Audio Recording from the Meeting, 2014 September 26

You guys want to come over there?
They don't have to.
They look too comfortable.
The views are probably much better over there.
So we'll all just raise our voices.
And then we don't have anybody on the speaker.
Nope, everybody's got a corn in a half here.
Fantastic.
Well, we're officially called to order.
And I want to thank everybody for being here.
We need to do an adjustment to the agenda.
If we could.
And we're going to move resolution 5B.
We're going to move that up to 2A.
If you would.
And then we're going to insert the 3E.
I can't do even see any.
I was just thinking exactly what we want to do it.
But we want to we left off the alumni association in the.
The reports.
So 10 months to say a couple of things for us.
So we're in there.
So can I have a motion to approve the agenda?
Second.
Second.
Any opposition?
I'm going to say non-constant that stands approved.
Item number two, what I'm going to do is,
opposed to just introduce the new members.
I'm going to ask the groups to quickly go around the table.
Because it's as important for the new members to know who we are.
It is for us to know who the new members are.
So we'll do the primary table first.
And then we'll start at the people behind the table.
And just very briefly, who you are,
who your affiliation is and anything else you care to say.
And if anybody wants to say go games, then just go.
I will start.
My name is Michael Castellana.
I have a privilege of being the president of the council.
I am an 8492 alone.
I, my day job as a president and CEO of Subcute,
a small local financial institution.
I work a lot in my kind of development in the area.
And I also serve on the foundation board of directors.
And I currently serve on the federal management board board directors.
But again, I'm pleased to be here because we have to be able to say that under the president.
John.
My name is John Fallon.
77 undergrad 81 post graduate degree.
I am a partner in the law firm of kids,
children in New York.
So obviously I'm fortunately on the lawyer.
And I always have to be one of those.
But there are a couple.
And you know, as some of you know, I've been involved with the council for a number of years.
And it's been a great opportunity.
And obviously, you know, we're looking forward to having another great football season in the arena.
And obviously, we're across from a good building.
Where were I?
Jim Clancy, graduate 1990 undergrad.
And everyone's been telling me what a great view it is.
This is all happy.
This is where I used to study.
And or pretend to study.
I carry my books up and go on the camera, book it back down a few floors.
The only view that has changed is at that side of the field.
And impressive growth of the university is just something to admire.
I've worked at the Department of Health.
Been there for a long time.
And my real job is Father of the Sexual Bulls Shawn.
Nick Butler, undergrad 15.
So that makes me a senior.
I'm the undergraduate student representative.
Before this, I was involved in the Student Association where I served as vice president.
Once I graduate, I'm looking to go into higher education administration.
And looking to stay here at you all before that.
And I'm looking forward to right here.
Welcome.
Go Dan.
Go Dan.
I'm Steve Betts, a class of 7185.
Recently retired as vice president for finance and business.
I was acting as university liaison during that period of time.
And I just couldn't give this one up.
I'm hanging on.
I'm Tim Murphy.
I'm president of the Alumni Association.
I'm a 1977 graduate of the Graduate School of Public Affairs.
I'm retired.
I certainly am retired in government service.
I'm a little more or another.
But I retired as the executive vice president of the recent foundation.
I was living in the state of New York.
A long time.
As I was in church, I served as executive vice president because badass is not a real job job.
I've been on the board for about 4 years and I enjoy every minute of it.
We got to be here.
Afternoon at one Robert, College and Indian class of 88 of Albany.
And then Calcabella College.
And I went to the Department of Civil Service where I am in the director of classification compensation.
And I've been in the council now for about 4 years.
And I enjoy every minute of combo.
We got to be here.
Afternoon at one Robert, College and Indian class of 88 of Albany.
And then down the street 91 from home in law school.
So another lawyer, but I'm better than he is.
Not cheaper.
I'm currently...
I've been in government for about 20 years or so.
But in Indian now, in different fashion.
But I currently own my own title insurance company in New York City commercial firm.
I've been on the council for a while.
I've been in a Pataki holdover.
I was one of the council's to government Pataki and really am proud to be part of this university.
I live in New York City and hold flag in Indian.
I've been talking to the school.
I've been talking to anyone that wants to listen to it.
So I'm really happy to be part of the team here today.
Good afternoon.
I'm Arby and I'm a new mayor of the council on first meeting today.
I'm President CEO of the Chamber of Commerce in our area.
And we look at the economic vitality of the capital region of this university and the places central rural.
So really in my day job, I've worked in the property and a lot of his administration and deans
because there's really a lot of interest here.
So I've been serving this capacity as well.
I'm a student at the school of Paris School of Police.
I call these producers one more reason.
I remember the only medical center for it.
And very good for the current great-grandmother of the university.
And all week even on the graduate of the North American University.
I do connect with all of you because a lot of us personally had first scholarship as well.
And before I finish, I'll just leave.
I'm Cynthia Fox. I'm a associate professor at Paris Studies.
And I've also been a legal member of the sticks program.
I've been here since 1988.
And I'm the vice and I'm this council because I am the vice chair of the faculty senate.
And I've just gone through one here, but I'm very happy to be here.
My name is Brian Fartstale.
I'm class of 2012.
I got my undergrad here.
I'm currently finishing up my master's degree in educational administration and policy studies.
And I've been involved in university studies.
I've had the Albany levels since I've been here three years ago.
And I do system-wide governance down on the vice assistant ship that is soon in the selected center.
Thank you.
My name is Nancy Herbman.
I was appointed third president of Mayor Catushine in Albany.
And I'm a private sales service, one of the co-chair of the mayor's turns is routine with president James.
I'm a recovering politician.
I spent 35 years in the state of the government retired as a system bed and state controller in terms of the average.
And I'm very pleased to be here.
I'm 19, for 2001, Rockefeller College.
It's a two minute recipient.
Oh, I'm Robert Jones class of 1844.
President and University of Albany.
I'm from the University of Albany.
I'm from the University of Albany.
I'm from Faddeen, Senaille, vice president for development.
I was sealed the fundraising at the University.
My name is Jim Van Boer.
I'm the vice president for finance and administration.
I picked up where Steve left me off on the graduate, counting masters back in 94.
And I was at the campus from 1979 through 1998 as a university accountant.
Went away for a couple of years and came back July 1.
And it was great to be back.
If I could add that he just shook me down for the $100 in parking tickets.
I'm probably going to get one today.
With interest?
With interest, yeah.
I get the interest.
I'm John Rallien, the office of Gerard Paz.
I'm Susan Paul, vice president for strategic partnerships.
Here I'll record a former member of the University Council and the past president of the Association of College Trustees and council members.
And given the opportunity, I'd like to just hit the conference that is appropriate time during the agenda.
Thank you.
Good afternoon. I'm Cindy Radea. I'm an assistant vice president and student success.
Also a grad from here and a grad from the University Council.
I've been working in student affairs and student success here for about 15 years now.
Hi, I'm Carol Sanger. I'm the director of the new advocacy center for sexual violence.
And I've been working here since 1980 and was director of this building.
So I think some of you may have been across my panel.
I'm Tamra Minor. I'm Chief Diversity Officer for the campus.
Good afternoon. I'm Jan and there. I'm also an attorney here at campus.
And I'm Sheila Saria. I'm doing a government relations area.
I'm so much in.
So we will not, the new members were not going to do this.
Every meeting that I thought there was an up new basis in the room that made the effort to try to reach point ourselves with.
So back to our agenda in the thinking of item numbers.
We will now be to.
One of the five.
We have a resolution adopted and sent to the agenda meeting format.
And I'm assuming that everybody has read through everything.
So I will.
And I'm paying the motion.
On that topic.
Social.
Second.
Any discussion on this topic?
This is something that we have talked about in some way.
So improve the efficiency of the meeting.
To move to written reports from the standing committees.
So that if there was something I'm not going to report, we could take them off and discuss.
And I'm going to accept them.
And other actions that we need to do on the agenda.
Is there any question on that?
The same nod, but we will request them all in favor.
Please say aye.
Aye.
Any opposition?
The same nod.
Now we actually need a motion to approve the items that are on the consent agenda.
Some of them.
Some of them.
Second.
Second.
Is there anything that anyone would like to take off with consent agenda?
The same nod and better all in favor.
Please say aye.
Any opposition?
That is Karen and Ann.
Tell me you wanted to speak briefly about your own association.
I just wanted to add a little two page hand out here that I wanted to hand around.
Yes.
Did you might guess the element?
The element of association is heavily involved in it planning for the upcoming homecoming weekend.
The sheet I'm handing out lists of all of the events that we know of that are occurring that weekend.
I encourage you to look to the list and attend as many of those events as you possibly can.
It's going to be a really fun time.
We're already taking reservations for some of the events on homecoming day.
That Saturday.
We expect at least 1200 people to attend to sign up and attend the upcoming event.
It's about the total we had last year, depending on the weather.
It could be a lot more or something.
Still, it's going to be a weekend and I encourage you to go.
Thank you.
Any questions or comments?
If not, we'll put the starter to show on.
I'll go over to President Jones.
Thank you very much, Michael.
Let me start by saying again, welcome to each and every one of you and in express our sincere gratitude for the home that you play on this council.
And emphasize the importance that that home has played the story.
And I hope you will see in the months and the years of the event that this council will continue to play a very important role in helping to shape the future direction of this university as we work together to move the university.
And I hope you will see in the next level of excellence.
As part of the comments that I want to make today, I want to start by, first of all, talking about some organizational changes that some way here at the university.
It's been just a little bit of time talking about that because I think it's important for you to understand the organizational changes that are underway and the organizational changes that we anticipate will occur pretty much through the beginning of the next academic year.
We have a pass out to you. The org chart as it stands today.
But this is very much a dynamic process. It kind of shows who the administrators leaders and what the administrative portfolio is out of my office currently.
But it's my pleasure. You've already met some new members of the executive committee. And I just want to emphasize some of those folks again.
We have several new members of Dr. Kim, who are in the end of the class.
But I'm going to make up there is some troubles. Tim is not with us today.
Tim is a colleague, someone that I've known for almost a decade. He spent most of his career at the university in Wisconsin.
He was a professor in the medical school and associate vice president for research.
I got to know him and worked closer with him when he came to Minnesota as a D.P. for research. So we worked together for about eight years.
And we were pleased that he was really open to coming out of retirement.
What he was busy taking photographs and playing with his grandkids and spending time with his spouse.
Who is, by the way, a U-old vinegared.
And I'm sure she played a major role in the offensive.
I'm coming back and helping his good playing Robert out because of the administrative issue with the right thing to do.
Unfortunately, he had a team on retirement before Tim did because she's back in an assisted-beam position.
I think it was Constance Medical School.
So they both have somewhat failed that retirement.
But we were very glad that Tim was available and approached a couple of years ago.
We just met on a Tim's divorce, who did with us since July.
I thank you all know that we hired after a very expedited search.
Probably one of the shorter searches in history in the university.
In about six weeks, we had to leave that buddy directly.
Mark Benson, who is the associate AB, down at Older Man to University.
And Mark is actually been on board a couple of weeks now.
And we're starting to see some very, very important impact for changes in our effort for our memory.
So we're very pleased to have Mark on board.
There's also been some transitions that's a part of this realization of our administrative structure.
But glad to see it here with us today.
It's kind of hard to know when she's in town or when she's in Brooklyn.
But Sue Foes is a joint appointment as the vice president for Strategic Partnerships at U.A.
And I just want to just stop just a moment and just offer my sincere gratitude to Sue.
And I think it's appropriate for this council to also recognize her more than six, maybe almost seven years of service.
It's Provost's Leadership University through some of the most difficult times in Providence University history.
So I just want to probably get the knowledge that worked that you did to not only advance, but to stabilize in many ways that moved this university forward.
So thank you for this.
And so having one job titled Apparently Wasn't Good enough for her.
And now she has to in addition to being the vice president for Strategic Partnerships where she is going to be playing a very key role in an area that will be talking about a little bit later in the agenda.
That is working being somewhat.
We don't have to have relates to academic alignments and affiliations that we are trying to embark on with all of it law and the counseling.
So Sue is one of the key partners and drivers of that portfolio.
