Transcript Senate Meeting
June 11, 2019
The AV equipment did not work at all for this meeting.
Michael Baginski, Chair: A very short announcement, our parliamentarian, Herbert Jack Rotfeld has brought to my attention the fact that it was never mentioned formally that the transcript for the Teaching Effectiveness report that was given (in January) is now available at the Senate’s Web site. Is that good enough Herb?
Herbert Jack Rotfeld: Tell them where.
Michael Baginski, Chair: I can’t put it up the projector…
Herbert Jack Rotfeld: If you go to the January meetings, agenda, minutes, or transcript, if anyone wants to see the full Teaching Effectiveness Committee Report the links are at the January meeting’s agenda, transcript, and minutes. For anybody that is interested.
Michael Baginski, Chair: I apologize for this. I teach here myself and it worked yesterday, so I don’t know what happened (referring to the lack of AV equipment usage). [Some other chatter from the Senate and laughter]
One thing I want to say is this is the June meeting which is the toughest meeting to get a quorum at. I don’t know if I can do this, my parliamentarian will clarify, will just a show of hands be okay?
Herbert Jack Rotfeld: Yes, go analog. I think it will work. [1:38]
Michael Baginski, Chair So, if you’re a senator and you are here please raise your hand if you are a voting member. Or a substitute (senator). Count 46 plus a few. A quorum is met.
[The recorder is working. It is separate from the AV equipment. Message from the check on room 239 is that room also does not work with the AV equipment]. We will continue the meeting in this room.
Welcome to the June 11, 2019 meeting of the University Senate. This is our 10th meeting of the 2018-19 academic year.
First, if you are a senator or a substitute for a senator please be sure you sign in on the senate roll sheet at the top of the room.
We took care of the quorum. I would like to remind you of some basic procedures for the Senate meeting for senators and guests.
If you would like to speak about an issue or ask a question please go to the microphones, are they working?
Laura Kloberg: No. Speak loudly.
Michael Baginski, Chair When it is your turn, state your name and whether or not you are a senator or a substitute and the unit you represent. The rules of the Senate require that senators or substitute senators be allowed to speak first and then after they are done guests are welcome to speak.
The agenda today was set by the Senate Steering Committee and posted on the Web site in advance, it’s not up on the screen, but it’s on the Web site so if you have a wifi device, laptop or cell phone, you can get to it.
The first order of business is to approve the minutes for the meeting of the May 21st, 2019 senate meeting. Those minutes have been posted on the Web site.
Are there any additions, changes, or corrections to the minutes? pause
Hearing none, the minutes are approved by unanimous consent.
Now I would now like to introduce the officers of the Senate and our administrative assistant. Dan Svyantek is the immediate past chair and it’s his last meeting, Nedret Billor is the chair-elect, she is on travel and unable to attend, Beverly Marshal is the secretary this year, and Adrienne Wilson is the secretary-elect: Herbert Jack Rotfeld is our Parliamentarian. Finally, our administrative assistant is Laura Kloberg.
This will be my last meeting as senate chair and Beverly Marshall and Dan Svyantek’s last senate meeting as senate officers as well. I would like to thank them both for all they have done for the senate. Dan has helped me understand the “lay of the land” a chair must navigate. He has always reminded me of important upcoming events that I need to prepare for; and he’s cautioned me whenever I seemed to be getting “too deep in the weeds” to see.
Beverly deserves special thanks as serving as a “wounded warrior”. Despite her broken femur, she has done an incredible job as secretary. She was the one who created the senate survey, cataloged the results, and identified the areas of greatest concern that we have addressed. She has done this while continuing as the FAR, Faculty Athletics Representative, and full-time faculty member of the Harbert College of Business.
Thank you both!
Now I have a few remarks. Let me first congratulate coach Butch Thompson and the Auburn baseball team for winning the Chapel Hill Super Regional and wish them well in College World Series. It’s been an incredible year for Auburn Athletics and hopefully next year will be even better!
