‘Spyami’? Professors at Miami U. Decry Proposed Mandate to Report Criminal Activity of Colleagues

At Miami University, faculty members are protesting a proposed policy that would require all staff members to report their own criminal activity — or any knowledge of a colleague’s — to the Ohio institution’s lawyers.

Faculty would need to inform the office of general counsel of any police reports, arrests, charges, and indictments, whether they committed the alleged crime, witnessed, or were told about it, or had been victimized by it.

Failure to do so, the policy stipulates, could merit disciplinary action up to losing their jobs.

It’s a measure the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors is calling “draconian” and unnecessary. One faculty member and former dean, in a letter on the chapter’s website, questioned whether the policy would turn the university into “Spyami.”

Members of the chapter’s steering committee say the policy would force faculty and staff members to inform on one another and would provide the general counsel’s office, which evaluates such cases, with a means of disciplining or even firing employees without good reason.

Through a spokeswoman, the university’s general counsel, Robin L. Parker, declined to comment on the policy until after the issue is discussed at a faculty assembly meeting on Tuesday. The university did not offer a comment on the faculty criticism of the policy.

The policy is unnecessary, given the campus-safety policies that already exist, said the AAUP chapter president, Cathy Wagner, a professor of creative writing. For instance, according to the chapter, university rules already require employees to self-report most criminal convictions.

“It’s possible that the policy has been constructed in order to keep us safer on campus,” Wagner said. “It’s also possible that it’s constructed to protect the university from liability and enable them to fire people more easily.”

There are ambiguities in the policy’s language, she added, and in the types of offenses required to be reported under it.

Wagner said the policy presented several troubling scenarios. Say an employee is assaulted by another employee and files a police report but doesn’t report the crime to the university’s general counsel. “It would be amazing if you got fired for that. That would be shocking and ridiculous.” she said. “But under the policy, actually, you could be. That sort of threat is the last thing that you need to be worrying about when you’re recovering as a survivor.”

The policy could negatively affect faculty and staff members of color, said the chapter’s research director, David Walsh, an associate professor of management.

“These things are potentially challengeable as discriminatory precisely because the police appear to not operate in a fully colorblind fashion,” he said. “Persons of color do get stopped, arrested, charged, convicted, at much higher rates than whites do in the U.S.”

Baked into the policy, Walsh said, is a “strong presumption of guilt.” Police reports often do not result in criminal charges. “Just because someone has some sort of involvement with law enforcement — it’s not as though there’s a little smoke, so there must be a fire going on.”

The policy states that “no presumption of guilt will be made solely on the basis of a police report, arrest, charge or indictment of a university employee for alleged criminal conduct. However, the university has a legitimate interest in evaluating the known facts underpinning a police report, arrest, charge or indictment for alleged criminal conduct.”

If it receives word of alleged criminal conduct, the policy says, the office of general counsel would conduct an “evaluation of all known factors involved” and make a recommendation as to whether the employee should be suspended pending further investigation.

Scott Schneider, an Austin, Tex.-based partner at the law firm Husch Blackwell who specializes in education issues, said the policy was not without precedent.

“It’s not a remarkable policy,” he said. “It’s just not an unusual position for a university to say, ‘If you’re aware of one of our employees, or you’re an employee that’s been accused of a crime, there’s a criminal proceeding, you need to report that to human resources.’”

The policy’s three-day deadline for reporting and potential consequences, were “pretty reasonable,” though the consequences ought to be appropriate to the situation, he added.

The policy’s origin has become the object of controversy among its opponents. It was placed on the University Senate’s consent calendar — which serves as “effectively a sort of an auto-approve section,” Wagner said — for approval and was passed by a voice vote. But Wagner and others petitioned for the Faculty Assembly, which has oversight over the senate, to review the issue at its meeting on Tuesday. Wagner hopes the assembly will send the policy back to the senate for reconsideration.

On Monday, 19 current and former faculty and staff members in the Department of Media, Journalism, and Film sent a letter to the chair of the Faculty Senate’s executive committee urging that the policy be returned to the senate.

“There is a bad odor, even a hint of McCarthyism, about forcing one employee to tell on another,” says the letter, which was provided to The Chronicle. “Some of us encounter work by students — including journalism by students — in which a Miami employee’s encounter with law enforcement might be reported. In such a case, it would make a mess of our teaching responsibilities to compel us to pass along such a report to the administration.”

Walsh said he saw the policy as Miami administrators’ response to several headlines, including one about the university conservatory’s possession of a tree whose roots can produce a controlled substance, and one about a professor’s arrest on sex-trafficking charges.

“We see, from our own observations, an administration that is just obsessed with the reputation of the university. They’re not above throwing individual employees under the bus” with the new policy, Walsh said. “It’s an invitation to the university to fire you, or at least take disciplinary action against you, on grounds that may be completely unjustified.”

Megan Zahneis is a reporting fellow for The Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter at @meganzahneis, or email her at megan.zahneis@chronicle.com.