And as a part of that partnership with Downstate, she also is the vice president for academic affairs at Downstate and has responsibility for creating a proposed function which is one of the administrative elements that President John Skip Williams thought was pretty important to have.
And so Sue has responsibility over the course of the next year for creating that function at Downstate as well as being our person on the ground to help move that partnership in the creation for it.
So we are very pleased about that.
And we also met Chibos here.
We knew that so she was vice president for the government relations. She was started in July after several years working for the C9C.
And so she has the experience that is necessary to move our government relations to the next level.
And this is Marty D'Ari, the folks on Zalva website who have been that is critically important for us to think about how we make some leadership changes in some more of the work.
We know some positions and ways that are really going to add value to the leadership of the personnel.
So she has a lot of experience in government relations and we are very pleased to have her as part of our team.
So in addition to the changes and transitions that have been made, there are probably an equal, is not a greater number that are in progress.
I want to give you some sense of the change that is in the air here at New Orleans.
Of course we started the search for the permanent vice president, I will see if I was president for acting in the compared to Provost.
Several months ago we actually had a conversation this morning with a search firm who had uptaped in terms of where they stand with the sourcing of candidates for that position.
And I can say that this jump here will be used in the way that the pool was developing.
I think we are going to have a very outstanding pool of candidates that are very, very important position.
And I think that we have left largely what it has been done in addition to the version over decades, but also both of some small measured and indication of where people are starting to get word, where we will lead in addition to the first and for the future.
So that position is on the way and we hope to make an announcement in that regard by December.
We are just in the process of starting the search for advice proposals for international education, we're creating a place where you're from, who's served for a very long time in that role.
We had two begins that almost at the same time informed us that they were transition and that's the school of criminal justice in the Dean of the School of Social welfare.
So we actually just signed off on the contract I think for the search firm to start those searches.
We decided to go to the single firm who's actually doing both those searches.
And so we're very excited about that.
We expect that that search will accommodate some time probably in the third part of the next semester.
And you've also heard about our degree to our desire to expand and create new programs as a part of our four states or strategic framework for this university.
And so we have a search on the way to hire the chair of computer engineer, which is the first year of the program that we plan to roll out next fall.
And because of some very significant and important compliance issues, we are also looking for a kind of nine director as well.
So those are some searches that are in progress and there are others that will be launched over the months ahead.
We will be looking for a vice president's communication marketing and social vice president for community resources.
Jim, please don't let this been trying to retire. I think all most of as long as Steve was.
So we finally agreed to let him go. And so we'll be searching for this request.
And then we've critically a second person with government relations to work closely with she and there are some other transitions that I won't mention today because they haven't been publicly announced by those folks there.
So a little bit to mention some of the other ones. But we also participate in participate other organizations with changes.
We decided that one of our states that you know is around public engagement.
Very in terms of the field, there's pretty much been a one person operation and public engagement for several decades at that directly.
We decided that if we think this work is important, we need to be the office and the staff appropriately.
And so we have allocated this year's budget some resources to start the search for a vice provost for public engagement.
And so those are some of the things that we have underway and I just wanted to just a little bit of time talk to you about the organization changes and even a chance to look at the work chart.
And we have any questions about that. I'll be very pleased to mention.
The next thing I want to just talk about briefly is the 2014 book process.
We started a slightly different process when I arrived last year and this year we decided that we would probably combine the budget allocation process not only one that was going on the provost office but one out of the president's office.
We were somewhat delayed this year because of the number of variables in making our budget decisions.
Normally we would have made those near the end of the academic year but it was very critically important for us that we make the decisions rather than rushing to try to make those decisions because of some arbitrary date in some ways that coincide with the end of the academic year.
We were recovering from the 48 million dollars at this university. We lost six years ago.
But we were very pleased that through the rational tuition strategy and other measures we were able to allocate over 20.1 million dollars for the 2014 and 2015 academic year.
And that's about 14.6 million, and we're currently allocation to the board. In other words, addition to our base. And about 5.5 million, and one time allocation of the state's own for the institutional resources.
And again, most of this came out of the rational tuition margin on 2020 standards.
We took the time this year and one of the reasons we were delayed because we thought it was critically important that our budget decision started to reflect the strategic plan.
In other words, if you're not aligning a resource which is strategic vision, it makes it very difficult to get it where you need to be.
So that was one of the reasons that we took the time this year to try to make investments in critical areas that we thought were absolutely important drivers to the next level of equity.
So some of the priority areas, and I know that there is a chart that we also want to distribute that has kind of a general overview of how we spent the recurring dollars, other words, the approximately 14.6 million dollars that was added to base.
And then as a second-past chart, that shows how we spent the buy-and-buyment.
So we have any questions about that. I won't take much time to go into it.
But that kind of gives you the good overview of how we spent the resources.
And so not only did we take a very deliberate process this time, but to understand based on what I've heard from people.
That in the first time of the history of the university, we share it with the investors and people.
They are so active in utilizing these things.
So we email out to all the university factors that we're telling them about the investors that we may not.
And again, we try to make this area that investors in high priorities are such as academic support,
the investment support, the academic initiative, the allocators, the advocate amount of money to our research agenda.
We created a $500,000 competitive pool for money to keep strategic research areas that we are going to hopefully stimulate our faculty to be able to write higher proposals and seek some cheap funding that's going to help elevate their scholarship.
We have a lot of support for students in this budget.
If you know, I had a meeting with the clients here who spoke to the undergraduate and graduate students.
And the recurring thing that then along the lines of the academic scholarships support for the undergraduate, inadequate graduate students are a support for our graduate students.
So we've listened and we've started to make incremental investments in all the areas because it's very important for us to keep the undergraduate students to make sure that the access to our undergraduate students is still there and still affordable.
And we're doing all we can to mitigate the rise in cost of the university.
So we've made some significant investments there and we'll just begin it. We have other work that we're going to be doing to make sure that we're competitive with our peer institution.
There's investments in workforce, faculty, instructional staff support, and again, all of these investments align very closely with our four sticks that we talked about doing the collaboration with students.
And also, the investments in development and diversity include in government relations communication.
And one of the last areas I haven't mentioned because of all our experiencing some of the very strategic investments that we've sit in this room today on the 27th floor.
This is a result of the campus years ago making the strategic decisions that the signature dormitories, these towers that kind of define this campus need to be read and renovation.
In some cases, gut renovation because the windmills were leaking, it worked very energy efficient.
And you haven't had a chance to see actually some of the rules, but this is an example of how this campus is starting to try to address some critical deferred maintenance issues, certain maintenance issues.
And we still have about $1.2 billion critical maintenance, the deferred maintenance challenge ahead of us.
But what you'll see in this budget is the notion that place matters.
And it matters from an aesthetic perspective as well as a physical perspective.
That you can't be talking about excellence and trying to put Joel in the next generation of students who are interested in growing in university.
The first thing they see when they come on campus, the two rating steps, doors that are resting out, petrified chewing gum that's been there since Rockefeller built this place in the city.
And a lot of the other small things that needs to be done, weeds, you know, some of the other agricultural background, and I can tell you, we have a very nice weed garden growing in several places around campus in this summer that several parents wrote to me and complained about.
And so people, these things matter to the parents and to students, you know, the place has to look presentable and has to look like we can.
Because if you don't spend the money in an effort to, you know, we can solve our $1.2 billion per thing, this problem in one day.
But I do think that there are some things that we can do that are cost effective and modest costs that we absolutely have to stay on top of a smaller issue as we continue to await the resources that deal systematically with the labor issues.
Like beach renovations of these towers were the big issue and we have other renovations, the expansion of the campus center for example, that's going on.
So we did invest substantial amount of money to hire additional maintenance staff to take care of critical maintenance issues and just to keep the place looking nice.
And we think that that's going to pay off because I also get the emails from those parents who come in on how beautiful the campus looks as well.
Those are the ones that don't get back by the time the beach was going.
But this is important stuff. So just in some of the decisions that we made this year as it relates to our investment.
So we will, we're very pleased to provide you with that overview.
And as we go forward for 2015, 2016, we're going to be hearing more about a new budget model, Jim Van Vores, all of our staff have been meeting to brainstorm with the games and other leaders about a new budget model.
And that's going to provide a bit more transparency and a bit more rigor in terms of how we actually utilize this bit of resources that we have.
And we're going to be rolling that budget model out hopefully in January. So we'll be hearing more about that.
One of the other things that we're working on is that it's very clear to us that we are still having more difficulty than I think we should in terms of continuing to attract an increasing number of people.
I think I'll probably be a bar student body has not slipped at all. I want to send that message.
But our student population is not growing nearly as fast as our parents. And we're trying to understand why.
So we're going to be taking a deep dive looking at how we will promote the kind of structure and systems.
The better understand what are, how do we set realistic enrollment goals? How do we provide the competitive incentives such as scholarships and staff who's going to make us more of a better.
How do we help return the university to a place where it was for a couple of years ago, where we were at the top of the line of the geography and high ability students that graduated from the Cross of Purdue, New York.
And that was the place to come. We've lost that bottom position and we're trying to figure out how we create a pet that's going to lead us back to that group.
We're also looking at some fact of development issues as well. Steve is going to be working with us and launching a policy review process that we think is going to support the real lot of policy set that universities, some of them haven't been looked at in part too long.
Some of them probably don't want to run the relevant. And so we're going to be printing out some of those policies, like updating them and make sure that they are in line before we are aware of where they're going.
We've had some better bit of success and fundraising. I don't know if you're going to talk about that. I'm going to send you a report.
Okay, well, we raised a total of the 11 point, the 11 point remaining, which is an increase of 62% over 2013.
And total fundraising number of 6.9 million.
And so we're very, very proud of the fact that our fundraising efforts are starting to pay off.
Endowment is now so close to 50 million that I think is safe to say it gets 50 million. It's 4.9.5.
So we're starting to see a lot of excitement, a lot of engagement in our development office.
And this 4.9.5 million represents about 25% increase.
And so this is a big deal and we're very, very thankful to Fardin and HIST to all of you who helped advance the notion of excellence at this university, which our fundraising help us build on.
So we're very, very excited about the progress that we've made and we will continue to advance our fundraising efforts.
One of the biggest growth there is that our fundraising efforts has been the addition of new endowments.
And back in 22 endowments and our foundation dollars bringing the total number of endowments accounts up to 4.9.
So we're very, very proud of that.
And then just a couple of things. The citizen lawyer and the ward that you know will be occurring in November, on November 6th, except you.
This is the 35th anniversary of the citizen lawyer again.
It's at 5.30 and we're very pleased to be honoring this year and the academic lawyer who has provided Kevin Money, former president of CNN, the community lawyers and a known who I think well known.
In 1974, graduate of ULPD and president of the C.O. of Houston and advisors.
And then Theddy Bender, who's a community volunteer or a community lawyer.
So I encourage you all to plan on attending that event.
This year is one of the best events we have ever here and on those four years.
So with that Mr. President, I guess we will end our report.
And I didn't say anything about CNN's transition.
So I'll believe it's that after this. I know I'm going to get a question about it.
It continues to move forward.
We are still fine tuning the MLU as mutual agreement at this juncture surrounding the big issue.
Which is how we will be providing general education requirements for about 100 undergraduate students from CNSE about imposing to those food service recreational opportunities, select health services and transportation and parking services.
The older the six areas that we've been wrestling to the ground over the past seven months regarding the CNSE transition.
I think all of you probably heard by now they've officially changed their name to the sunny polytechnic.
And so for some pie, some people already started calling.
But it is some polytechnic issues which were performed many years ago.
And officially the faculty have already been transitioned from the new affiliation with you.
But the students are still our students.
And so until this MLU, all of the students graduate in undergrad and they're still considering to be involved in the students of those field training.
And that way, you know, because MLU will be the transition point for what it's signed in XQ.
I think there's like a 20-day after this one they will transition from being our students to being in the CNSE system.
So with that, I'll end my report today.
Questions?
Any further questions?
I'll just make a comment.
I have heard local for a long time here at the Norwegian University.
Still amazed and pleased that every month, EMPI, the University, both directly, where you see the basics of the key culture of the University, EMPI, the headlines.