Next, I’d like to also thank President Steven Leath and Provost Bill Hardgrave for all they have done. I’ve mentioned this before …but when I was still chair-elect, Dr. Leath became the President of Auburn University. I remember the first thing I spoke to him about was the “Fixed Price Residual takeback if not spent policy”. I personally hated the idea that any contract/grant money leftover in any account could be taken away from the faculty member who “won” it. He agreed and immediately revoked the policy ---thank you!
When the executive committee told him how inadequate the “in state travel and lodging reimbursement” is (was) he lobbied the state legislator and Governor Kay Ivey for an increase …and we got it! It may not be exactly what we wanted but it was a step in the right direction and for that, we thank Governor Ivey and President Leath.
Lack of available faculty parking, especially in the evening, was another big issue that we brought to President Leath’s attention. He put General Ron Burgess in charge of solving the parking problem and he has already made significant progress. I hope that by the fall the new south college street deck and other changes will really reduce the problem of finding adequate parking. (aside: this is not for people that are here at 6:30 in the morning but people and kids that are here after 8 in the evening.)
Provost Hardgrave also deserves special thanks. He is always willing to help the senate leadership in any way he can. He attends the steering committee meetings and meets with us whenever he’s asked. He oversaw changes that allowed Multi-year contracts for Non Tenure Track Faculty, the new Professor of Practice title series, and Guidelines for Tenure on Hire. There’s more I could say, but suffice to say we consider him an ally not an obstacle. And I say that having dealt with obstacles in the past.
I thank you both! I am sure we all do.
Finally, Nedret Billor is attending a conference but she will be the senate chair at the next meeting. I want to wish her well.
Let me encourage everyone here to let us know if you see potential problems on campus or have any concerns.
Next – Provost Bill Hardgrave will make remarks. [8:55]
Provost Bill Hardgrave: First of all, thank you Michael for your kind remarks and I am glad I am not an obstacle today.
Given that warm thank you, I do have some good news to share with you. This administration has been committed to what we call the Faculty 4 Rs of recruiting, retain, recognize, and reward. And to that end we ask the Senate Committee on Faculty, Salaries and Benefits to give us some ideas about how we address those things. We got a lot of good ideas on each of those 4 areas, but there’s two I want to talk about today that we are recommending or anticipating doing pending the final budget approval.
One of the things was changing the promotion pay. Our current promotion pay is $4500 from assistant to full, and $6500 from assistant to associate and it’s $6500 from associate to full. As far as we can tell it’s been 15 plus years since that has been addressed. We are anticipating making that change to a 10 percent pay increase from assistant to associate and 12 percent pay increase from associate to full. That will be effective with this group of folks that are promoted will get the pay raise October 1. Again, this is pending budget approval, but at this point things are looking very positive. I think that’s good. I think when we did a survey of what our peer and aspirate schools were doing, that is a very, very aggressive change in our promotion pay.
The second thing we anticipate doing, last year we did merit-based market adjustments. We did 89 of those to the tune of about 1 million dollars. We anticipate doing more merit-based market adjustments this year. Both of those recommendations came out of that committee. I appreciate the committees great work in recommending that to us. This is consistent with what you’ve heard for President Leath talking about how we make sure we recruit, retain, reward, and recognize our great faculty. It is consistent with strategic goal number 4 on the excellence in faculty, and KPI of strategic goal number 4 is: is our pay relative to our SREB peers and moving that needle on that. I think changing the promotion pay, continuing to do market-based adjustments will do both of those.
Again given the great work is there anyone from the Faculty Salary and Benefits Committee here? (no) Well, they are all doing great work. Please thank those who are on the committee, they did a great job and this is just two of the recommendations that they brought forward. We are very excited about what we can do for the faculty in adjusting that pay.
At this point I will take any questions that you may have. [12:27 bkup] Okay, I will turn it back to you.
Michael Baginski, Chair: Thank you very much Provost Hardgrave.
