In the past academic year, the 
Office for Institutional Equity, 
the entity on campus charged 
with investigating complaints of 
discrimination and harassment, 
has been widely talked about on 
campus. After a ruling by the 
Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 
September 2018, OIE had to change 
its policy regarding student sexual 
misconduct complaints to include 
an in-person hearing between the 

accused and the accuser. 
In October 2018, The Daily 
published an article following 
a student survivor of sexual 
assault’s 
painful 
experience 
going through OIE’s reporting 
process. In November 2018, The 
Daily investigated the University 
granting 
Music, 
Theatre 
& 
Dance professor David Daniels 
tenure after a student reported 
an instance of Daniels’ sexual 
harassment to OIE.
In light of this heightened 
conversation surrounding OIE and 

the reporting process, The Daily 
sat down with Jeffery Frumkin, 
OIE 
interim 
senior 
director, 
and Elizabeth Seney, OIE senior 
associate director and interim 
Title IX coordinator, to talk about 
OIE’s mission, its new policy, its 
investigator training processes and 
other areas of interest.
The Michigan Daily: What 
would you say OIE’s overarching 
mission is in helping the campus 
community? What are the office’s 
priorities in investigations?
Elizabeth 
Seney: 
For 
the 

first question, I would say the 
overarching mission really is to 
make sure that the University is 
responding fairly and appropriately 
to concerns that exist. Then, 
of course we also have a role in 
preventive and educational work 
as well. So I wouldn’t limit our 
overall mission to just responding 
to particular concerns, but I would 
say that is where we spend a lot of 
our time and efforts and that’s a 
significant priority. And that really 
is in making sure that the process 
is designed and conducted in a way 

that there’s broad access to make 
reports, broad access to engage in 
either an investigative process or 
whatever might be the appropriate 
and requested resolution, and that 
all of those processes are both 
legally compliant but also meet the 
needs of the community, so they’re 
fair. People are being treated with 
respect throughout the process … 
not causing more harm as much as 
that is possible. I would say that’s 
the overall mission.

The 
Lecturers’ 
Employee 
Organization has accused the 
School of Music, Theatre & 
Dance of moving to reduce 
course loads for two lecturers 
following 
LEO’s 
successful 
bargaining campaign last year.
According to LEO, the School 
of Music, Theatre & Dance is 
trying to shift classes taught 
by lecturers Missy Beck and 
Jean-Claude Biza to tenure-
track faculty in order to avoid 
paying lecturers more under the 
contract the union ratified over 
the summer. 
Beck, who has taught at the 
University for more than 15 years, 
said she was told her course 

load would be reduced after she 
emailed Anita Gonzalez, interim 
chair of the Department of 
Dance, in February asking about 
scheduling sections of a ballet 
course.
“That’s where she replied that 
she didn’t even know if I’m going 
to be teaching next year,” Beck 
said. “So I wrote back to say, 
‘What’s going on, if it’s me, if it’s 
my performance, I would love to 
talk to you about that. This was 
my mission, teaching students 
and teaching people, so if there 
is something I could be doing 
better, please let me know.’”
Beck said she was told SMTD 
intended to have tenure-track 
faculty take over the classes she 
had previously taught.
“It was a bit condescending,” 

Beck said. “At one point when 
they said, ‘You’ve been helping 
us out, you’ve been so generous 
to take those classes, but now 
we need to give them back to 
the people who they belong to.’”
Following 
a 
months-long 
bargaining 
campaign, 
LEO 
ratified a new contract with the 
University in July that included 
salary increases and improved 
health 
benefits 
and 
job 
security for nearly 1,700 non-
tenure track faculty across the 
University’s three campuses. 
Under 
the 
agreement, 
the 
minimum salary for lecturers 
in Ann Arbor saw a 47.8 percent 
increase, going from $34,500 
to $51,000 by September 2020. 
Starting salaries in Flint and 
Dearborn were both set to reach 

$41,000 by then, a 50.2 percent 
and a 44.9 percent increase 
respectively.
LEO says it is because of 
these raises the Music, Theatre 
& Dance School moved to cut 
the dance lecturers’ course 
loads. According to an email 
provided to The Daily by LEO, 
Gonzalez 
said 
in 
February 
SMTD’s 
administration 
was 
looking to shift as many courses 
taught by lecturers as possible 
to tenure-track faculty.
“Because 
of 
the 
large 
increase in LEO salaries the 
administration would like to 
move as many LEO courses 
as possible to tenure track 
faculty,” Gonzalez wrote.

michigandaily.com
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Tuesday, April 23, 2019

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Vol. CXXVIII, No. 106
©2019 The Michigan Daily

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O PI N I O N . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

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A R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

S P O R T S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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@michigandaily

At the Planned Parenthood 
Advocates 
of 
Michigan 
conference 
in 
Lansing 
on 
Tuesday, 
Michigan 
Attorney 
General Dana Nessel said even if 
the Supreme Court overrules Roe 
v. Wade, she would not prosecute 
what would then become illegal 
cases of abortion.
“I 
will 
never 
prosecute 
a woman or her doctor for 
making the difficult decision to 
terminate a pregnancy,” Nessel 
said.
LSA senior Megan Burns, 
co-president of Students for 
Choice at the University of 
Michigan, 
and 
LSA 
senior 
Annabelle Luescher, the events 
coordinator 
for 
Students 
for 
Choice, 
attended 
the 
conference on behalf of their 
organization.
“Dana was speaking a lot 
about things she had done 
in support of women and in 
support 
of 
women’s 
rights 
during her time in her new 
position as attorney general,” 
Burns said. “She kind of threw 
it in there sort of randomly. 
I think a lot of people were 
caught off guard.”