Everything continues to be greater than you can.
So I think your efforts to engage and really get out through the community and all of these different areas.
It has absolutely been relevant.
For those of you that aren't here, you may not see that.
But this is clearly the hardest work in the present that I've seen out here.
Thank you very much.
Okay, if there is nothing else, we're going to move to new business items.
The first is going to be a presentation on Title IX.
I'm going to kindly ask you to write down and hold your questions until the end of the presentation.
Because I'm sure you'll have some questions, but it is so full that we want to make sure that we get all of the information out there before we start a presentation.
Okay.
A good afternoon, Council Chairman Castellano, President Jones, Council members, and guests.
We thank you for this opportunity to speak briefly with you today about what Title IX is, the role of the Title IX officer, and share other related legal issues as we help as specific programs we have in place to ensure that students are prepared.
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is not just about sports, but is a federal statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.
Sex discrimination, of course, includes all forms of sexual harassment, including verbal and sexual violence.
Naniloids, students, and third parties against employee students and third parties.
As the Title IX coordinator, I serve as the principal institution official responsible for the administration, of policies, procedures, and data collection to ensure compliance with Title IX.
This includes the coordination of policy development and implementation,
appropriate policy changes, university-wide training and education,
communications compliance reporting, guidance to leadership,
and knowledge of emerging legislation,
and for compliance requirements in all areas covered by relevant regulations.
Our campus successfully underwent a compliance review by OCR,
and we have upgraded our compliance efforts to the next level.
Janet Fayer, who actually provided leadership
in handling the legal aspects of the compliance review,
will speak a bit about the review,
as well as any related legal issues.
Carol Stanger and Cindy Riggie will then speak about the university's
prevention and response programs.
Hi, good afternoon.
We do have a handout for everyone.
It's just one page, two sides.
One that does begin, reprint the Title of the Actual Title IX statute,
but also reprint, sorry, I'm not too...
The University's non-discrimination, non-discrimination,
not-discrimination, no, excuse me, which was very timely yesterday.
Thank you, Dr. Jones, because she sent out the annual notice
yesterday, again, the College Campus.
As well as on the other side, we have different websites
if you want to take a look as to where our discrimination policies appear,
as well as some other points of interest that we'll get to along the way,
including our non-discrimination notice,
and a couple of other things that have happened on our campus.
Again, I want to thank you, and we appreciate this opportunity
to bring you up to date on Title IX.
We recognize that pretty much a week doesn't go by
when you don't open a newspaper or a news magazine
or turn on your local and national news
that Title IX's not in the headlines,
as well as what is going on with the NFL for domestic violence.
I know I'm an attorney and I have a license to annoy.
I know people get very nervous,
going to attorneys are asked to speak.
So let me start from the very end.
The University is doing a fantastic job
at addressing sexual assaults on its campus,
both prevention and response.
To both the complainant and the respondent.
Let me just know from the outset,
we're careful not to say victim and perpetrator
because of their criminal terms.
And on our campus, our remedies are administrative
and I'll get to that more in our pric-do chat here.
As Tamar noted, Title IX is actually enforced
by the U.S. Department of Education,
the Office of Civil Rights, we call that OCR,
very affectionate term for all of us.
And the reason why Title IX is now in the forefront
for the University is one,
not because it's part of a national political agenda
for both the President and the Vice President.
You may have heard this week they've rolled out their campaign.
It's on us, and that's really a bystander intervention
public service campaign.
It's also not because Senator Gillibrand
and Senator McGaskill have rolled out
their proposed federal legislation.
It's also not because back on in April of 2011,
OCR sent out a dear colleague letter
which is advised to colleges and universities
as well as interpretations, OCR's interpretation
of federal law.
That was found to colleges and universities
across the country and it absolutely
upset the Apple cart.
That was the first time colleges and universities
really became aware of the fact that OCR
was defining sexual harassment
to include sexual assault and sexual all sexual violence.
So that really changed the landscape.
It was because on December 23rd, 2010,
four months before that dear colleague letter came out.
The chancellor of the SUNY system got a letter from OCR saying,
happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, happy New Year, guess what?
We are going to do a compliance review
of the SUNY system, compliance review of your Title IX.
Unfortunately for our Albany campus,
or at least it seemed unfortunate at the time,
the Albany campus along with Buff State,
New Falls and Morrisville,
we were chosen out of the 29, 9 state-offs
for a full compliance review.
So we went through the compliance review
and OCR focused on the following areas
and I apologize for reading,
but the Title IX coordinator, as Tamara has identified.
How the campus disseminates information
about sexual assault prevention and response
to the college campus.
What are our grievance procedures for sexual assault?
The non-discrimination notice,
our student code of conduct,
and how discipline students retaliation policies
for those who may complaints.
Trainings and other programs for prevention and response.
It wanted to review all of our sexual assault cases
and the student disciplinary process from 2007 to 2011.
It wanted to know about our campus police relationship
with local police agencies.
We wanted to know whether or not we had a 24-hour response team available
for any victim complainant.
We wanted to know what we do for campus focus groups on this issue
and also whether or not we had campus climate surveys.
The whole compliance review for the SUNY system,
including our campus, took two years, nine months.
And on September 30th, 2013,
SUNY system entered into a resolution agreement
with OCR resolving all issues.
I will say this too, we still have ongoing through 2016.
Some mandated reporting so that they keep knowing
that we're continuing to do what we say we're going to do.
But honestly, our campus spared very, very well.
We were on top of everything.
One problem we had is we actually had two nondiscrimination notices
on our campus, one for students, one for faculty and staff.
That was really historic.
We've often treated the two sides of the campus,
two houses of the campus separately.
We've now combined into one, and I just would like you to know
that our nondiscrimination notice goes beyond what is required
by OCR.
And we include sexual orientation, gender expression,
gender identity.
So we want this to be a welcoming community for everyone.
The other thing we had is out of the 58 files
or so we sent of our student conduct proceedings.
Six of them, OCR came back with questions claiming
that we had not followed our own policy and procedure.
When, in fact, after we went back and looked,
it came back that we only had one issue of documentation
where the person in ball said, I know I did it,
I just didn't document it.
So again, we did very well.
And just to give you a little visual, we sent five banker boxes
of documentation, policies, procedures, pamphlets,
handbooks, et cetera, to OCR.
So I mean, if paper proves anything,
we're certainly doing a lot in this area.
I do, though, want to point out for,
and I'll say it this way, for my client,
all of the great things that it was doing,
even before all of this compliance review started,
and certainly while the compliance review was ongoing.
The university, again, the Title IX coordinator
is the person who is to be at center stage
for all compliance issues.
Tamra has been filling that role.
The university has come to realize that Title IX
and sexual prevention and response in other areas
that all come into that is such critical importance
that we are going to hire a full-time Title IX coordinator
as President John's mentioned in his report.
And that is, that search is going on now.
In terms of dissemination of information,
I have to tell you, this campus is terrific
at getting out of information.
Between emails, the websites, the orientation for students
and faculty staff, we have pamphlets, magnets, door hangers,
posters, by all time favorite, the stall news.
And yes, I literally mean the bathroom stall.
You get students everywhere they go.
The student newspaper, our handbooks,
we have a number of programs that go on annually,
as well as different recognition months
and Carol Stang will talk a bit more about that
and ongoing trainings.
And of course, for some of you who went to school here,
you know about the dorm meetings.
And those often have trainings that go on there too.
So we cannot think of another way.
Our campus is very creative about getting the information out.
And so we're all very, very comprehensive.
One of the things you may have heard about in the news,
turning out to campus relationship with local police.
That's been a very big issue with other campuses
across the country, particularly Montana,
Poverty Williams Smith recently in the news.
For those of you who are newsative counseling may not know,
but I want to remind everyone that our university police department
is a department of sworn police officers.
They are not security guards.
They have statewide jurisdiction.
They go, they are highly educated, well trained.
They train, they are the trainers at the New York State Police Academy,
as well as the local police academy.
They are a leader in training and providing the program
itself for a RAD or a DRAD Aggression Defense.
It's a self-defense program for women, children, and men.
It's a fantastic program.
So they are out in the community.
Again, they are sworn police officers.
Our university police, we do have cooperation agreements
with the City of Albany Police, as well as the town of Gulderman,
since our campus sits in vote.
We also have relationships with the Albany County Sheriff's Department,
as well as the New York State Police, as well as the East Greenbush Police,
even though technically, you know, on the land over in East Greenbush,
that is part of our jurisdiction, so are there, too.
UPT are also though highly trained in how to conduct an investigation
of sexual violence.
They are also trained on how to treat the complainant of victim,
as well as the respondent, the alleged perpetrator.
They are 24-hour on-call police departments every day,
Cindy Rige and others in student success.
We have a liaison that works with the City of Albany Police Department.
They get reports about what's going on with our students,
whether, again, they're in trouble, as a perpetrator, or they need help.
And also, they're often the first ones who first spoke
who are talking to the alleged victim, again, complainant.
And they hand out and describe all the different options for a student.
We just want to tell you some of the options on the administrative side.
Carol Stanger will tell you about the program options for them.
First of all, a student can bring a complaint through our sexual harassment policy.
If that complaint is against an employee,
and that's handled through Tamer's Office,
her office investigates, makes a recommendation to President Jones,
and involves an employee that then goes over to HR for a discipline.
If it is a student, then at the end of that report,
it goes to our student disciplinary folks,
and it's referred there for student discipline.
This student can also lodge a complaint with the local police,
our UPD, or the local police agency, for a criminal prosecution,
which of course would be the Albany County District Attorney.
So that, of course, would take it out of the camp.
This realm, but we would cooperate, certainly.
The student can also go directly to the Office of Community Standards.
Again, as a student disciplinary office, and handle it through the community rights responsibilities.
Or, again, they can refer directly to HR to go through that process.
And just as a refresher, I'd like to mention,
if your management confidential President Jones can hire a virus on the spot,
if it's a union member, there are union contracts that we have to work through.
Those options are not mutually exclusive.
A student can pick all of them, even though some of them meld together.
How, if that would all shake out, is for us to work on as the administration.
That's not for a student to have to worry about.
And again, Carol's going to talk about all the helpful programs,
you know, in dealing with the aftermath.
The choices, though, are up to the student.
We can't tell the student what to do.
We can't make them do anything.
We can't retaliate if they choose not to do anything at all.
And there's a couple of challenges with those choices.
One, if a student wants his or her name to remain confidential,
we can't guarantee that confidentiality unless they have reported that first to someone
who has statutory confidentiality, like a mental health provider, or clergy.
We try very hard to maintain it, but again, we can't guarantee it.
And we certainly do not put it in the headlines.
We do not broadcast that kind of thing.
But on campus itself, we do have to share names at times.
We also, whether or not a student wants to do any of those investigatory processes,
the campus itself has an independent responsibility to investigate.
And that is often a challenge if a student doesn't want to put forth his or her name
and doesn't give us much information.
We do our very best with that and track that.
But those are two challenges, and you will hear about those in the news.
A lot of the editorials have been dealing with those.
Another issue that we want to focus on is our student code of conduct.
We did very, very well in the compliance review.
We do use the preponderance of the evidence standard that's more probable than not.
That is a less of a standard than the criminal, beyond reasonable doubt.
But it is still a pretty high standard.
Two things we did have to change in our code.
And I don't expect you to remember this, but this did come before the council a few years ago.
One, we have to give appeal rights to the complainant.
The person, the student, who made the complaint.
We always only had appeal rights for the respondent.
Now they both have to have that right.
And second, while we did this in practice, we didn't have it in writing.
And that's written out of the occasion of outcome to both the complainant and the respondent.
Those are very big in the news.
So again, I just want to highlight those for you.
The other thing of trainings, OCR, is very big on trainings.
And I have to say our campus is too.
Administratively, we've had a comprehensive training program in this area for years.
And it's through, again, orientations, all sorts of different ways that it comes up.
But we have a president's council on the prevention of sexual harassment.
We also have a sexual harassment awareness prevention training that's done through diversity inclusion.
And again, we do other programs throughout the year.
It's emails, et cetera, out there.