Next, Dean Paul Patterson will present the Extension Title Series.
Paul Patterson, Dean of the College of Agriculture: Thank you Mike. My name is Paul Patterson, I am Dean of the College of Agriculture and I also serve as a ??. I am here to discuss the guidelines that have been recommended to establish a promotion series for the non-tenure track Extension Specialists that are at Auburn University. This is a job category that has existed for many years and existed through the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. About two years ago we merged some of those faculty into the College and they merged into academic departments. At that point they fell under the Provost and we recognized that we did not have a promotion process in the Faculty Handbook for this job title. So, the purpose of this recommendation is to establish guidelines for the Handbook that will define promotion process for these faculty members. [13:54]
We have faculty members in this job title and very often they hold both this Extension title and the appointment through the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station. So, they hold both and Extension and research appointment. But what we did not have was a promotion process for extension specialists, the non-tenure track extension specialists. To give you an idea of how many people this affects. Currently there are about 10 of these faculty members in the College of Agriculture. And until we get these promotion guidelines approved they don’t have a process or vehicle for advancement within their profession, their current title.
We set about to address this problem beginning last summer when Mike Phillips was hired as an Associate Dean for Extension in the College of Agriculture. He formed a committee made up of other Extension Specialists and Department Heads and they developed these guidelines. The guidelines were developed to mirror the current guidelines for the Research title series. As the guidelines have be proposed, we have an assistant extension professor and an associate extension professor, and an extension professor. Upon approval by the Senate the recommended changes will be submitted to the Office of the Provost. Upon approval by the Provost it will be recommended to the President. So, today I am asking for a vote on the guidelines that have been recommended. [15:51 bkup]
Michael Baginski, Chair: This is a very awkward thing to do without clickers, but we are going to do our best. [addressed to Laura] Would you count with me?
If you are for this…
From a Senator: Could we have discussion first?
Michael Baginski, Chair: I’m sorry, yes, questions. I’m focused on this technical problem.
Rusty Wright, senator substitute, Fisheries: I am a substitute for Fisheries and also an extension specialist. How does this affect the folks that have been moved already into those positions? And particularly those that don’t have the terminal degree?
Paul Patterson, Dean of the College of Agriculture: So, for those that are residing in this position now, upon approval by the Senate we will make a recommendation to the Provost on how those appointments will be specified. If you read the guidelines there is a (description), folks that do not hold a terminal degree there is a point in the title series where they can be placed and begin their careers. Does that answer your question?
Rusty Wright, senator substitute, Fisheries: Close enough, I have to go back and see specifically where that is. Do you know what their title would be?
Paul Patterson, Dean of the College of Agriculture: So, I can give you concrete examples. We have a young man who is an agronomist who is at the Tennessee Valley Station and has a split appointment between the Experiment Station and Extension, but he currently does not hold a PhD. So, he would be appointed as an assistant extension professor. The guidelines require for promotion that you do hold the terminal degree for other qualifications.
Michael Baginski, Chair: Other questions? Alright, We now need to vote on the motion. If you are in favor of the motion raise your hand and hold it up there until we count it. Laura counted 54, Mike counted 63 in favor. Opposed count was 2. The motion carries. [19:30]
Next we move to an Information Item: the Clery Act Overview will be given by Susan McCallister. She is the Director of Safety and Compliance. I want to personally say that I knew very little about this. It’s informative, take any student on travel, grad students or undergrad it’s something you want to listen to.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: I am Susan McCallister, I know a lot of you, I don’t know all of you. I am director of Campus Safety Compliance. One of my areas of responsibility is overseeing our program for compliance with the Clery Act. [20:13]
Before I get started, I know some people know very little about it, I know some of you are very familiar. So, how many of you are campus security authorities and know that you are? Okay, so it’s a small percentage, less than I thought would be. I am going to give you an overview and some of the requirements of the Clery Act, but my main focus is to talk about what’s going to be most important to you as faculty.
