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Thursday, March 12, 2015 — 3A
the faculty grievance monitor
raised concerns about the lack
of due process in OIE’s proce-
dures. The faculty grievance
monitor is responsible for mon-
itoring grievance procedures,
but has no power in the process.
They report their findings —
specifically unacceptable delays
— to the director of Academic
Human Resources.
SACUA raised these con-
cerns to the director of Aca-
demic Human Resources and
the director of OIE in Novem-
ber 2013, according to the
report. They also included
their concerns in an April
report to Pollack.
Shortly after that report was
filed, SACUA received a formal
complaint from a faculty mem-
ber who had been the subject of
an OIE investigation. Because
SACUA considers faculty mem-
bers as under its jurisdiction, the
group asked the Faculty Hear-
ing Committee to investigate
and report on the complaint’s
allegations. Two subsequent
faculty complaints about OIE
policies were also filed to the
FHC on August 4, 2014, and Sep-
tember 8, 2014, respectively.
More broadly, Wednesday’s
report recommended that all
OIE decisions and actions be
subject to immediate review
under the current faculty griev-
ance procedures until new
ones are adopted. It also rec-
ommended that all OIE inves-
tigations that would result
specifically in the termination,
dismissal or demotion of a fac-
ulty member should be con-
ducted under the auspices of
Regents Bylaw 5.09, which gov-
erns how faculty are dismissed,
demoted and terminated.
Additionally, in regards to
the three faculty members
who submitted complaints to
SACUA about OIE proceed-
ings, the report recommend-
ed that the verdicts in their
cases be reversed until they
could be “reconsidered in a
forum with appropriate due
process protections.”
The report cited minutes
from an August 26, 2013 SACUA
meeting where the chair read
several responses from OIE to
questions from SACUA, includ-
ing a response that held that OIE
proceedings against faculty are
not subject to standard griev-
ance proceedings, protocals for
challenging a University action.
According to SACUA’s web-
site, any University faculty
member can file a complaint to
SACUA within 90 days of the
date the grievance first took
place. The parties at which the
faculty complaint is directed
are responsible for making a
decision at the departmental
level. If the grievance cannot
be resolved at the departmen-
tal level, it is brought in front of
the Grievance Hearing Board.
The GHB is only to be attend-
ed by the grieving parties and
their advisers, who can be
attorneys. Witnesses are only
to be present at the GHB when
they are testifying.
In an e-mail interview, SACUA
Chair Scott Masten, a professor
of business economics and public
policy, wrote that the next step for
SACUA is to present the report to
the Senate Assembly Committee
where representatives from the
University’s departments will
have an opportunity to comment
on the proposal.
“Beyond that, we expect
to work with the University
administration
to
explore
ways to improve OIE pro-
cedures to address our due
process concerns, including
the establishment of a cred-
ible appeal process,” Masten
wrote. “All of this, of course,
will be done with recognition
of the University’s commit-
ment to maintaining a work
environment free of discrimi-
nation and harassment.”
Masten added that for most
faculty members, the report
will have little effect because
the majority of University fac-
ulty will not be accused of the
types of behavior OIE is respon-
sible for investigating.
“But for those who do, the
addition of basic due process
protections — of the type that
students are already guaranteed
— should help to assure that out-
comes are fairer and less prone
to error,” Masten wrote.
University
spokesperson
Rick Fitzgerald wrote in a state-
ment that the University plans
to review the recommendations
detailed in the report.
“We stand behind the pro-
fessionalism of the staff in
Academic Human Resources
and the Office for Institutional
Equity,” he wrote. “We also
note that the SACUA report
has some good suggestions
about enhancements to our
processes that we are look-
ing into implementing, and we
will carefully consider what
SACUA has provided.”
Coalition for Open Government
and former director of Michi-
gan State University’s School
of Journalism, said many pub-
lic institutions interpret the
response period as applicable
to the production of the docu-
ments as well.
