Faculty hired at Syracuse University will soon have to undergo mandatory criminal background checks.

Provost Michele Wheatly announced the policy change Wednesday during her report to the University Senate during its first meeting of the fall semester.

Chancellor Kent Syverud also spoke to senators about a range of issues, including Invest Syracuse fundraising and the university’s budget. 

Here are three takeaways from their reports to the Senate: 

Criminal background checks

Background checks have been required only for staff hires at SU for years. But that’s now changing.

Starting this fall, faculty candidates will need to submit to background checks, Wheatly said. People applying for faculty positions with a start date of Jan. 1, 2020 will be affected. The Academic Affairs Office will oversee the background check process.

“Eventually, we will move toward background checks for existing faculty,” she said. Wheatly did not exactly detail how or when that will take place.

Staff background checks have been required since October 2016, she said.

The faculty policy change was first discussed during an April Senate meeting. The Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom, Tenure and Professional Ethics presented the proposal. 

Wheatly said Wednesday that many of the committee’s recommendations are included in the new background check policy.

Senator Margaret Susan Thompson asked Wheatly if SU will consider the severity of the crime a candidate was convicted of when conducting a background check.

The provost said that convictions will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis for each candidate. SU will consider what a given crime was and when it occurred, among other things.

“The procedure that we use is intentionally designed to not discriminate against any existing faculty member or faculty candidate about their intellectual thoughts,” she also said.

Fundraising, budget

The university raised more than $163 million last year, Syverud told the Senate. 

“That’s the most funds ever raised over one year in our history,” he said. 

As of June 30, Syverud said $31 million was raised for Invest Syracuse’s “tuition rebase and cost reduction goals.” SU also surpassed its two-year Invest Syracuse goal of raising $40 million for financial aid to support socioeconomic diversity. 

Invest Syracuse is a five-year, $100 million fundraising plan that the university launched in 2017. The initiative includes a $3,300 undergraduate tuition premium, which took effect last fall. Members of the Class of 2022 will pay more than $13,000 in tuition premium fees if it takes them four years to graduate.

When first launched, SU officials said Invest Syracuse would collect $30 million in “administrative spending” cuts, $30 million in tuition premium money and $40 million in fundraising.

As of the end of the last fiscal year, SU was running a balanced budget, Syverud said. 

‘Ideologically uniform’

Syverud spoke at length about free speech on college campuses and how he thinks SU must prepare for a “challenging election year” in 2020.

“If our students are going to learn or going to seek knowledge and to grow, I think they need to be exposed to a true range of views,” Syverud said. “Not a rigidly enforced and homogenous orthodoxy.” 

“That exposure is very difficult to achieve at a university or in a department where the faculty are too ideologically uniform,” he said. 

Syverud said he thinks SU needs to be “more attentive to this issue.” There are members of the Board of Trustees who support him on this topic, he said. He did not name who.

Senator Mark Rupert asked Syverud if he was suggesting affirmative action for conservative scholars. 

The chancellor replied no, instead saying he thinks the university has to make sure it’s seeking a full range of perspectives because, if not, the space for free speech may shrink. 

“We need to talk about how we assure that views can be expressed on campus,” Syverud said. 

Published on September 19, 2019 at 12:06 am

Contact Sam: sfogozal@syr.edu | @SamOgozalek