She used to call it the "coming out chair."

It was 1995. Kate Wattum, a statewide system employee, and another employee at UAF had sued the university for not providing healthcare benefits to same-sex couples and dom estic partners and won at the superior court. The university began extending benefits to gay and lesbian couples.

The new policy had strict privacy controls. But at least initially, some gay employees worried that if their partners received benefits, then everyone would know they were gay. Some came to Wattum for advice.

"People would slowly come into the office or call me on the phone, and they'd sit in this chair here," she says, referring to an orange chair across from her desk. "I felt like the gay benefits coordinator."

Today, Wattum, 43, coordinates the UA system's Web sites. Her family, including her partner, gets health benefits like any other university employee's family. No one has sat in the chair and asked Wattum for advice about the benefits in three years.

Above her computer hangs a color marker drawing by one of her daughters. Wattum splits custody of her 13-year-old son and twin 10-year-old girls with her ex-partner. Her ex got benefits for a time too.

When she sued in 1993, Wattum hoped to create a precedent that would eventually extend domestic partner benefits throughout the state, something that finally happened this year. Now voters will voice their opinions in an April 3 advisory vote on whether Alaska should ban these same-sex partner benefits, including Wattum's.

"She was sort of accidentally responsible for something that's turned into a big deal in this state," says Wendy Redman, vice president of university relations and head of Wattum's department. "She was really just looking for fairness."

LONG-TERM NANOOK

Wattum was born and raised in Palmer. When she was young, she collected Batman comic books and Pez dispensers, both of which can be found in boxes and crates below her desk at UA.

She learned how to protest early on. Wattum's mother was a teacher in the Mat-Su Valley School District. At the time, the district required that women wear dresses or skirts and men wear suits, regardless of the weather. Wattum says her mother, tired of complaining, began wearing a polyester pantsuit with comfortable, flat shoes.

Her mother was ready to get fired, Wattum says. Instead, nobody said anything and slowly other women began wearing practical clothes.

"I think the hardest part was the lack of reaction," she says. "Mom was ready for the good fight. There was no party, no congratulations, there was no resolution made to her personal effort to make a sweeping change, but I remember being very proud of her."

After graduating from Palmer High School, Wattum spent a semester at the University of Hawaii-Hilo and then earned her associate's degree at Colorado Mountain College. She then switched to UAF in 1982. She lived in Skarland and Lathrop Hall, largely the athlete and party dorms at the time.

"I came to college because I didn't have anything better to do, and then I got into the arts," Wattum says.

She majored in sculpting, a craft she still enjoys. On her desk sits eight clay sculptures of people. She also studied computer science, which helps in her current job managing Web sites.

For three years, the five-foot, eight-inch Wattum played for the women's basketball team as a walk-on.

"I was good enough to make the team," she says. "That was the position I really liked, because there wasn't a lot of pressure on you. You know, second string get to go everywhere and you don't have to perform."

From the stands, Redman, her future boss, had a different opinion. "She was good, she was very good," she says. "She was hot."

Wattum never told the team she was gay. But she says the team seemed to sense it.

"I was always an outsider on the basketball team. I wasn't part of the clique," she says. "I mean, nobody was mean to me, but I wasn't invited to be in that group."

Wattum says she was conflicted about being gay at the time, and today is embarrassed about some of the things she said and did in college. She drank a lot of beer. She dated mostly men.

After graduating in 1986, Wattum began working for printing services in probably the lowest-level job available at UAF, she says. She worked her way up to administrative assistant at the statewide Office of Public Affairs, and has been in the same cubicle ever since.

"I think I've held every job in the department except the director job," she says. "Which I don't want."

A FIGHT FOR EQUALITY

About 15 years ago, Wattum and others at the university started getting together and talking about their lack of benefits. Only a lawsuit could solve the problem, they decided.

They did outreach to the gay and lesbian communities at UAF looking for people who would put their names on the lawsuit. Due to the fear of being "out," only Wattum and an associate professor in engineering named Mark Tumeo did.

"There's a reason that people are young," Wattum says. "It's because they are idealistic and do things they probably wouldn't do if they knew better. But I wanted to do something important that would have an impact. I wanted to be involved in it. And I did."

Redman, who oversaw Wattum's department, says while it didn't cause office problems, it was surprising Wattum would be involved in the lawsuit.

"Kate's not the type of person you would ever have pegged at being at the forefront of social change," she says. "She's fairly low-key and not a public person. So I think it was difficult for her to be pushed into the limelight like that."

Tumeo, now a professor at Cleveland State University in Ohio, says Wattum was taking a large risk joining the lawsuit. As a professor, he had tenure. Wattum didn't.