Carol's going to touch on the trainings for students.
There are any number of trainings and any number of forums, those trainings are delivered in.
The only difference that we do now than then is we do highlight Title IX.
Again, we always talked about sexual violence.
It was just never Title IX sexual violence.
So other campus focus groups, OCR, is very, very insistent that we have them.
Truthfully, this campus has always had one.
We've called it our campus safety committee.
It's always been charged with making recommendations to the president on how to keep the campus safe for a more responsive.
As times change.
Sexual violence has always been on that agenda.
It's now a standing item on the agenda.
The other issue is the campus climate checks.
OCR has required us to do a campus climate check.
It required us to do one during the compliance review as well as after.
The challenge there is getting students to come.
Their input is invaluable. Clearly, it's invaluable.
But getting them to come is very difficult.
We cannot send out invitations to the complainants or the respondents.
That's discriminatory and it of itself.
But it is something that we're constantly looking for better ways and interesting ways of getting students reaction.
We do turn to the campus student campus leadership for help there.
That's really our compliance review and what happened in the real hot, the real meat of it and how well we did.
I do want to mention one other challenge that we have on this campus in every college campus in university across the country.
That's Elkoholcuse.
Elkohol and sexual assault.
I'm sorry to say.
I can go hand in hand.
It's a rare case that we have one that doesn't involve Elkoholcuse and frankly drugs as well.
We have many programs on Elkoholcuse prevention and resources available for students with drug and alcohol issues.
Please know that that's also coming into the whole sexual violence prevention as well.
It's very difficult. You can't treat them separately anymore.
Before I end and I'm probably out of time.
I just want to mention a couple of few other things.
The NCAA is on board with the sexual assault violence prevention and in August it released its own resolution which binds our university.
And the resolution from the executive committee basically talks about making sure that our athletics department complies with all federal state college university policies and procedures.
And also that any complaints and investigations of sexual violence within the athletic department are not handled in the athletic department.
The athletic department and the athlete themselves cooperate with the university but they do not handle it internally.
And that's clearly to ensure that athletes are not treated either better or worse in instances of sexual assault.
Two others statutes. You can't help hearing about it so I just wanted to clarify what they are and how they interact with Title IX.
One is the Clear React and what the Clear React is. It's a recording act. It's a federal act. It's named after a student who was murdered at Lehigh University back in the 80s.
It requires us to produce every year a fire and campus criminal safety report.
Our report, the website address is on the back of the sheet there. It's on the front page of our first page of the website on the bottom annual security report.
If you do get a chance, I know it's 88 pages long but it does describe a lot of our prevention programs. It does have our crime statistics for the last three years.
And frankly, this university at Albany, we've gotten great kudos from OCR as well as within the Sony system for the comprehensive report we produce every year.
So if you get a chance to take a look.
The other is the Violence Against Women's Act that are known as VAWA. That was passed back in 1984 to address domestic violence.
It was reauthorized in 2013, why it matters to us. It means clearing to now specifically includes domestic violence, dating violence, which on our campus and our campus code we call intimate partner violence and stalking, which includes cyber stalking.
So now we're going to have to report those crimes as well. And again, our code of conduct, we've addressed those. It's been going on for a long time.
VAWA though, I just want to point out is gender neutral despite it said that despite it saying violence against women is gender neutral.
Stay tuned because student success will be back to you fairly in first short order to ask for your approval of amendments to the code of conduct, the community rights and responsibility for definitions.
So it was our federal definition, it's their mandatory, but nonetheless that's part of what you need to approve.
So stay tuned on that.
Last but not least on the legislation side, Senator Gillibrand and Senator McCaskill, their campus accountability and safety act.
It is out there as proposed legislation. Please know, Sony and the university have had places at the table.
For both, by the way, it's on us, but also for this act, we've been asked to respond to it and we've been very actively involved.
I have to say at the outset, unless it changes drastically as it goes through the process, it really is not going to change much about how our campus deals with sexual assault and prevention.
That's how far ahead we are of the curve.
For example, it says, a clerk reports have to be on websites. We already do that.
It says, a clerk reports have to have statements about local law enforcement outside the campus system. We already do that.
We have to have anonymous online reporting of crime. We already do that.
We have to have tell students about local services in the community, particularly like the availability of rape kids and things like that. We already do that.
We have to have one disciplinary proceeding process for students. We already do that. We don't have it separate for the road scholars versus the athletes.
So again, there's very little that we're going to have to change based on the current draft. But we are on top of it, we will be staying tuned.
Last but not least, very, very quickly. Two other things that Sony has been doing.
I debated telling you about it, but it is also about sexual violence and sexual abuse. This is in direct response to Sandusky and Penn State.
Back in 2012, the board did pass a resolution requiring every faculty, staff and students to be mandatory reporters on the campus of child sexual abuse.
Then in 2014, this passed June. It reiterated. Again, it's reaffirmed its commitment to protecting minors who are on campus.
And it passed a child protection policy. That policy is again system wide. It really invokes pretty much every procedure or anything that we have to do with minors on campus.
And so we're still working to implement that. There will be a training that system is rolling out for us on that. If you'd like more information at some point, we'd be glad to provide you.
But we are taking steps to address minors on campus who are invited on campus, such as high school students here for orientation, other high school programs that are healthier, etc.
Some are camps for students, sports athletes, that kind of thing. So I can't say enough. The University of Albany, the administration takes the legal compliance very, very seriously with all of this.
But in taking it seriously, we have not lost the legal form over the absolutely helpful substance of these policies and procedures and the programs.
So I'm going to turn this over to Cindy Riggie and Carol Stanger. But before I do that, I also have to tell you. And I know where it's going to be so annoying, but I really like to tell you positive things for once. Thank you.
Thanks to Carol Stanger and Cindy Riggie. Our new advocacy center has been front and center of not only our local news.
Our local channel, 6CBS News, last earlier this month, and it's an earlier September feature at SUNY Albany's advocacy center on its 30-minute, you know, nightly news devoted three whole minutes to us, which is a big deal.
It wasn't just a sound bite, lots of film footage. And if you want to see it, it's still online and we let KBV the links to that.
And then Senator Jilla Brands off, this actually picked that up. And she sent a tweet out. And you know, she's been highly critical of colleges and universities.
And so the tweets on the back page too. So we're very proud of ourselves that we're getting some local and national policy.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you again for having us here today. I just wanted to talk very briefly before Carol comes up. And really my role is to explain a little bit about how the advocacy center for sexual violence came to be on this campus.
They just opened this past January. But prior to that, we've been assisting students taking reports of primarily focused around sexual assaults on this campus for decades.
I've been involved with this for the past seven years through the Vice President's Office for Student Success. I have been liaison on this campus for any student reports of sexual assault that would come through our office.
I would work collaboratively with our sexual assault resource center, which was out of our counseling center. And really we've always provided students support resources.
What they can do on this campus to make official reports to police. If they just wanted to make a report to our campus judicial process now called community standards.
We've always had structures in place to do this. Now as Janet had mentioned, you know, there's a lot going on now with new laws, legislation, and what college campuses need to be focusing on beyond sexual assault.
So sexual violence really now are focused being an umbrella term for domestic violence, dating violence, stalking sexual harassment.
The folks intimately involved in how we support students in this way really started to think, you know, our process is very decentralized. For a student, they probably have no idea that a Vice President for Student Success exists.
If I'm coming forward with a report that I might be a little intimidated to do in the first place, I don't want the Vice President's Office to know this happens to me.
So we really started thinking more, you know, how can we make this make better sense to the student that the student we can be promoting a one-stop kind of area that focuses on supporting students with resources and support that they need, but also focusing on education, prevention, even really beyond the realm of sexual assault, you know, sexual health.
What can we be doing so that this really resonates and makes sense to students? So in the fall of 2012, we weren't very hard on a proposal for President Jones to put forth the idea of opening an advocacy center on this campus for students.
He funded us 100%, we've got a director and assistant director, a graduate assistant, and a support staff in that area.
I'm going to have Carol talk, she's going to talk to you a lot about what this center does on campus. But I have to say, you know, we knew that the title of this center was going to be an advocacy center.
We wanted to focus it, so it wouldn't be seen as, you know, an advocacy center for whatever a student needs might be on this campus.
So sexual violence is a national term, specifically on college campuses. You hear it a lot in the news. It makes sense to our students, students get it.
They understand what the center is all about, and actually the day we opened, we had a walk-in of a brand new student, it was a transfer student.
So they weren't even really familiar with the lay of the land here, but they walked in the door the first thing to get some assistance from Carol for an incident that they were involved in.
So thank you, President Jones. The center has been very successful up to now in our infancy of it being open. So now I'll turn this over to Carol, our director, to talk to you a little bit more about that.
Thank you.
And yes, thank you, President Jones as well. I think this has added a lot to the university and I'm really excited to be involved with it.
Interestingly, we opened our doors the same day that President Obama, January 22, announced the national spotlight on this issue in the news.
I like to think it was a result of our opening center in my fantasy life, but in reality I'm sure it had nothing to do with it, but it was kind of ironic and interesting.
And again, I used to work in the counseling center prior to coming over here, so I wasn't directly involved with sexual violence, although I was someone involved, which, especially with my peer education program.
So I was aware of how things had gone. And there is a big difference between advocacy and counseling, obviously. But I think that's one word pointing out for a moment.
I think both myself and my assistant director have clinical mental health counseling or social work degrees. I also have a human sexuality graduate degree.
And so we have the ability to do clinical work, but that's not what we're doing. We're stepping outside of that to provide advocacy.
So one of our motto is, is when a student walks in who has been involved in an incident like this, we want to provide them a good listening to, which sounds sort of silly, but it's really important.
We don't want to be looking at the 50 minute clock and we don't want to be saying, okay, next we'll see you next week. Here's a tissue.
You know, you can stop crying in the bathroom before you, all of that. It's rules take the time if you need to talk to APM, we'll take the time in most circumstances.
So we're there until they're done. And sometimes that can be enormously helpful because they get it out. They often have not shared this with anyone else, or with just a few well-meaning people in their lives who say,
we should do this, we should do that, taking the control back from the student who's just had their control taken from them in an incident.
So we want to put them back in the driver's seat and really just listen to get that out. And then we don't want to offer those other services.
President Jones said earlier comment about place being important. I really wanted this center to feel not like an office.
And that's a picture of part of it there. It's students walk in and they're like, wow, it feels like a living room. A house. We wanted it to be comfortable.
We have a little T-station. They can help themselves to any one of 35 T's or a cup of coffee. We used real mugs to the dismay of my staff because there's no benefit.
Our comfort and holding a paper cup, I'm sorry. It's just not because it doesn't make me feel better at all.
I want to hold a warm mug and feel the warmth and it makes such a difference to students.
So why do they contact us? That's really been addressed. So I'm kind of skipping it. But any kind of sexual violence as others have mentioned.
And also I meet with students specifically when they have other general sexuality or sexual health concerns, which I've always done in the counseling center.
We just moved that part of my work here. So again, obviously sexual assaults or rapes being involved in an intimate partner violent relationship or someone stalking them.
And I like to say that can range from, you know, I talk about it on a college campus where people were involved in a relationship and one of them breaks up and the other doesn't.
So they're still texting 47 times a day. They're still waiting outside of the classroom. And it's either at a minor annoyance level, but it can move on to a spectrum where they're saying, if you don't get back with me, I might kill myself.
If you don't get back to me, I might do something to you. So it moves into a different direction and we want to talk about all of those things.
That's our little T-stations. So what do they do when we walk in? Well, once they get their story out, we then offer them a variety of services. And again, the student has full choice of what they want to do if anything. They don't have to do anything. And that's fine as well.
So of course, support advocacy. We offer consultations. Sometimes people will come in, especially when we're talking about the domestic violence spectrum, people will come in who are concerned about their roommate and their relationship with someone else.
So it's a third party kind of thing. And what can I do? You know, they're just not seeing that this is a problem so we can work with them there.
But again, we provide academic accommodations for students. You know, if we know that they've missed classes, result of this incident, if they feel like they need to get out of Albany for a period of time, we can work with the Provost's Office to get a letter of accommodation out.