“U of M has obviously not
interpreted it that way,” she said.
University
spokesman
Rick
Fitzgerald said the Daily has
requested very sensitive docu-
ments, and University officials
need to ensure the release doesn’t
violate the Family Education
Rights and Privacy Act, for exam-
ple. He said two months is not an
unreasonable time frame for the
University to respond to such a
request.
Certain types of information
are exempt from FOIA, and offi-
cials must review every document
to redact information not permit-
ted for release. He also said docu-
ments wouldn’t likely be released
as they become available — per
the Daily’s request — but they
would most likely be produced as
a full package.
“It’s far more important to do
this right than to do this quickly,”
he said.
Fitzgerald also said he couldn’t
speculate on the length of the pro-
cess, but said the review has start-
ed.
“We just don’t know how long
some of the things will take,” he
said.
In February 2014, the U.S.
Department
of
Education
announced it would launch a feder-
al investigation of the University’s
handling of sexual misconduct,
prompted by two Title IX com-
plaints submitted to the Depart-
ment’s Office of Civil Rights.
One of these complaints, lodged
by Douglas Smith, a former pro-
fessor of pathology at the Univer-
sity, alleged that the University
mishandled sexual misconduct
allegations against former Michi-
gan kicker Brendan Gibbons. In
January 2014, the Daily reported
Gibbons had been permanently
separated from the University for
violating the student sexual mis-
conduct policy.
The University supplied hun-
dreds of pages of documents
related to sexual misconduct
on campus to the Office of Civil
Rights, including its policies
governing sexual violence, any
changes to those policies and the
names of personnel responsible
for
investigating
complaints.
It also provided all formal and
informal
complaints
of
dis-
crimination, and all e-mail cor-
respondence regarding sexual
misconduct.
In
September,
the
Daily
requested access to many of the
documents the University pro-
vided to the U.S. Department of
Education, which the Univer-
sity’s FOIA office appraised at
$1,720.
The Daily revised its request in
December to include only a por-
tion of the documents involved
in the investigation, which the
office said would cost $890. The
Daily paid the first half of this
fee in January, but the University
has not yet produced the docu-
ments.
“There are a number of uni-
versities that seem to have a
culture of obstructionism, and
Michigan is certainly among
them,” LoMonte said. “We’ve
had recurring problems over the
years of a culture of non-trans-
parency.”
Briggs-Bunting, who noted
that two months “is more than
adequate” for the University to
produce the documents request-
ed by the Daily, said the Univer-
sity seems to be “dragging its
feet.”
“They’re also playing a game
because it’s not necessarily infor-
mation that (they) want to go out
in the public,” she said. “Cer-
tainly that’s not something that
other public institutions haven’t
attempted to do in the past.”
Under a revised version of
FOIA, effective July 1, public
bodies will be required to pro-
vide an estimate of when records
will be provided. Though the time
estimate will not be binding, pub-
lic institutions will be required
to “provide the estimate in good
faith and strive to be reasonably
accurate.”
Fitzgerald said the University
will comply with state law when
the revisions take effect, but for
now the University does not have
processes in place to provide a
timeline estimate.
how much of an impact could be
made on education at the federal
level.
“We’re continuing to just chip
away at this problem — there’s
no silver bullet,” Obama said
Wednesday. “We’re going to
have to do things at the federal
level, the state level and the uni-
versity level to really mobilize
the entire country around the
issue of college affordability.”
The Student Aid Bill of Rights
reads as follows:
“Every student deserves access
to a quality, affordable education
at a college that’s cutting costs
and increasing learning.
Every student should be able
to access the resources needed
to pay for college.
Every borrower has the right
to an affordable repayment plan.
And, every borrower has
the right to quality customer
service,
reliable
information
and fair treatment, even if they
struggle to repay their loans.”
