More than 300 members of the National Communication Association are boycotting the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel, in San Diego, where the association is scheduled to begin its annual meeting on Friday.

The group is staging the boycott to protest a $125,000 donation by the hotel’s owner, Douglas Manchester, to a group called ProtectMarriage.com, which backed Proposition 8, a ballot measure approved by California voters on November 4. Proposition 8, which was designed to reverse a California Supreme Court decision that allowed same-sex marriage, says that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid” in California.

The group of protesting scholars also says it is conducting the boycott in solidarity with workers and union organizers who have accused the Hyatt Hotel of unfair labor practices. Instead of attending the communication-association meeting, the protesters are holding an “UNconvention” with 120 panel presentations at other hotels, parks, and alternative sites in the city.

Betsy W. Bach, a professor of communication studies at the University of Montana who planned the annual meeting’s program, said the association signed a contract with the Hyatt in 2001 and would lose nearly $750,000 if it moved the meeting out of the hotel.

“It would just be too much of a hit on our organization,” she said. However, the association has moved to another hotel the sessions for its division and caucus on gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and queer concerns. —Robin Wilson