And the law is now saying that we have to faculty have to provide accommodations for these situations to a larger extent than they did in the past. So that's something that we're seeing as well.
We also provide residential accommodations obviously for on-campus students. But if somebody, if their alleged perpetrator is in the building or across the hall and they're not comfortable there, or if they just want to be moved somewhere else so the person doesn't know where they are, we can work with residential life and do that.
We provide referrals for health care needs. Obviously, we're talking about a sexual assault. There might be a lot of health care needs immediately. If it's a heterosexual situation, you know, pregnancy prevention might be a problem.
If you see prevention might be an issue, certainly if they want a forensic rape exam. If they want STI testing, there are drugs you can take, HIV-profile access drugs that can be taken quickly so that if they were exposed to HIV, they have a much significantly lower chance of being exposed.
But explaining all of that and the side effects and weighing the options, we will also accompany them to emergency room if they would like. So they have an advocate with them.
If we're not available, we will provide an advocate and we have a great local community service, the Crime Vive Divin Sexual Violence Center, who provides those advocates as well. So we will work with that process.
Assistance, Theratic Student Conduct Process. We will help them if they decide they want to refer of their fellow student to the judicial process. We will help them with that. We'll help them fill out the paperwork. We'll talk about what they need to do, what that will feel like.
We will attend as an advocate with meetings in that area. I should mention I used to be the assistant director of judicial affairs here as well. So that's been really useful in this experience for me because I know that system really well and I can walk them through that system.
So when they go to a intimidating, when they go to a meeting, they have an hour worth of details that are explained to them. They're in crisis. They don't remember half of them. So they have someone else sitting there that can reiterate it with them the next day.
And we also will provide assistance to pursue charges criminally through the criminal process. And that might mean would you just come with me to the police, whether it be an Albany Police Department or the University Police Department or a screenverse or what have you, we will again provide advocacy for that process.
So they really get a lot of hand holding if they would like through any of these things. But it's completely up to them whether they choose any of it. And sometimes they need to go away and come back and think about it. And sometimes they're reporting it late, which takes some of these options off the table, but still there are lots of others that they can engage in.
Also, you've heard a lot about the awareness prevention and health promotion that we offer. I, 20 years ago here, I found it a group called Project Shape and that stands for Sexual Health and Courage Cation.
And I have a good fortune of working this year with 53 undergraduate students who volunteer their time. They take a year long sexuality course that I teach. And they earn six credits.
And we do over 120 programs and workshops on sexuality matters throughout the year each year. And now we've stepped up our sexual violence piece of that, although we always did some of that.
We do poster campaigns, we do awareness months, and we do, I'm in the residence halls many times in the evening in a room like this doing programs for students as are my staff with my students.
So that's a pretty common thing. We also do a don't cancel that class program so that faculty can call us if they know they're going to be out of town for a conference. Don't cancel the class.
Give us an opportunity to commit and meet and talk about these issues, whether it's related, we can make it related. I've done really strange things. We'll put math things in there. We'll get it in there.
So we've been able to do that on occasion as well. So we're trying to be creative in all the places we can go in and meet with students.
Atopera is a domestic violence awareness month. We're working and collaborating with our football team. One of the football team members is a member of my project shape group.
And we've worked with athletics and had some meetings. We're going to be having those students make statements about their feelings about domestic violence, especially in light of the NFL. They're very interested in doing this.
And we're having that on the Jumbo Tron. We're going to be giving them some things to say. We're going to be tabling over there. We've got footballs with domestic violence information on it. They'll be throwing out. We'll be doing a lot of different things there. So more to come on that.
I wanted to spend just a minute or two. I know we're taking a lot of time here. So I'll just do this quickly. But just to talk a little bit about the scope of the problem.
Some of this you've heard from President Obama for sure. So this may be familiar. But the percentage. Why is this such a big deal and why do we see it in every newspaper and why is the media so interested?
Well, it's one in five female college students that nationally are said to be victimized with just sexual assault. We're not talking about the other areas of violence.
And it's one in 33 men. Man are victimized both by men and by women. But it's obviously those numbers are much too high. This is a huge problem. In terms of relationship violence. This is also fairly stunning. If you don't see as much on this. But one in four college students say their current relationship is one that they believe they would consider to be violent.
So those are the ones that are still in it and they're defining it that way. That's really depressing to me. One in three by a former partner. One in three. This includes the study that this is from includes higher high school years. I think it's 17 to 21 was the age group. So it's both high school and college.
And then in terms of stocking one in five female college students said that they have been stopped is usually how they say it. And one in 14 men in college by a four partner most often.
So this is a silent epidemic. 42% of college students say they've told no one. And we find that out through anonymous reports. We also on this campus have done stratified random sample reports.
Using the college health assessment survey. We've done a lot with sexual assault questions. We're able to compare that information with the national.
Luckily our percentages were not. We're under what the national was. But again it's in various from year to year. But only 5% of those campus sexual assaults are reported to police.
So whenever we talk about people are interested in clearing and the clearing numbers. And I'm like why are you interested in that? I mean I.
It's not telling you anything about we know what's happening to a larger degree. You know those numbers are somewhat moved when you think about it in that context because.
You know I wouldn't compare it college. I mean I think the more reports me that my goal my own litmus test for this center is that if we're doing our job right and people know we're there and we're able to offer services and they see what we can do for them.
More people will come in to get services that will help them heal and that's one of my goals because we know what's happening.
The fact that they're not coming forward doesn't mean it's not happening and I think with parents and others we just need to kind of get that information out there.
And there's been a lot of national research say the most often cited reason by students about not reporting are institutional barriers.
And those are because they feel like they're going to lose control. They don't think they think they're going to be blamed.
They're going to be judged. They don't want their name released and all of those things as well. So again we're working on some of that.
Now the violence against women act obviously impacts tile nine. This is all I see it in circles. So my mind kind of works with the overlap here but.
They do make some changes in terms of how we handle this and obviously the SUNY system encourages reporting and mostly because we want to get students services as quickly as possible.
And also if we're dealing if they're willing to press charges so we can deal with allegations.
So we're still committed to providing police protecting the policy excuse me of students but there are some kind of changes in the law that make this a little bit more difficult.
So Janet we'll talk about confidentiality there are a number of different sources of confidential reporting on campus and now with the new law it includes professional advocates.
So our center is covered in terms of confidential reporting. Psychologists license near states psychologists obviously the University Counseling Center also covered staff members within the University Health Center and also clergy in our Interfaith Center but everyone else on campus is a responsible employee and that and I'm doing trainings with the.
The Division of Student Success and also with the College of Arts and Sciences folks I've met with but we're starting to do trainings around some of this to explain this to folks so responsible employees this isn't a change we've always been required to report time day location of an incident but they did not previously have to put the name forward and now they do and that's one of the things were a little concerned and you see this in the news as well if we have to put the students name forward will fewer students come by come forward to report.
Again it's being put forward to basically the title line coordinator through my office so it's a limited number of people but we do have a duty to investigate and that might change some things if we have an unwilling you know student unwilling to make a statement or take part in investigation it's going to limit our ability to investigate so it may not go very far but at least it gets the name of the alleged perpetrator on a watch list so that those of us that are seeing this pretty routinely would be able to pick up the name.
So that's kind of the change so they also have to give us the details of the incident as the student reported to you and I'm out there telling staff you're not the investigator don't ask a million questions you know what where were you what we just take down the information you don't have to probe you don't have to re-e victimize the person just take down the information and whatever they said is what you share with us and then we can take it from there.
So I know we asked you to hold questions but questions now for any of us or anything that has been said from all four of us today.
On the privacy issue this university have the liability for breaches in that privacy and I know that's a thousand foot question because it depends on who but just pick those lists of those mandated reporters that have the duty to report.
So if there's some reason that we somebody's name on there and someone sees all the might submit this being accused of something now.
What's our yeah we do have liability there breach of confidentiality and that's why we're all part of the training is to train people you don't need things behind you don't leave your computer open etc.
So what we do have a liability for that so far it has now been a problem on our campus.
Are there our safe guards in place for that?
Oh yes yes absolutely.
The man is a valid one.
No nothing's valid.
Please remember two in terms of us releasing students names to the press were obligated by FERPA you know for direct reinformation only and so that direct
reinformation is in things names of students but that doesn't mean that we give out the students names under that if they're part of sexual assault.
One of the things that and it just this is just a footnote there is a movement across the country for the alleged perpetrators to respond and saying that many of the processes are not fair and we're going to sue.
And some of the conversations we've had within the general counsel's office have been about well how interesting we keep your name confidential.
It may if you are found guilty through the judiciary process it may be on your transcript but only you can release your transcript you know to the outside world but if you go the court route all of that is public information.
So some people may be releasing their own name without recognizing you know the university is bound not to the judiciary themselves.
Carol correct me if I'm wrong but one of the things for the local DA is many victims don't want to go forward with the case because he or she do not want their name out there in the public eye and of course the DA's office does try to keep some confidentiality but they really can't.
And by the way some of the folks on the campus like Carol who's a counselor anyone in this any of the health care counselors mental health or position nurses are flurging their statutorily bound so even if I demand you to Carol no you must tell me because we have to do she can't.
So did I hear you correctly that everyone including students are mandatory or yes.
So student is legally bound and if they go we have to separate it here I just want to make it you're talking about for child for child for child for under 17.
Which I think is one of everybody should report it but if they are aware of it and they don't they are now technically yes yes.
How do we disclose that we are training students at faculty and staff on that now.
Do they sign something when they work every year saying they acknowledge that because that's something that I am amazed that.
We brought in 10 students that are guaranteed to die in the middle of nor the consequences of the matter let alone the consequences.
Well the other issue with that quite honestly is unlike if I'm a social worker and I report and I'm a mandatory reporter or I'm a school teacher I'm a mandatory reporter those statutes do provide me a unity if I'm wrong.
And this that's also a presumption that I'm asking you to take right so then then you're leaving your kids open to you.
So who's been with them. That is a huge issue there is there is nothing out there at the moment.
So you're saying those students are required to report something where if they for some reason are wrong and therefore are culpable they could be brought in civil action and there's no one doing them the fire of the attack.
Correct and that is a huge concern in the soonest times.
We don't have to do the other questions to we have a duty to give them the knowledge.
Right exactly the real responsibility.
But we have a legal we have a legal duty and so then therefore comes back to our university for.
And that's all spelled out.
It's clearly is weird. I mean obviously we're all lawyers but that's the point.
No one is going to understand that. That sounds like a mandatory freshman class for every incoming freshman but let us sign off.
No no if you take the sign off then how do you know right it's valid.
No and all the issues you brought out we have the board resolution is very problematic.
We believe for our students.
For faculty and staff it I still in some respects is problematic but we also have section 17 coverage work.
Yeah but you'll probably identify.
Yes exactly.
That's one question and concern something like I would have is some kids out there and then when he gets sued depending on how old he is you could have local parental issues.
Where the parents are going to get sued and your own policies.
Or some other homeowners policy or something that the lawyers can attach on to.
And before you know it my kid is 17 years old screws up and I'm going to get sued for millions of dollars.
Right. That's not going to go over well.
No it's not. And if I had your permission without maybe names may I bring your concerns back.
Yeah no you can say you can say you can say this whole count of the counts of the counts.
I would somebody you're in charge but I mean I'm not going to break the discussion.
Right now we have an analysis be done.
Exactly what these issues are.
Because you know again everybody knows I mean I'm more the corporate kind of guy deals with this lot.
And I'm telling you this is a big problem.
It's a huge issue and we talked about on the campus about whether this is not better addressed.
First of all let me step back.
Our students here anywhere between the ages of 17 and up.
And you're 18 you're an adult you're 21 you're clearly an adult.
So we all have a responsibility.
However our campus we're here to serve as students and provide them education.
Not require them to be mandatory reporters.
And the campus has been talking internally about is this issue of student reporting better addressed through training called bystander intervention.
Where if you are at a party and someone is drunk and something is going on you intervene or you call the police or you get some help what have you.
Rather than requiring them to be a mandatory reporter.