In support of the Bill of
Rights, the memorandum is also
meant to create policy solutions
that will provide support for stu-
dents repaying loan debt, Obama
said. According to a White
House report, more than 70 per-
cent of today’s bachelor degree
graduates leave with a debt,
which is on average $28,400.
In the state of Michigan,
there are currently 1,516,000
student borrowers with about
$40.1 billion in outstanding stu-
dent loans.
“I believe that America is not
a place where higher education
is a privilege that is reserved for
the few,” Obama said Tuesday in
Georgia. “America needs to be a
place where higher education has
to be available for every single
person who’s willing to strive for
it, who’s willing to work for it.”
During his speech, the presi-
dent outlined three major com-
ponents of his program: creating
a “responsive” student feedback
system, promoting more afford-
able monthly payments and bet-
ter meeting the needs of student
borrowers.
Under the memorandum, by
July 1, 2016, the Department of
Education is charged with cre-
ating a website for students to
file complaints and feedback on
federal student loan lenders, ser-
vicers, collections agencies, uni-
versities and colleges.
The system aims to improve
the timeliness of the Depart-
ment of Education’s response to
student borrowers. The presi-
dent also said he wants to work
with the Department of Educa-
tion to study better responses to
potential illegal activity pertain-
ing both to loan regulation, and
to how colleges and universities
market themselves to students.
Other components of the
memorandum include ensuring
that borrowers are able to meet
their monthly loan payments. To
achieve that objective, the gov-
ernment will work to increase
transparency in the student loan
process by informing borrowers
when their loans are transferred
to a different service, as well as
informing borrowers when they
lag in their payments or do not
complete applications to adjust
their payment plans.
Additionally, the memoran-
dum calls for the creation of
“centralized point of access” to
help students pay back federal
student loans, as well as require-
ments for loan providers to allow
students to pay back loans with
the highest interest rate.
During Wednesday’s confer-
ence call, Arne Duncan, the U.S.
secretary of education, detailed
the thinking behind providing
these “centralized point of access.”
“One is an integrated com-
plaint system, where we want
borrowers to be able to report
to us on difficulties that they are
having. That will help us resolve
difficulties better and under-
stand better how our servicers
are performing,” Duncan said.
“The other is an integrated data-
base that will allow borrowers,
in one spot, to look at the balanc-
es of all of their student loans,
and begin there to make choices
how to allocate payments among
those loans.”
The president also announced
several partnerships to create
programs aimed at facilitating
payment of student loans.
The White House Office of Sci-
ence and Technology Policy will
work to improve communication
between lenders and borrowers
and create payment plans with
borrower habits in mind. The
Office of Management and Budget
will study payment plan trends to
create policies better adjusted to
the student borrowers.
The president will also ask offi-
cials from all areas of government
to improve lending practices and
implement
performance-based
metrics to evaluate them.
While Obama’s memoran-
dum introduces several new
plans, it builds on several piec-
es of legislation passed during
his administration.
The first point of the Bill of
Rights is to allow every student
access to a low cost post-high
school education. To accomplish
this, Obama cited his proposed
two years of free community
college education, as well as
his administration’s First in
the World Grants, to which the
Department of Education allo-
cated $75 million in September.
Obama has since proposed an
increase to $200 million.
To ensure that every student in
America can afford to go to col-
lege, the Obama administration
has also increased the maximum
Pell Grant award to $5,730 in the
2014-2015 academic year, which
is almost $1,000 more than the
2008 maximum. The president
has also proposed additional
increases so the Pell Grant maxi-
mum keeps up with inflation.
The necessity for the increase
in grants was highlighted by
Stephen Culbertson, the com-
munications director for the
University’s chapter of the Col-
lege Democrats, as especially
pertinent in Ann Arbor.
“The perfect example of [the
need for financial aid reform] is
here at the University of Michi-
gan,” Culbertson said. “The lack
of economic diversity on the
campus is kind of indicative of
how prohibitive the cost of high-
er education is becoming, and
particularly higher education
is becoming at high-level public
institutions. There’s not enough
being done. Federal programs
can only go so far, a lot of the
problem lies at the state level.