"The reality was that I was much less out on limb than Kate was," he says.

In 1993, the two filed paperwork to get health insurance benefits for their partners. At the time, Wattum was living with a woman named Beverly McClendon. They had been together for about three years and had a son.

UA denied both requests. In its denial, the university said the "health care plan does not allow for coverage of a domestic partner, nor is there any obligation under the plan to provide such coverage."

Wattum and Tumeo filed several grievances. Once UA finally denied them, the two sued in January 1994.

After a year in the courts, Superior Court Judge Mary Greene ruled in Wattum and Tumeo's favor. The university was "compensating married employees to a greater extent than it compensates unmarried couples," Greene wrote, and that violated the state Human Rights Act.

A month later UA appealed, arguing the state had a right to discriminate with health benefits on the basis of marital status.

For Wattum and Tumeo, the fight was like David versus Goliath. By July 1996, UAF had spent about $60,000 fighting the case. In contrast, Tumeo was often stuck sending out dispatches to online gay alliance networks requesting donations to offset growing legal fees. They held fundraisers. Their lawyer cut them a break, but they still owed him money. Tumeo covered the bills so Wattum wouldn't have to. In the end, he spent more than $25,000 on legal bills.

"Justice isn't cheap, unfortunately," Tumeo says.

Administratively, Wattum says, she had support at UA to keep the suit going. But the Board of Regents urged the lawsuit forward.

As the lawsuit continued, UA began allowing domestic partners to claim benefits temporarily. Tuition waivers soon followed. Wattum predicted few enrollees, as many gay couples didn't want to be public. And that guess came true. After four months, only 38 employees had enrolled, and only 16 were same-sex relationships.

Meanwhile, Rep. Pete Kelly, now UA's state lobbyist, introduced a bill that would prevent the state and companies from paying domestic partnership benefits.

"I would think encouragement of intact families is a societal benefit that is worthy of some form of discrimination," Kelly told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

In April 1996, the Legislature approved the bill. Gov. Tony Knowles signed it.

The case was in peril. The university had appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, but the court could dismiss it if it decided the laws had been changed sufficiently. To keep the case going, Wattum and Tumeo filed a motion to argue their case on constitutional, rather than statutory, grounds. And while those motions worked their way through the court, the pair lobbied UA to keep its temporary benefits in place.

In March 1997, the Supreme Court ruled in Wattum and Tumeo's favor, but it declined to address the constitutional questions. UA kept the benefits anyhow.

A DECADE LATER

Ten years have passed since the lawsuit ended. A lot has changed. Today, 116 UA employees with 175 dependents receive domestic partner benefits.

Wattum and McClendon split up about a year after the lawsuit. Wattum gets the children every other week.

She has now been with another woman for about five years. For more than a year after they started living in together, Wattum hadn't gotten her benefits extended to her new partner. But while out ice climbing near Palmer, her partner fell and broke her leg in three places.

"It was quite a hefty little price to pay for not signing her up," she says.

Wattum signed her up recently.

Today, as Web coordinator for UA, Wattum sets up sites for all the system offices and trains employees in using them. She also is responsible for making sure the sites all look the same.

She also deals with special projects, such as the "Start Walking" program, which encourages employees to walk for execise. Wattum coordinates the program.

"It's a different kind of programming for me because I get to interact with people, whereas most of the time I'm just interacting with Web sites, making sure the Web sites are running and are coordinated," she says. "But this project allows me to congratulate people, send out certificates, give them words of encouragement."

A new round of the program begins April 2 and will include employee families.

Anymore, Wattum says she's like any other mom. On a recent visit, she was planning to watch her son in a wrestling match after work. On other days, it's soccer or dance with the girls.

"It's kind of funny, because when you decide to have kids, you kind of bury yourself into the heterosexual community, because those are the people who have children, and those are the people your children interact with," she says.

And while her court victory extended only to UA, it's legacy has lived on. In October 2005, in response to a different lawsuit, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that domestic partners were entitled to the same benefits as married couples.

Members of the Legislature now want to change that, and have approved an advisory vote on April 3 to determine if the public would support banning same-sex benefits.

Redman says the university has no stance on the advisory vote, as it has no weight in law. But the university is against any amendment that would bar it from providing domestic partner benefits.

"We've been on record all along that we're not supportive of that," Redman says.

Wattum hopes the constitutional amendment doesn't happen. But the advisory vote just increases the odds, she says.

"These are not questions you put to a vote of the people. Human rights. Civil rights," she says. "And I don't know why, when it comes to these things, people feel if they allow others to have equal rights it's somehow taking away from their rights. And I don't understand that."