Now if they're only mandatory reporters for child abuse which is 17 and under but that is even a more sticky situation.
Was this something that we voluntarily did or was this a certain situation?
This is a federal trial.
But if federal trial just to be resolved.
And do that to have the legal rights for somebody to be mandatory reporter.
So I think for the issue of the same time I think we're all on the same base that this is an issue that will put in your very capable hands to voice to whoever that you can.
We would be happy to.
And certainly after the meeting if you have additional thoughts let us know through Steve or directly whatever you most comfortable with.
And we can certainly take the back.
And if you would like an update at any time let us know we do it whatever format you call it.
But I think it's important that as we go forward with the discussion we are able to distinguish between what the federal government is saying about this issue.
And reporting is to be what we soon need trustee make over the intercommittee.
Right.
We are very very clear about that.
Right. Exactly. Very separate.
With this being.
Yeah. That's one of the volume.
Without having you recite just statistics what is the incidence of sexual violence?
Have you been in the state?
Well it's interesting because only recently have we begun to make that umbrella to include other than sexual assault.
So our numbers obviously now reflect things that they didn't reflect before but that certainly happened before.
So it's hard to make the comparison.
And again most of them are unreported.
So I can tell you that it's certainly well over 20 reports that have come into the advocacy center.
Just doing that.
Is that for a year?
Since January 22nd.
But some of those are not.
Are handled differently because I'll explain why.
At orientation I, I, I, or my staff met with all the incoming students and following our little half an hour program.
We'd be walking out and a student would say, would it be okay for these are not even here yet students right?
They're here overnight.
Would it be okay if I made an appointment to come see you about something that happened to me in high school?
So we're getting a lot of those.
Something happened to me two years ago, kinds of things that don't get reflected in numbers but they,
obviously clients were seeing people that were helping and you know, and it's affecting them.
While they're a student here they're still dealing with the aftermath of that.
You know, when in our stratified random sample, the information we were extrapolating,
the numbers ranged from 11% you know, compared to the one out of five number.
11% of people in a stratified random sample of classes here each year, two down to five percent.
But you know, I don't know that that's, I mean there's some, obviously some statistical error in there.
So if we take the worst case scenario or the best case scenario it's still 650 students that would have been sexually assaulted.
And the way that question was asked was in the last 12 months, were you a victim of you know, sex without consent,
something along those lines that we had a bunch of different questions depending on which area we were looking at,
or would you consider yourself in a violent relationship or you know, stalking.
So it's still a huge number.
And we just differentiate quickly, not about trying to be a Johnny Raincladger, but okay, so the mandatory reporting requirement,
apparently is for what?
Mandatory reporting requirement, that's in suing policy through the Board of Trustees.
And that's for reporting child sexual.
What is the definition of a child?
Someone under the age of 17.
Okay, all right, now you know where I'm going to go with this, because 17 years old or under,
you can have kids on this campus attending a party where they are you know in a situation or whatever.
And if another student happens to see that and doesn't report that, then that student doesn't even realize that that's not the adolescent that they're even thinking of.
Because when you think Sandesky and all that stuff, you're thinking children, little children, not adults who are 16 or 17 years old.
Okay, so that's one issue.
So there's no mandatory reporting for anything above that age level?
Correct.
From the students.
From the students.
That's the only thing where I'm really concerned about.
I'm worried about the faculty, I'm not worried about coaches and things like that so much.
But just so we're all clear, those kids, you're putting a big responsibility on them, that they're probably not even aware of.
Little on their parents are not aware of.
And the ramifications associated with that are very significant.
And I think we as a group, what a generally say, they're concerned about that.
Because you agree with college, right?
My daughter was 16 when she was on this campus, so that's what I'm getting.
So, but another distinction, and then I get another question.
That's mandatory reporting the legal sense.
But is it a student being responsible?
Are they part of your responsible employee group?
No, with one exception, RAs that are paying physicians, they have to be employees.
Right, and there's a training.
But they're probably in demand for it because they're employed?
Yes, because there are student and an employee at the same time.
So that's that, that, I'm not as worried about them.
Because except for gross negligence and both of them is conduct, they're probably protective of them.
Right?
So, in simple negligence, the state of fact, things like that, where an attorney could bring a lawsuit against they end their parents.
There's exposure.
Right?
Yeah, right.
So, the other question was just as, I think from the sense of governance and transparency,
would it be possible to give this body a periodic basis, the period in which you guys select a summary report that has quantitative and qualitative facts?
It was opposed to pointing to websites which I know we can go to, but from a governance structure, I think it would make sense out of the end.
And show good governance to those who manage or view the council as interested in not that we would like to see on your basis,
trended reports with those things that you feel are important to report to us.
I don't know, China, great more of our party, but I just think this is what reports should do, taking an active responsibility.
Check.
I wanted to statement, and I, and I, from President Jones, I give you a lot of credit for day one telling resources at this blind label,
just instinctively knowing that this is a problem that needs to be handled, so I appreciate you doing that.
Your wisdom for that and staff, all of our work you've done.
My question is more, this is, you know, papers, and this is a very big issue, and thankfully we've been ahead of the curve, which is simple.
Thank God for that.
My question is, should this be, so the 30,000 for a question, I know there's going to be issues with this, but couldn't we have a mandatory,
or mandatory, I'm saying freshman class because it's easier catching them when they come in, class workshop, something, you know,
you come up with an active, you want to get them exposure to as much as this stuff is, and it can't where they have to be there.
And then continue hitting them with these other soft, soft matters that we do before.
I know it's a financial hit, I know it's money, but I'm wondering if you have in your wisdom, you've already thought about this,
is something kicking around, is it best practices work?
What if, what if, what if, what if, what if, well, why wouldn't you go just like you're working now with, you know, with all of your law?
Why wouldn't you, as part of that, go and see if you can get some of the kids that are on your law school,
and that's not a pro-sum of the business.
And in order to, you know, tap into their legal expertise, couple with your expertise on this, and come up with some kind of a program,
of exactly what you said, and freshman orientation, things like that, into the nuance associated with the decision.
Well, I think we're already doing this a lot of what we are suggesting, you don't have long-morse about the specific details in that group,
but there's room to do more, so yeah, I mean one, look, I was, where there was a solid wall, I'd always find a whole room to dance to get through, so I got that for myself.
I mean one where, I get on the whole, and I see a lot of people standing there saying, get back on there, you are just like everyone else,
and you need to take this course, that level is what I'm talking about, or workshop, whatever.
And I think it doesn't even need to cross money, because I don't know that it needs to be a whole course.
If I and my staff could go into all of the existing freshman courses without having to beg and say, is it okay, maybe we could give up that would be really helpful.
And a lot of schools are using online courses to meet the mandate that all students get instruction, but we're looking at those, but I don't feel the same.
You know, I want it to be a discussion, I want to be interacting with students, I want them to interact with each other, I think it'll be a much richer experience than sitting down at a computer, and most of the ones I've played with are really easy to cheat, because I went in, so I'm going to try to cheat, I want to give myself 10 minutes to get through this, and I'm able to do it without really reap.
So I'm really, you know, those, we may have to move in that direction, but that's what it is.
I just raised it as a question, and I know you guys will look at it, just thought it.
And if I can say, and please take this as it's intended, because we've talked a lot about this on the campus, as we feel like this is the great time to strike with some, especially when Carol doing her bi-standard sexual intervention, prevention, because of what's going on in the NFL, and people look up to the sports.
And James Brown's recent message on Thursday night football, to men across the country, that they're part of this solution.
And because the President of the United States has come out with it on us, and looking at everyone, it's a wonderful time, because we're getting some national momentum, it's everybody's responsibility, it's not just the dirty little secret, whether it be domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, all of the violence is together.
Coming with that, I think, again, it's a terrible time, but it's the best time for us to really get that.
I live at New Yorkshire, where I've been to high school, it's a ripening community in Harvard, it's not comfortable, but from the bad, the community leaders are starting to try to pull people together and come up with workshops and discussion groups, so I agree with you with that.
Well, the other aspect of this, that we really haven't spent too much time talking about in this video today, but I can tell you, that APLU means, the President has made a big presence all over the time.
At least for a lot of time talking about the new laws, particularly as relates to alleged rape or sexual assaults, and the responsibility that is being pushed down to institutions to make informed decisions in judgment, you know, between the perpetrators, alleged perpetrators, and the victim.
And how most of our institutions aren't very well prepared to make that almost legal decision, and so that's the piece that we haven't even grossed in this discussion, and that's the piece that keeps me up at night, because we want to be fair to vote parties, and as Janet said, there's an even creed scene,
and the grounds well of alleged perpetrators out there who are saying, wait a minute, do you have the authority and the ability to make that kind of judgment that's going to impact my life?
And I think that's going to have some impact unfortunately on the ability of the victims to come forth and be willing to come forth because of the concern that they're going to end up in court even if they don't want to be open about this.
And so it's the piece, it's the position that we're putting in to operate like a jury and a court to make these kinds of decisions, and most our education institutions, including this one, are not sufficiently step and prepared to do that.
You can tell if I'm wrong.
No, you're not wrong.
Unfortunately, I'm going to make one more comment, and I've got a little more time.
But one of the things that hopefully isn't lost in this is we've talked an awful lot about mandatory reporting that they're responsible for the counseling centers, advocacy centers.
I don't know where, I'm not going to even suggest that we're the responsibility lies, but if there is a way to prevent the activity, we wouldn't have to worry as much about reporting of the activity.
So educating the primarily young men in what is and is an appropriate, I think, should also be an answer to the questions.
But I want to thank you guys, that certainly you got all over what pump it on a Friday of the month.
I'm very topical and in time you managed to thank you all very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
So we have a few more items that we lost on drafts.
The next item is the proposed bylaw revision.
Nick, would you like to introduce that?
And if we could first get the motion on the table and then make the talk a little bit about it for the amendment or the council bylaws, we respect the election or law position.
So I'm voting.
Second.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Sure. So looking through the bylaws coming in, I saw that the elections for the council are held at the end of the fiscal year, which would be at the main meeting when the student representative will actually be coming in, obviously, at the beginning of the year.
So they don't have to say in electing the officers for which they'll serve under or sort of with.
And so this kind of addresses that by moving the election of the officers to the first meeting of the fiscal year, which would be this meeting.
And obviously the election of these officers is in anything that's necessary, contested or anything like that.
But this way the student representative does have a vote in the officers that will be electing them, or they're representing them.
And I think it also addresses appointments by the governor for new members who would be coming in as well to be beginning the fiscal year so that they could also be a part of the elections, whether it's Ron or whether it's just a vote.
So it really just addresses that.
Thank you.
And it's like for an identification, or any other comments on that bylaw on that.
If there's an unlawful and they would just say, I have any opposition.
I'm not carrying them in.
Okay. Here we have the student recognition of amendments.
I have one more important thing to do here.
Did you comment, said, would you mind?
No.
And it is, I will tell you, the group is again the leader.
Unfortunately, we are a victim of problematic communication systems in the state of New York, where we learn about changes in our council.
So personally, I want to apologize that these things just happen.
And I think that was good.
But I don't want to overshadow this emotion.
Whereas Pierre already served for 12 years as a member of the English Council.
And whereas during that entire term, he served with high marriage and great commitment.
And whereas he brought to the council, we brought the press experience, professional career, along with the deep understanding of the global council that is specific by the administration of the 36th or New York education law.
And whereas during his tenure, he played an important leadership role with the association of council members and college questions, and his version of New York.
And whereas during his tenure, the council expressed a major, but very issues affecting the university.
And whereas during his tenure, the council also considered an enormous, largest capital construction proposal since it's established on the other time of campus.
Including new residential and academic buildings, sports complex and stadium, and major facility renovations on both the uptown and downtown campuses.
And whereas during his tenure, the council reviewed and supported several significant campus initiatives, including the CIMC 2020 plan, proposal and the comprehensive campus strategic plan.
And whereas, whereas Mr. Albert, throughout his tenure on the council of dentists, was a step faster and hungover commitment to the continuing development of the university of Albany, serving as a future planning for the New Merced College of Federal and vice-communities, and search committees.
Now, therefore, via result of the University Council recognizes and expresses its steep appreciation and gratitude.