So, the Clery Act is also known as the Jeanne Clery disclosure of campus security policy and campus crime statistics act. It was propagated in 1990. Just to give you a little background about why this act came into effect was there was a young woman named Jeanne Clery and was a freshman at Leigh High University in Pennsylvania in 1986. This was right in my backyard when I was a high school student, so it really hits home for me. She was raped and murdered in her residence hall by a fellow student and they discovered that he was able to get into the residence hall through propped doors and that there had been really no information published about their campus safety policies or a history of some violent crime that they had had on that campus. So, her parents fought very hard to get some legislation passed to address this and to share more information with our existing employees and students and also with prospective employees and students. So, that’s what the Clery Act is really all about. It is about having some safety programs in place, but it is more about that disclosure about making people aware of what is available and how we handle safety, what safety programs we have, and also what crimes and in the case of student housing what fires are reported on campus.
A broad overview of some of the major requirements of the Clery Act. I am not going to go into a lot of detail on these because a lot of these do not apply to you directly, but each year, calendar year, we have to publish an annual security and fire safety report that includes crime statistics that include crimes from the 3 previous calendar years as well as our Campus Safety Policies on a lot of different issues, and we also have to publish fire safety statistics for the student housing facilities that we operate including ones that we lease for our students that are within one mile of campus. So we have some of those for our Auburn Global students where in our statistics have to report information about apartments like the Beacon, the Grove, and a couple of other locations. We also have to do timely notifications to campus. This is a big one that you probably see on a regular basis where we are sending out emergency notifications in the form of AU ALERT or sending out an e-mail as a campus safety notice. That’s also known as a timely warning. We have a legal obligation to send those for certain types of crimes if there is an ongoing threat to campus.
We have to have emergency procedures in place, we have to test those, we have to have prevention and awareness programs associated with sexual assault, domestic and dating violence and stalking, which is where it kind of intersects with Title IX, and we also have to have procedures for missing student issues. If someone reports that a student may be missing you have to have procedures for that and how you are going to notify their contact that they provided in the case that they are determined to be missing. [23:53 bkup]
To give you the difference between Title IX and Clery, this is not a Title IX presentation but I can’t help but talk about this because this is where there is a lot of confusion with the Clery Act. So Title IX is all about who the incident happened to. So, it’s gender-based misconduct involving anybody affiliated with the university no matter where it happens. Clery is all about where it happens. So, it’s crimes occurring on properties that we own or control, or that student organizations own or control. This is where it is going to start touching on you and you’ll be surprised about some of the things I have to share on the geography.
The affiliation of the person doesn’t matter. We could have, I mean we have a murder that will be included in our crime statistics for 2018 that involves somebody who is unaffiliated with the university. You may remember we sent out a notification in September of last year about a shooting near McDonald’s, it doesn’t matter who is involved if it happened on the property that we own or control, then we have to report it. We have broad categories of geography; we have on campus including on campus student housing, we have non-campus which I will put to the side for a minute, and then we have public property. We actually have to report things that are adjacent to campus on public property, so West Magnolia the street and the sidewalk, south College same thing, the MLK Park, Martin Luther King Park, if things happen there, all are included in our public property statistics.
But non-campus is where it really touches faculty, so , non-campus is any properties that are owned or controlled by the university or a student organization that is not within a mile of campus. Things that are included there are properties we lease on a long-term basis; we have a classroom facility on Shug Jordan Pkwy, and the Bowling Alley for bowling classes. We have to collect crime statistics for the time that we control that space. Any kind of classroom space that we lease, or offices that are leased to meet with students, such as with Southern Union we need to collect crime statistics for that. If we house students more than one mile from campus that would fall under our control, also research folks, vans, or other mobile classrooms. So, if you have anything like it is probably good to check in with us and make sure that we are aware of it and we are properly counting anything that happens there. I am going to introduce Mike right now, this I Mike Adams our Clery Compliance Specialist that deals specifically with geography and campus security authority. So, he’s the one that you most likely will deal with on the issues that I am talking about today.