Pres. Obama 
adviser talks 
career, book 
during event

Valerie Jarrett discusses her experiences in 
the White House, the support of her mom

LIAT WEINSTEIN
Daily Staff Reporter

GOVERNMENT

On Monday evening, over 
two hundred students, faculty 
and 
community 
members 
filled the Michigan Theater 
for a conversation between 
Valerie 
Jarrett, 
former 
senior adviser to President 
Barack Obama, and Broderick 
Johnson, 
a 
former 
White 
House 
Cabinet 
secretary 
for Obama. The discussion 
touched 
on 
Jarrett’s 
experiences as a single parent 
working 
in 
the 
Chicago 
mayor’s office in addition to 
her years as Obama’s adviser 
and close confidant.
The 
talk, 
co-hosted 
by 
Nicola’s 
Books 
and 
the 
Michigan Theater, was meant 
to give the community an 
inside look into the White 
House 
during 
the 
Obama 
years and promote Jarrett’s 
new memoir, “Finding My 
Voice,” which was published 
on April 2.
Johnson, who noted Jarrett 
is the longest-serving senior 
adviser to any U.S. president, 
opened 
the 
conversation 
by 
reminiscing 
on 
their 
experiences 
together 
as 
University of Michigan law 
students. Johnson mentioned 
the two became even closer 
friends working for the Obama 
campaign in 2008.

“Over the last 15 years, 
Valerie and I have become 
very, 
very 
close 
friends 
through the campaign, the 
Senate campaign and then the 
two successful campaigns for 
president,” Johnson said. 
The conversation flowed 
between 
discussion 
of 
Jarrett’s childhood in Iran, 
where she grew up on a 
hospital compound, and her 
family’s relocation to Chicago 
when she was seven years old. 
Jarrett said while her years 
in Iran lent her a greater 
appreciation for the freedom 
awarded to citizens in the 
U.S., they also made her aware 
of the importance of a cultural 
crossover and understanding.

“It gave me the sense that 
the United States is really 
an extraordinary country,” 
Jarrett said. “But the other 
thing I learned there was that 
… we can learn a great deal 
outside our shores. So it gave 
me the context for where the 
United States fits in. Coming 
back 
to 
Chicago, 
to 
my 
mother’s home and where my 
father did his residency, they 
just felt it was great because 
they were going home. To 
me, I was going to a foreign 
country.”

See OIE, Page 3

. 

LEO accuses SMTD of cutting ‘U’ 
courses after union won pay raises
Lecturers claim classes are being transferred to tenured professors post-bargaining campaign

MELANIE TAYLOR
Daily Staff Reporter 

MAX KUANG/Daily
Ian Robinson, president of the Lecturers’ Employee Organization, greets SMTD Dance lecturer Jean-Claude Biza before the Congolese Dance Class showing at the Betty Pease 
Studio Theatre Saturday.

LEAH GRAHAM 
Daily News Editor

ELIZABETH LAWRENCE 
Managing News Editor

State AG 
addresses 
abortions

Nessel discusses role of 
Roe v. Wade in the state

In 2011, after the U.S. Department of 
Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a Dear Colleague 
Letter to remind schools of the importance of preventing and 
addressing sexual violence under Title IX, student Title IX cases 
were transferred to the OIE office. 

 From August 2011 to August 
 2013, OIE instituted an 
 interim procedure while the 
 University worked on a more
 robust student sexual 
 misconduct policy.

In 2013, OIE’s official 
 policy was implemented, 
 utilizing the single 
 investigator model to keep 
 a trauma informed lens
 without sacrificing fairness. 

In 2016, OIE revised its 
 policy to include intimate 
 partner violence and gender 
 
 required that there be an 
 annual review of the policy. 

 In 2017, a district judge 
 dismissed a lawsuit filed on
 behalf of a former University 
 
 
student who violated the 
 University’s Student Sexual 
 Misconduct Policy but argued 
 his due process was denied. 

Currently, OIE is working to create a more permanent version of their policy.

2011
2013
2016
2017
2018

The Office of Institutional Equity comes into being in 2004. It handles cases of discrimination, but not the student on 
student sexual harassment cases. Before this time, sexual harassment claims were handled by Human Resources.

based harassment. It also 

In 2018, the Sixth 
Circuit Court of Appeals 
appealed this ruling, and struck 
down the University of Michigan’s 
sexual assault investigation model 
because it did not include a 
cross-examination. Because 
of this, OIE amended its process 
to include an in-person hearing 
between students involved and the 
witnesses. 

Interview with The Daily: Office for Institutional 
Equity officials clarify new policy, reporting process

OIE sits down to discuss overarching mission, duties, training protocols for investigators at U-M 

See ABORTION, Page 2

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com
See OIE, Page 3