He did, Albert, for years, 12 years of exemplary service, dedication and stewardship, advance in university of Albany because he made your public research university.
And be a further result that the council and the university announced the time and effort which he generously engaged in the important work which the council undertakes fulfilling its oversight and advisory responsibility, as well as supporting the campus by his active participation and be a further result that the council and the university extend best wishes to him as he leaves this formal position and hope for future opportunities made renew with his application.
I will make that motion if there is any second.
The second is made by the rest of the council.
Paul and David, please say aye.
Michael, could we...
If you look at the next to the last whereas on the front page, it says the SUNY 2020 plan.
Oh, yeah.
Forward time.
I agree.
I didn't read this exactly.
It's a printed report following along.
Certainly, there's a lot of planning but not like that far.
Exactly.
Any other discussion on that one?
Can I say a few more?
Sure.
I've been on the council now for about four and a half years and the peer has been a great friend of the mentor and I've learned a lot from him.
I've been a bad government.
I've been a misnatsing among these meetings because we really click from day one because we appear now and then I don't know.
But peer was a pleasure serving the peer.
Thank you.
You're here.
Where?
I'm here with a discussion on that motion.
Well, I think that in my...
I mean, I've been on the floor for so many years now.
We've worked together on many presidential searches.
It's not only the work here on the council but it's all work here.
I did on the act.
It's very important.
You cannot underuse the thing that might work at all.
I mean, that's a hugely volunteer or presidential type of thing.
It's just a lot.
There's a lot of this area.
It's very great.
I would have composed John Stapen saying that the good thing about having around is that you're never going to be gone.
So, I always know that you'll always be there and be raising the flag and being advocate of universalism.
You're plus the heavy.
That's what we first met.
The raising flag of the different cross-envolving.
I know, yeah.
Literally.
I said, well, I would also just like to say, thank you.
I'm glad you're on the hard spot.
You're a dedication.
You're support.
You're so in that position.
But again, I know you're not going to wait for this.
It's a lot more to continue to get to the end of the day.
If I could be here, you know, on my association hits a back.
And then I feel a steady next door.
And I'm going to join us anytime.
Well, it's a long, that's nice to know.
You know, these two characters, they find our way.
They find our way into the minds of the people.
They're a mentor.
They're a mentor.
Exactly.
They're our characters.
Yeah.
My boss.
My boss.
My boss.
We will consider that the issue is passed in Annals.
Yeah, I know you wanted to let me say a couple of words.
I do.
First I need association exit council member ACT.
I would encourage participation in that.
It is an association of college council members of the state
operated campuses, 29 of them.
We have a conference coming up in late George on October 24th of
the 26th.
We will make arrangements for any part time individual or individual
that want to show off on a part time basis such as so-plugs.
A couple of the big highlights.
A number of the things that the president included in his record,
budget, marketing, enrollments, a lot of these are topic panel,
discussion items.
I know the Dr. Jackson and the governor have attended ACT meetings.
In the past, I think they're very worthwhile.
Chairman McCall, chairman of the Board of Trustees will be there for the
scholarship presentations on Saturday afternoon.
And the chancellor will speak on Sunday morning at the breakfast.
And the director will be there for the local folks to go up the north
way and you're all welcome to attend.
If you need any additional information, you can see Steve.
Happy to do it.
And regards to my time on the council.
I would encourage all of the new members and the existing
members to put in a lot of time and participate.
I was on almost every honorary degree committee and a bag committees,
etc.
And it brought me, certainly, an addition to three presidential searches.
It brought me closer to the university.
And it certainly is an honored position to have.
And I've been honored to have it for the last 12 years.
And this kept better.
I've just got to know about the same time that I got to talk to you.
So it wasn't the last minute thing.
And finally for me, the ACT, each campus has a representative on the board of
directors at ACT prior to that.
It was Mike Stein, who also has been in the resolution.
I kind of took over for Mike.
And now it would be time for somebody here to maybe take over and take
over an active role in the ACT because I think it is, of course,
a wild to association, which everybody is a member of.
So I thank you.
Is that a...
And so you have to be a member of the council for serving that.
No, we have some liaison's to the council that are members.
And to attend the council, what doesn't necessarily have to be a council member.
Yeah.
APPLAUSE
It's so right there.
No, it's okay.
We have another recognition that Mike Stein and his service in the university.
I am going to start this one, pet with resolution.
And I will make this resolution.
Now, therefore, he has resolved a university council recognized and expressed his
deep appreciation for the gratitude for Mike Stein for his seven years exemplary service
that acquires an stewardship in advancing the university's alvenry as a major public
research university.
And be a further resolved at the council in the university to acknowledge the time and effort
which he generously gave to the important work which the council wanted to take
and fulfilling its oversight and advisory responsibilities.
And be a further resolved at the council and the university's investors and pet.
It's a means that there's formal position and hope that future opportunities may be
removed from the facilities.
And I will make that much of that motion.
All of which will be provided in a minute, so I will vote for a second.
That's it.
Second by unanimous consent.
He's not here, but we can say it.
We will move that motion in two minutes, then we have frame resolution.
Thank you.
Next, our agenda.
As Dr. Jones pointed out, we had a wonderful year last year in fundraising and
a great deal of success that we had was due to a number of large gifts for it, where we received one
particular was a $2.2 million gift from Alice Hastings, Murphy's estate.
And I would like to go on about her, but her Goddaughter is sitting here and I would like maybe
at some point say a few words about Alice Hastings, Murphy was served as a librarian here and was
I think getting a little emotional, but in her honor, you're requesting to name...
I'm trying to figure out what is the exact title of the area of you're trying to name the
preservation department.
Preservation department in the honor of Ms. Alice Hastings, Murphy, who was a librarian at the University,
the total gift was $2.2 million and it meets all the guidelines that was set previously for the
council for the naming of this space.
I...
Acceptable.
Second.
Any discussion out there?
I'm saying all of the favorite places, please.
I'm always in favor of naming things for Murphy.
And the second part of my memo to the council was has nothing to with Murphy to step up and
take a lead on that.
We are going to renovation for academic support center and you should have as part of the
documents here in different areas that we are going through renovation and in accordance with the
naming guidelines that was set by the University Council earlier, we have gone and put this
in place accordingly for donation for the appropriate donation amount according to those
prices to point the individuals named to me on this space.
So, to open it up to the discussion, I'm going to get a motion to hand on the floor.
So, we're going to be seconded.
Are we required to actually...
This is a governance question.
Are we as the council required to actually include these specific dollar amounts?
Is there a way that we can delegate the actual dollar amounts to you while we acknowledge the
groups?
It just seems odd to me that we have to say that the GA office has an opportunity of
something about $100, but that is some part of the lack of education law.
I have to consider to account for that.
I don't think there is a particular requirement that you do it in this fashion.
I think you could probably do it in the establishing minimum thresholds for various kinds of
phases as similar to what Sunita said.
It's policies with respect to naming.
They say at certain levels, it's acts at certain levels of law so that you can establish those kinds of
baseline to people.
I know this House already out of the barn, I guess.
I just don't want to set a precedent with this.
I think it would be more appropriate to get you an in this administration of freedom once
being knowledge put to the space they are that you do what you need to do above a minimum.
I think a minimum is a great way to do it.
Other thoughts of thinking like this.
I think that's a good idea.
I mean, were you the only one who I've been asked the way?
Did you think the numbers were too high for what Sunita said?
I just focused on how friends or friends are.
Michael, these are minimum for us that we know and we go to talk to an individual.
Sometimes, the individual gives $10,000.
We still name $7,500.
We know that's the minimum we have to go with.
But I do it for me.
It would make me easier for me too if I had some of it more of a general.
You might want to give the person the two large two or four.
But different.
Any kind of any plus maker deal.
That's what you guys did to me.
They'll be coming back.
If an appropriate amount came, it was offered to us for naming the entire academic support system,
say $750,000, I would come back to you and I said, this will meet your guidelines.
That will be it.
I'm just trying to, from a governance perspective, facilitate what you guys need.
We can move this question and maybe just address it on a go-fire.
But we do need to change the resolution because it's resolved with naming how those things are presented.
That's what we want to say.
The minimum naming opportunities of the percentage of the judges.
That way you can see it.
Okay.
For example, a cent walked in and said, I'm going to give you $200,000 to come out of the football thing.
So it's $250,000.
What would you say?
I'll always do that.
Helping it.
Actually, no.
Yes.
Do you want to be a building?
No, I don't want to say yes.
Okay, I understand.
I also want to say yes.
The guidelines are associated with that.
That is 15% of the cost of the construction.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, it sounds like this.
This threshold is helps them.
Yeah.
Okay.
But John, I like you.
If you all want me to $200,000, I know the members of the council.
Let's make a deal now.
You're not going to have to list you why.
Well, without the window.
No.
It goes very nicely to get my quality.
This is $17,000.
My other question is,
it's not specified here.
I don't think it's just my personal pension.
I don't think anything should be appropriate to be $200.
Have you seen this space?
No, but you're saying forever.
You're saying forever.
It's a good test for you right away.
Whatever you all want to do, I don't want to get my room.
I just think anytime you say,
you give me the dollar amount and you get it forever.
It just puts you in a box.
But if you're comfortable in a box, I just put it in a box.
The bench is in the science library, the 5,000.
And they're in perpetuity.
What do you have with the $50?
I have a little game to make.
It's only a half per year.
But dad, I'm going to move that question.
I'm going to put a fitting credit all of those favor please say.
I proposed Gary.
Thank you.
The potential affiliation of Dr. Moulin Law.
I know we're out of time.
But this is an important issue.
So let's try to give you the biggest kind of experience of what's going on here.
I think you all who are calling that.
All right, now I have to take away some of the money.
We identified as one of our strategic goals is to very talk to the strategic elite,
expand the academic profile of the issue of this.
And there are a number of measures that we put in place.
One of our top five earlier was to essentially take the first steps to start your school of engineering
by getting better and improve the computer engineering program.
And they're hiring a chair and hopefully by this time next year we would have been identified
and found the meaning for the school of engineering.
So this is the state that part of the overall strategy of how you expand the academic
and the job of your own decision.
Because I have to say this.
I said to each and every department, you know, it's great to try to meet with every department
across this university and then should they understand the decision and get their input out.
The university identity, and this is a very fair statement, I think, today,
has been treated differently than the other university centers.
We have not been allowed to be involved in the same ways that storm broken Buffalo
and being able to have it in some regard in terms of having a more comprehensive,
sweet of academic undergraduate and professional program.
And a lot of it had to do with geographical location, the fact that we're here in this capital
and state surrounded by more private institutions than the rest of our country.
There's nothing wrong with private institutions.
Nothing wrong with private institutions.
We love it.
But in many ways, when doing what they've had to do to survive and to prosper,
we were prevented essentially from offering a number of those that were in programs.
You couldn't think about law because all of any law was there.
You couldn't think about medicine because of all of it in that, all of it in pharmacy, so on and so forth.
So we see that we're in a critical country of where in order to expand our profound
and some of these areas, we don't have the resources nor the time to build them from zero
because it's just not going to be a very strategy, I think it's going to be a great allowed momentum.
So instead, our strategy has been along the lines of how can you develop deep affiliations
with other entities where we just don't have those programs
and where the value proposition is mutual benefit, where we would benefit tremendously
from the affiliation and the other entity, what also would benefit.
In such a case with all of any law, I think all of you have been reading the papers above
that the crime and the enrollment of undergrad students, of James students,
there has been a significant decline as much as 35% across this country in the first year of law student class since 2008.
It goes down each and every year, all the new laws, class went down by about 25% back then,
after the new installments every year, since 2008, that this Delta Day, I mean, a 2008 to head 800 plus the now they have maybe 525 more of a bit.
And so it's not just not a normal law problem, it's a problem all over the whole country.
Every major minor law school experience in the same difficulty with declining enrollments
in first year law school classes primarily because the job market is also the kind of job suggests they're not there anymore,
is one of the issues and the downturn in the economy has created a situation where a lot of folks went to law school without the intention of ever practicing law.
And that now is not financially feasible for a lot of people.
