The devil is in the details and the diction of proposed changes to the harassment policy, said several faculty members who voiced their concerns at Thursday’s Academic Council meeting.
Vice Provost for Academic and Administrative Services Judith Ruderman, who headed the committee in charge of the revision process, fielded a barrage of questions and complaints for more than an hour, continuing the debate cut short at the end of the council’s Nov. 18 meeting. Arguments arose about how specific or general the policy’s wording ought to be and how best to define harassment, as even footnotes became points of contention.
One of these footnotes would institute a change from the current 2002 version of the policy, removing the making of fraudulent claims from the jurisdiction of the harassment policy.
Law professor Larry Zelenak argued that the policy needed to condemn firmly all false assertions of harassment. “I don’t think it happens very often at all, but I do think that it’s tremendously damaging when it does happen,” he said.
A major problem with treating fraudulent claims as harassment is the challenge of determining whether the claimant made false assertions intentionally and consciously, explained Cynthia Clinton, director of harassment prevention and special projects at the Office for Institutional Equity.
“I would find it very difficult and hesitate to try to assess the intent of any individual,” Clinton said.
In a hand vote, a majority of council members supported keeping false claims under the harassment policy. Another informal poll revealed the council’s unanimous preference for the first of the two possible definitions of harassment that the committee had developed.
Some faculty members objected to the wording of another footnote, which lists resources for dealing with “disturbing behaviors” not covered by the harassment policy. Professor of immunology Garnett Kelsoe questioned the need to discuss “disturbing behaviors” in the policy, but Ruderman said widespread confusion about what constitutes harassment makes the note necessary.
Will Wilson, associate professor of biology, argued that mentioning “disturbing behaviors” in the policy at all could ultimately lead to restrictions on forms of free expression, just because some might consider them disturbing.
“It’s a footnote,” said Ruderman, assuring the council that its inclusion would not “open the floodgates for everything to be called harassment.”
Several comments proposing the addition of more specifics—for example, to the description of possible bases of harassment—provoked Provost Peter Lange to respond. Such lists cannot be comprehensive, he said, and are included only as examples. “This process can go on unendingly if every possibility has to be included in a list,” Lange said.
For the Academic Council, though, an end to the discussion is in sight. Members will vote on a revised version of the proposed policy at their next meeting Jan. 20.
In other business:
The council unanimously endorsed a resolution in favor of the establishment of a doctoral program in medical physics. The program also won the support of the Board of Trustees over the weekend, completing the approval process.
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