There’s not adequate funding.”
The University’s chapter of
the College Republicans did not
respond to a request for com-
ment Wednesday.
Mark Kantrowitz, the publish-
er of Edvisors Network, a national
organization that assists students
find financial aid opportunities,
said he was optimistic about the
latest proposals, but felt that there
was still more to be done.
“It’s a step in the right direc-
tion,” Kantrowitz said. “It gath-
ers together several interesting
proposals that, on the whole, will
provide some benefits, such as
the proposal to require federal
loan servicers to apply prepay-
ments to the highest rate loan.”
Though he said he was happy
to hear that financial aid was a
topic of discussion, he added that
he was unsure if all the presi-
dent’s proposals were feasible
without congressional action.
“I think it’s going to provide
some good, but it’s not going to
be earth-shaking in its effects,”
Kantrowitz said. “It’ll help some
students — borrowers who are
struggling — but it’s not increas-
ing the amount of money for
grants, for example. It’s not
teaching people to borrow only
what they can afford, and I think
those are key problems that need
to be addressed.”
Culbertson also said there was
a need for student financial aid
reform, but was unsure about how
much could be done about student
financial aid at the federal level.
“In and of itself, the Student
Aid Bill of Rights is not so much
a policy solution,” he said. “It’s
kind of broad directives that
President Obama has released
to kind of signal that ‘this is an
issue we are looking at more
closely on the federal level and
we as the government care
about, that we want to make col-
lege more affordable, we want to
make taking out a student loan
more clear and simplified.’ ”
In the conference call with
reporters, the president urged
readers who agreed with the
proposal to sign a statement of
support at whitehouse.gov/col-
legeopportunity.
“We want to mobilize the
energy and focus the attention of
everybody nationally around the
basic principles to make it easier
to get young people to have the
education they need,” Obama
said. “We don’t want to allow
higher education to become a
luxury. It’s an economic impera-
tive that every American family
should be able to afford.”
Daily Staff Reporter Isobel
Futter contributed reporting.
WHITE HOUSE
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FOIA
From Page 1A
children are there,” said Dawsey.
Education
Prof.
Eliza-
beth
Moje,
associate
dean
for research and communi-
ty engagement, agreed with
Dawsey that the current school
system lacks stability.
“There is a lack of stabil-
ity and a bounty of confusion,
which makes the work of build-
ing leaders and teachers incred-
ibly difficult,” she said.
This is the second “The
Future of Education in Detroit”
event. According to Mahima
Mahadevan, project manager
in the Public Policy School, the
first talk made it clear that more
discussion about Detroit educa-
tion was needed.
“We felt an ongoing discus-
sion was the most appropriate
format to bring in the many voic-
es and perspectives on this topic,
having started with three panel-
ists for the first event,” Mahade-
van said. “We started planning
soon after for a following event.”
Mahadevan said she ensured
each of the speakers had a strong
tie to Detroit.
“Our focus is to invite speak-
ers with a personal stake in the
education system in Detroit in
order to share their understand-
ing of the issues with our audi-
ence,” Mahadevan said.
Detroit native Tawana Petty,
another
panelist,
said
she
brought her own perspective to
the topic of education in the city.
“I am representing as a mom,
an organizer, author, poet —
someone who has come through
… Detroit Public Schools, and
raised a son through Detroit
Public Schools,” she said.
As a graduate of the DPS,
Petty stressed the current strug-
gle she finds between so many
subcomponents of the district.
“The struggle between char-
ters, between public schools,
between
board
members,
between
coalitions,
between
foundations — pretty much any
entity that feels that they have a
vested interest in the education of
young people in Detroit,” she said.