So anyway, there are enrollments to now.
And one of the conversations we started probably the most a year ago with Dean Andrews, with the Ronald E. D. Notion,
I knew they were having some challenges keeping the enrollment up.
We started a conversation about if it made sense for their long term by a quality to develop some kind of alignment with a research university that we were interested in having that conversation.
It's a conversation that's not the first time that it's been gross, it's an understanding that this conversation is actually put on the table probably five or six years ago.
But as they say, time is everything. Sometimes you have to have both parties in perfect alignment in order for the partnership to develop.
We believe fundamentally that this is the right time where at the value proposition both for university all being in for all of the law is right where we will actually mutually benefit from this alignment.
And we will be much stronger institution because of it.
And I believe that the bias and opportunity for all of the law to stabilize is this JD program.
But what's most exciting about this is the value proposition of what we can do together.
That's a both of you, not what they can do at all.
And so we've been having these conversations about what this was looked like, what the structure was looked like, what would be required in order to an affiliation to be done in a way that we're really at that.
That both institutions how can they stabilize the JD program but also grow additional certificate programs jointly with programs not only with university all meeting but continue to grow those perhaps without any institutions as well.
So anyway, after very, very quiet here discussing this as a big idea with Dean Andrews and then no one who's the chair of the board.
We came to a agreement that they would present this.
Well, first of all, we decided that we better make sure that agonizing communities, faculty, staff and students that both institutions were aware that these conversations were going on.
And so we announced that to our faculty, mutual faculty and staff and students over the summer.
And much to our surprise, most people thought it was an interesting idea that deserved a deeper analysis.
So we were very pleased with that. And just this past Friday, we come cut to the chair here.
The trustees at Albany Law School put it to give the approval to the dean and to the chair of the board to move to the next level of discussions with you already about this.
That's a big deal. I mean, that would say landmark moment and to get them, they have some concerns.
And the way I look, the way I understand the situation, there is a small group of people who think that perhaps they could continue to go at a moment.
And there is another cohort who already think that particularly affiliation makes a lot of sense.
And there are some folks who say, why don't you just cut to the chase and go ahead and merge and get it over with.
We're not at that point of merge.
We feel very strong, we're at the most prudent and responsible way to start down this road, to the studio, to the concept or to be affiliation.
And so we have some gotten principles that we were articulated that if we were going to fill in one of the core principles we put on the table is that essentially Albany Law would essentially become a constituent college school of the university of Albany.
And then all the rest of the things we would like to figure out, one or less that could act as if their constituent would academic unit of this university, if really doesn't provide the opportunity for us to add much better.
And so the academic synergies is part of the value of composition for doing tremendous academic synergies.
And so he's going to be on the working group and leading the working group that's going to have us again find a lot of those synergies, a lot of you already know, the Albany Law is working on their active pathways that are radically aligned with a lot of the academic excellence that we have here in terms of criminal justice, school of social welfare, our business school, etc.
So it's a tremendous opportunity for us, we're very excited about it.
And we will be putting a mutual affiliation working group together that's going to be looking at everything from finance and governance to the academic synergies that I mentioned.
And one working group is going to be looking at the issues of their endowment, if there are any synergies about the lining and the lining, other aspects of their operation in ways that would allow them to be more effective and more efficient to reduce their costs and the mutual into increase our efficiency and our attractiveness as academic institutions.
And so we're very, very excited about this, so there's a lot of work to be done. We set a very aggressive timeline for this to get this done before the calendar year is over.
And so what I think today is your advice and actually your support for moving ahead with each discussion is in dialogue about it.
I'm going to stop there, I can go on about this for another 15 minutes.
This is a potential, another game to the engineering school is going to be a game changer that's going to take time.
That'll be five to seven years in a minute.
This is a game changer that we can execute in the next five months.
And so we're very excited about it, but also want to make sure that there's transparent and engaged in vetting this with the broader audience and even counsel to solicit your ideas and your questions.
I don't know if any other opening law ones here, but I went to school. I just graduated from deep connections with the school.
I say thank you and it's about time and hurry the heck up and get it done because I think the university, all the synergies that you mentioned are alluded to.
It certainly makes a good business decision, I think, for both law school and the university that have that going forward.
One question was timing and as you enter that as soon as possible, try to work it out.
I know there's a lot of issues from the tuition there, it's $35,000, $40,000, $43 now.
I remember I paid 10, I paid 10, 11, 12, I can play each year that kept raising hand for a ton.
So obviously there's a lot of math that has to be worked out.
We've got smart people in myself to figure that stuff out.
So anything that I can do to help facilitate this merger up, it's a really affiliation.
Now mergers the bad work.
I know, that triggers a lot of other things, but now it's great.
Well it does, if you start talking about merger, you invoke all kinds of approval that will take us a couple years.
So that's not a road we want to go down because frankly not one of those.
We feel great sense of urgency about getting this done now, while it's really a compelling argument now.
There's a lot that we can do with the deep affiliation.
And let me just mention this, there's no such thing as an original idea.
Much to my surprise as we started to have these conversations.
After all the years I've spent engaging with Michigan State University Council.
I never realized that their law school was actually instilled today, operates at the 501C3.
The cost was to destroy the school of law, a private law school.
Two decades ago, when Peter McPherson was president of Michigan State,
had this big idea because the law school also had some first challenges that would be rooted out of Detroit.
Because of the urban renewal project that you remember happened back in the late 80s and early 90s.
And so they needed a place to land.
And they were sort of, well, probably in private institutions, they ended up at Michigan.
And that's the Michigan State, and that's part of the model that we're looking at in terms of how we can get this done through a deep affiliation
that would essentially allow this public entity, private entity, to operate in a public fashion.
But in congruence with existing state laws and that we're not spending the state resources there.
This is not a bailout, folks. I have to say those words because I just don't want anybody.
First of all, we couldn't bail.
We're trying to move ourselves along.
So we couldn't bail out as we, if we could have really allowed to do so.
We couldn't buy them. We just don't have that kind of resource.
But there is a verification of mutual agreement about the presence of mutuality that we're both much stronger because of this.
And that's why we're going to be affiliation rather than having a conversation about emergency.
It just doesn't work for us in this world. It's a nice start.
What are the practical differences between merger and affiliation?
I mean, if they're going to become a constituent college at the University, will that be carry?
We're, well right now, it's actually all in law.
Union County. Right. So they already have affiliated.
We've got the disassociated.
It's all this own record.
Because now it is done.
Am I wrong?
I'm not asking this guy. I'm not asking this guy.
It might have pulled me up.
You're in college.
That's not a problem.
There's a nearer diploma.
That's what it does.
Yeah.
Yeah.
These are the issues in a lot of ways.
We have an environment where you can just talk to him.
And you can post a hand of responsibility.
We're making a decision.
We're going to file a file for the executive section.
We've got to fire somebody.
First of all, the person who's here, your fire.
Oh, we got to talk about it.
Let me just go on.
Yes. There are some issues regarding naming that I've been very clear about.
I'll just leave it at that.
Let me just put it this way to give those.
The average person, including a lot of our own faculty,
already thinks they're part of the university in the first place.
And people out in the community.
I can't tell you how many times I've, what you mean, a fill of age?
I thought they were already.
Sorry.
I'm not.
What's up on the healthily?
I can tell you that when I was a young associate.
I mean, people would say to me, well, you went to a SUNY,
you have a master from SUNY, and then you're law degree from SUNY.
That was not.
Yeah.
First of all, I already resonate.
That's all of the law school of university, yes.
Because that's the only way people with this associate, not an fat way.
No, right.
They would say you're not part of SUNY, right?
Yes.
But the dean jokes about this.
And she said, you know, everybody thinks we're part of you anyway.
So it's not a big deal.
And she tells us, let's worry about this part.
Yeah.
About one of our faculty members was helping her giving a pet selecture.
She said, he or she said, well, this is my first time on this part of our campus.
But it tells you that the general health perception out there is, in some cases, people think, oh, we met at the party.
So, right?
But anyway, that is one of the issues, the whole naming piece, the whole alignment.
There's one of the committees that will be in place as a governance committee that will be responsible for mapping out what the governance structure is going to look like.
They have a border of trustees.
What is that going to look like if you do an affiliation?
You know, they are private entity.
We're a public entity.
And, you know, we have union faculty.
I don't know if they have union faculty or not.
Thank you.
But they're not G-U-D.
No, no, no, they are union.
I think so.
They have this whole issue about firing professors.
Yeah.
Just so we're here.
There are these people who have got to get a few comments.
But the world has changed from this.
And being a partner and a big firm, I can tell you right now, the world is totally different now.
But it was just 10 years ago.
And it's only going to get more difficult for them.
And I had a conversation this past weekend with someone that has achieved operating officer for a very large law firm in the city.
And she was telling me that, you know, they used to bring in.
They probably have decreased the number of first year lawyers they bring in down probably 25-30%
and it's not quite enough.
No, even slightly about it.
We don't have the same numbers because clients don't want to pay for this.
Yeah.
That's the problem.
So, so they're working for you.
What I need for you is essentially, as you could, I need a formal action of some kind,
some are comparable to what the trustees that all been in law about it, the dean and the chair of the board,
and move ahead to the next level of discussion.
The next level of discussion actually will involve having these working groups that started their work,
figuring out the answers to all the questions that you're proposing,
and come back essentially with a plan in the next couple of months about if we're going to move hard with this,
this is what it would look like, to have an MOU and operating principles in place to be vetted by already lost trustees
and vetted brought back to this because this is one of the areas where, as a council,
you have responsibility for ultimately taking.
And this is all on the planning stage.
It's going to be a long way to go.
I just want to turn around and suggest that we go ahead and make a motion to move.
Absolutely.
So, we'll entertain a motion to authorize the administration to extend the real terms of two and moving to draft,
and I understand what the board was.
It's a very big group.
It's a motion.
I see it by the way.
Yeah, I'll make a, as in a long day, both.
I'm strongly suggest I'm sure about this as well.
It's a big, so second.
Second, I'm going to put it in the first round.
I'm not going to say I'm, I'm not going to say I'm, I'm not going to say I'm, I'm not going to say I'm, I'm not going to say I'm, I'm not going to say I'm, I'm not going to say I'm, I'm not going to say I'm, I'm not going to say I'm, I'm not going to understand what the board was.
And again, the reason I asked the issue about, you know, what we could say on an off the record, you have to remember, we have assigned confidentiality of bringing the police folks in order to even have the conversation we've had so much.
So I have to be very careful about what I say in particular is going to be part of a public record because they're not public hinting.
So I just want to be clear about that.
So can we explain it? What is that mean for us in our week bound by that confidentiality group?
Is it safe?
Is it safe?
That would be you, but also, I feel it is.
Help me out there, Joe.
Yeah, I think we've probably covered it.
Yeah, we're all, none of us can talk about it.
But how does it look like?
That is the problem.
Because open business hall to the city of San Diego.
Yeah, I'm just, well, it's not even in the paper.
So it's not like what we just recorded.
No, it's not.
It was out here, but in response to that question, I was asked, I have to be very careful because I don't want it to be part of public record.
There's no longer Jones that already I've played.
What the name was going to be and what the local community is.
That's correct.
That's correct.
Okay, that's the one.
I just want to, you know, just a very sensitive, I believe, we actually do recording.
It is, it goes up on the website, but we haven't discussed anything that we've today that hasn't been discussed rather publicly between the two faculty.
But I just want to know, so everybody knows.
We're accepted.
Yeah, this one to be important is not just immense, but the actual.
The verbatim record will be on the university's website, as required by next Wednesday.
We got to remember that from crack.
Okay.
Yeah, there's nothing in the only other thing I have is that you just passed the by-law, which required the record.
I think because of the reasons you have that, we don't really have to do that.
You don't want to.
That's the vice president secretary.
Yes.
That's the secretary.
That's the secretary.
She's not here today.
Why don't we have to have some of this?
No one, no burning issues.
So why don't we put the door up until the next meeting?
I'm going to identify, get five of the bus drummers off this morning.
So.
We'll find out the day of the meeting.
How are we sharing it?
Thank you.
Thank you all.