Then there is the catagory of school sponsored trips. [27:13] If you take students on a trip and you stay overnight, we need to know about it. That’s difficult to hear, but the Clery Act requires us to count two different types of overnight stays. If you go for 2 or more nights, then the hotel stay if paid for by the university for students to stay there, then we are in control of the hotel rooms and the common areas of the hotel while you are staying there. Mike, I don’t know how many letters you’ve got, do you have any idea of how many we are going to have for 2018? About 700 letters are going to go out for 2018 statistics to local law enforcement agencies saying, our athletic team stayed at the hotel for one night or two nights and we need to know if you had any crimes that occurred in that location during those dates and times. You can see why we have somebody who is dedicated to just geography and CSAs because it is a full-time plus job just for Mike. We have another person who handles crime reports. So…
Mike Adams, Clery Compliance Specialist: Susan, could I clarify one thing?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Yes.
Mike Adams, Clery Compliance Specialist: You may be out of touch on this but the important thing is that you notify us when you travel. As far as any crimes that occur we don’t ask you to, if you are aware you should report, but we are going to go and contact law enforcement. We don’t ask any of you to do that, but we do need to prove to the Department of Education if we’re audited that we, if there was a trip, that we did contact any law enforcement agency for the potential jurisdiction. We don’t want you having to investigate or determine anything, we just need to have the lodging information.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Yes, absolutely. We just need information from you. We will take it and so what we need to on the compliance side.
There is repeated use or a short stay away. The short stay away is 2 nights or more, and repeated use is using the same place once per calendar year or more. So, even if you stay for one night we need to know about it because some other group may take students to that same location for one night and then all of the sudden it is in that repeated use category. You can send that information when you are having those overnight stays to: crimereport@auburn.edu, crimereport, all one word at Auburn.edu and Mike will let you know if he has additional questions or if we need additional information.
Mike Fogle, Senator, Physics: Can I ask clarifying questions? What about students, undergraduate or graduate that travel for research purposes to conferences? Do you want us to report all of those? If they are sampling in the field?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: So, that’s a good question and I’ll get clarification on that, but I think yes because it is basically anything that is outside of the classroom activity. Conferences, definitely; research…
Mike Fogle, Senator, Physics: Can you grab that information off of travel voucher information? Do we really need to take time to send you all of that information? That is a huge administrative burden with all the students that travel.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: It is, it is a huge administrative burden for us, we understand both sides of that and we are looking at better ways to gather that information, but right now we just need some way…we’ve been doing a great job with that with our student organizations. We have been gathering this for several years, we need to do a better job on the academic side. We will come up with some kind of a better system. [31:07]
Someone: Susan, this has to be done pre-travel right?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: No, it can be done post-travel because we are going to ask for those statistics at the end of the calendar year. We just need to start gathering it so we have the information compiled so when we send those requests at the end of the year.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication & Journalism: I just want to clarify. We take students some place, obviously we are reporting that. A couple of our grad students decide to present a paper at a Conference, we are not going with them.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Right. If you are not paying for them to go then we don’t need to know about it, but if you are covering the cost of the hotel then that means that Auburn University is controlling that space.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication & Journalism: So, the solution is if there’s a RAT involved you file paperwork.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: I don’t know if you have to do a RAT for every trip that you take.
Someone: Not for domestic travel.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Okay.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication & Journalism: My department for domestic travel you file a RAT.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Okay, that may be a way for us to pick it up if that’s the case with everybody.
Beverly Marshall, secretary: Excuse me, what is your name and your department?
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication & Journalism: My name is Ed Youngblood , Communication & Journalism.
