-1 last week by the Senate Assembly Committee on University Affairs, the executive arm of the faculty senate.

Proponents say the clause would protect transgender individuals from discrimination and would be a symbolic sign of recognition and respect.

The resolution also requests that policies in the University's Standard Practice Guides - separate from the bylaws - also be changed to describe gender identity and expression as a distinct protection. The SPG policy on nondiscrimination currently footnotes gender identity and expression as subcategories under the general category of sex.

"(The University administration) has moved to change the language everywhere they are able," University spokeswoman Julie Peterson said.

Peterson said the decision to footnote gender identity and expression stemmed from the University general counsel's interpretation of a 2004 case in which the 6th Circuit Court ruled that discrimination of gender identity and expression is assumed to be "expressly" protected along with sex.

In a Februrary 2005 letter that followed, then-University Provost Paul Courant informed the campus community of the University's position.

"Discrimination against members of the University community based on gender non-conforming behavior, gender expression or gender identity is prohibited," Courant wrote.

Peterson also said the University is now focused on enacting the policy, citing steps that the administration has already taken, including posting a list of unisex bathrooms across campus and expanding Department of Public Safety training to include LGBT-related issues.

LSA sophomore Jaya Kalra, who serves as co-chair of the Stonewall Democrats, an arm of the College Democrats that focuses on LGBT issues, is not satisfied with the current language of the regental or administrative policies.

"It makes a stronger statement if the University says it explicitly," she said.

Kalra said a change in policy language is inevitable because the University will eventually "look foolish" amidst the growing number of campuses that have changed their policies on gender identity and expression.

More than 50 schools have changed their policies, including Harvard University - which changed its policy earlier this week to explicitly prevent discrimination-based on gender identity - and Ohio State University.

Social work Prof. Brett Seabury, a SACUA member who worked closely on the proposed resolution, said faculty involvement in the issue is needed.

Seabury said the reason the regents have been reluctant to act on the issue may be because it is politically charged.

Law Prof. Bruce Frier, a SACUA member, said he suspects regents are not eager to take up the issue.

He referred to a parallel proceeding in the 1990s when groups, attempting to include sexual orientation as a protected group, encountered underwhelming support from the regents.

"The same thing is happening this time," he said.

When sexual orientation was added to the nondiscrimination policy in September 1993, it was welcomed but widely viewed as long overdue. More than 150 colleges and universities had already adopted similar changes. The regents approved the change 7-1. Then-University Regent Deane Baker was the sole dissenter.