Petty is a member of the
James and Grace Lee Boggs
Center board, an initiative that
works to better Detroit commu-
nities, in part through advocat-
ing for changes in education. She
said the board is pushing to take
Detroit away from what she calls
a binary system of education,
meaning people are either edu-
cated or they are not. Petty said
they do this by fostering educa-
tional opportunities outside of
the traditional classroom setting,
as well as by exploring alterna-
tive educational systems.
“When we look at alterna-
tives, we look at re-spiriting
young people’s inherent gifts
and nurturing their imagina-
tions,” she said. “We’re looking
at providing them an opportuni-
ty to envision what their future
can look like whether or not they
go to college, whether or not
they get a ‘good job. ’ ”
Moje said she finds panels
exceptionally important for fos-
tering educational reform, partic-
ularly in a city like Detroit, where
the school system is frequently
known for “systematic failure.”
“We need to hear from people
who live and work in Detroit
about what they see as the edu-
cation needs of their children
and youth,” Moje said.
During his speech, Lamont
Satchel, chief innovation officer
for DPS, placed his focus on fund-
ing within the district. He said
the financial issues Detroit faces
are also faced by other districts.
Particularly in Detroit, pan-
elists said funding issues and
a growing number of charter
schools caused massive cuts
throughout the system. With
students shuffled from school
to school as they close, many
children end up leaving the dis-
trict to attend another school or
drop out altogether. Satchel said,
when children leave the district
for schooling, DPS loses even
more funding.
“You reach a point where
you have to ask yourself: is this
working?” Satchel said.
SACUA
From Page 1A
DETROIT
From Page 1A
many of us have been raised and
socialized and taught to believe
that it’s OK?” she said.
To build a positive climate
on campus, LSA junior Micah
Griggs said students shouldn’t
depend on others to take action.
“We can’t just wait for the
next class and hope they want
to make change,” Griggs said.
LSA sophomore Steven Hal-
perin, the Make Michigan vice
presidential candidate in the
upcoming Central Student Gov-
ernment elections, spoke about
how the classes that fulfill the
University’s race and ethnicity
requirement do not adequately
teaching students about the
challenges faced by minori-
ties today because they largely
focus on the past.
“A lot of the time with these
short conversations, it’s easy to
take out of it a message,” Hal-
perin said. “But you’re not real-
ly getting deep into the topic.”
Simpson asked students if
they felt the president of the
University of Oklahoma was
right in expelling the fraternity
leaders of that university’s SAE
chapter responsible for a racist
chant.
Responding to the argument
that students were expressing
their right to free speech, Rack-
ham student Portia Hemphill
said she believes OU’s president
handled the situation well, as
the idea of free speech is con-
ditional and should not impede
the civil liberties of others. Fur-
thermore, she said because the
president was an older white
man from a southern state, he
set the tone for how future situ-
ations of this nature should be
handled.
Other students felt, though
these particular students were
expelled, the measure may have
been ineffective at getting at the
larger problem of racism within
the OU community.
LSA senior Joshua Thur-
man said the video should be a
call for all college students to
address the issue of racial preju-
dice on campuses, even if it does
not feel pressing because the
instance only occurred at OU.
“It’s about making the con-
nection of how that video
relates to our campus climate,”
he said, “And even though we
don’t have people on video
right now singing songs like
that, there are other instances
and other manifestations of the
same thing happening here.”
A racially insensitive party
theme created by the University
Theta Xi chapter played a role
in spurring the Black Student
Union’s Black Student Union’s
#BBUM
Twitter
campaign,
which launched a campuswide
conversation about race on
campus.
When asked about what a
diverse
campus
community
means to her, Harper said it is a
community that fosters a sense
that the people around you mat-
ter. She said both communities
and individuals lose when peo-
ple do not learn from those with
different backgrounds.
“The gift is to yourself,
because I better understand me
when I’m trying to understand
you,” Harper said.
DIVERSITY
From Page 1A
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