David Crumbley, senator, Nursing: A question about travel abroad, let’s say to Ghana, South America.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: We work with international programs on all of the Study Abroad Trips and they provide information to us about what counts and what doesn’t because there are some real intricacies with that, if it’s a home stay program it doesn’t count, if it is a contractual agreement for just a programmatic type thing it doesn’t count, but if it’s a contractual agreement for space then it does. So we actually had burgulary in Rome on a program last year that was in apartments leased by the University of Arkansas but provided to Auburn through contract. So that is the kind of thing that we have to really get into the weeds on the lease agreement. If it’s just a hotel if you are staying one place per night it may or may not count because there could be other groups going to those same hotels, but if you are staying for 2 nights or more, definitely. Debra Weise should be getting that information to us.
Mike Adams: Susan that is if they are working under the auspices of Auburn Global, correct?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Yes, they all have to for study abroad.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication & Journalism: I want to make sure I have a handle on this. We have a student doing thesis research, they decide they are going to go to the National Archives. We provide them no funding.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: That does not count for us. We do not need information about that. Only if Auburn University is covering the cost of the lodging or leasing a physical space. Internships do not count because that is a programmatic agreement, but leasing space for a classroom or for housing does count.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication & Journalism: so, somebody going out to do field research on science education, unless they are getting funded you are not worried about that.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Correct.
Tracy Witte, senator, psychology: Does this apply to an employee who is a project coordinator who will be working remotely, working in Washington state. Since she is not a student is this not applicable?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: That’s a great question and no it does not apply. It is only for spaces that are frequently used by students. They define frequently as more than once. If students are not going out there then, no.
CPT Christian Ramos, ROTC: Does this apply when using Army funds for training?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: No.
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication & Journalism: Here’s another one. If we give a student a $500 travel grant for research.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: No. They can do whatever they want with that, you’re not paying directly for the housing.
Rusty Wright, senator substitute, Fisheries: So, this is only for lodging, is that what I am hearing? I did hear you say boats, Fisheries. If it’s a day trip, where do you draw the line?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: The key is if the space is leased by us, the space itself. So, if you go on a field trip to a museum it doesn’t count because the museum is in control of that space. I know, you could argue that we are not in control of the Hotel, but that’s how the Dept. of Education views that. So. Hotels, written leases to use space for classrooms or offices for faculty where students would meet with them, that kind of thing.
Rusty Wright, senator substitute, Fisheries: But you mentioned boats, our research boat and go out on the water for a day.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Are you leasing that boat?
Rusty Wright, senator substitute, Fisheries: It’s our boat.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Your boat, if a crime happens on that boat we need to know about it. We are not going to have to request information that you went on the trip. You would just report if a crime were to happen while out on the boat.
I knew this would be a contentious issue and understand completely, a very difficult area for compliance for sure.
A couple of other things I want to mention to you about the Clery Act. There is also something called separate campuses. If you work at a college that has a facility that is more permanent in nature like Rural Studio, Urban Studio, we got Aricia, all of those are considered separate campuses and they have to comply completely on their own independently with the Clery Act requirements. If you’ve got an organized program of study, so you are offering more than a class or two on a regular basis, you have an onsite administrator and it’s frequented by students then we also need to know about that. We need to evaluate whether that needs to be considered a separate campus. Right now, we’ve got 12 identified, we’ve got future studio coming online and a couple of others that we’ve been looking at and need to know about those as well.
The other issue is Campus Security Authority (CSAs). We are regularly evaluating who is identified as CSAs. We are going through that effort again. Anybody that has significant responsibility outside of the classroom is considered a CSA. Some of you raised your hands that were identified as CSAs. I am sure many more of you probably are and we are working on a better way to identify those. Mike adds the CSAs to an e-mail list and lets you know that you are one. He will offer training either in person or online. It’s a short training, which talks about your reporting requirements. Campus Security Authorities have to report crimes that they are told about that occur on our Clery geography to us so that we can evaluate whether we need to send a timely warning about it, if there is an ongoing threat, or if we need to count it in our statistics.
Privacy and confidentiality just want to mention that this is a big part of Clery. A lot of people when they first become a Campus Security Authority (CSAs). worry about sharing personal information with us. We do not need to know personally identifying information for our job. We are looking at whether there is an ongoing threat to campus and whether or not we need to count it as a statistic. We don’t need names. If you are reporting something to us please keep that in mind. Keep the names out of it. The only office that needs that is Title IX or the Student Conduct Office if it is a conduct issure.
Then, What we do with it? Let’s say you give us a report of a crime that occurred. We will evaluate whether or not if there is an immediate threat and if emergency identification is needed or an ongoing serious threat, such as an armed robbery and the person is at large, we need to send a notification for that. Whether or not we need to put it on our crime log, which is accessible to the public, you can go on our Web site and look at it at any time. And whether or not we need to put it into our crime statistics. We also coordinate with other offices to make sure the victim has resources provided to them and the follow up on safety concerns that may have come out of the report.
So, that is what I had to share with you today. Does anybody have any other questions?
Ed Youngblood, senator, Communication & Journalism: Could we get a copy of this on the Senate Web site?
Michael Baginski, chair: Yes.
I have a simple question. If I wanted to find out if I am on that list of people for Campus Security Authority (CSAs) where would I go to find out?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Ask Mike Adams. His e-mail is on the handout sheet which will be posted to the Senate Web site.
One thing I want to point out, Campus Security Authority is a misnomer really, all you are doing is sharing information about things that are reported to you. You are not expected to investigate crime or anything else. Try to encourage a student to report to local authorities, if they are willing to do so. A victim of a crime has that decision to make on their own. Yet let us know about it so we can do our compliance piece.
Someone: When you send that out could you add that link? Crimereport@auburn.edu
Omar Han: If ? council gives a scholarship for a grant every month, does that require notifying your office?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: No, because you are not specifically saying what the funds are going to be used for. It is up to the student to decide.
Robin Jaffe, senator, Theatre: What do you do with all this information?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: That is a really good question. We compile all of this information. We send out 700 letters, Mike tracks if he gets a response from every one of those people and follows up with them by phone or e-mail to try and get a response. We document that. If we get a crime report then we evaluate if it happened in the space and the time that we had control and we include it in our non-campus crime statistics. So, there is this non-campus category in our annual security report. There could be a crime from Study Abroad, and 5 from hotel stays, and 3 from fraternities that are privately owned all in that same category. So, it is a big category, but we don’t get a lot of reports in that category usually. We have had a report of a domestic violence that we counted and a burglary as well from these requests, so we do get crime statistics sometimes but not a lot.
Michael Baginski, Chair: Susan, can you talk about how parents can use this information when selecting a college?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Yes, absolutely. So, the question was about parents using this to select colleges. That was really the whole goal of the Clery Act. There is a Web site at the Department of Education where you can look up different schools and view their crime statistics so that comparison can be made. That bad thing is a lot of people do not apply the Clery Act the same way, so it is hard to compare apples to apples. We’ve done some comparison with other SEC schools and it is very clear that they are counting things differently than us. It is not that they have a safer or a less safe school, but they are not using the same criteria necessarily.
That was the goal to go on to the Web site and look at 3 different schools to compare them side by side, then maybe determine I would go to Auburn because they have less violent crime.
Steven ?, Biosystems Engineering: In Clery geography reporting you talk about the actual requirements of what people are supposed to report, it seems a little vague from what I am getting. Is it possible to clarify the guidelines in a written form?
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Absolutely.
Steven ?, Biosystems Engineering: Report these things at the time when travel is involved.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: We will put something together and get it to Laura to send out to you guys.
Michael Baginski, Chair: Thank you very much.
Susan McCallister, Director of Safety Compliance: Thank you all so much.
Michael Baginski, Chair: Thank you.
This concludes our formal agenda for today.
Is there any unfinished business? Pause ….Hearing none, is there any new business? …. Hearing none, I now adjourn the meeting. [46:49 bkup]