Campus Safety Task Force Final Report - Executive Summary

Dear BW Community,

The BW Campus Safety Task Force submitted a final report to my office on Friday, April 27. Yesterday I reviewed the report with the co-chairs of the task force - Professor Tom Sutton and Counseling Services Director Sophia Kallergis. This report reflects the work of the task force as it sought to provide guidance and recommendations on campus safety with a focus on sexual misconduct and discrimination policies, practices, procedures and resources at BW.

Since late January, the members of the task force have interviewed 21 BW faculty and staff, reviewed Title IX sexual misconduct and discrimination policies from 24 Ohio campuses and interviewed six staff members from those campuses who work to execute Title IX policy. The panel also addressed concerns first raised by a student-led safety group, as well as issues submitted through a confidential MyBW page.

The final report offers guidance/proposals in three major categories:

• Policy and Procedures

• Personnel and Training

• Campus Awareness

We will begin work immediately on the priority recommendations for Summer 2018:

• Establish a standing university committee, composed of faculty, staff and students, which represents the breadth of our diverse community, with responsibility for overseeing and monitoring progress on the recommendations from the task force.

• Separate the positions of Title IX Coordinator and Chief Diversity Officer to ensure that adequate time can be given to these two important areas of our university.

• Strengthen and improve engagement of the campus misconduct investigation team.

• Revise Title IX policy document to incorporate task force recommendations.

• Design and implement a campus safety awareness outreach campaign that will begin as we welcome new and returning students to our campus in August.

In addition to these excellent recommendations, we will be looking for ways to incorporate Title IX awareness into the opening faculty and staff meetings of the Fall 2018 semester.

While the University is committed to the immediate implementation of the Priority Recommendations for Summer 2018, the report also includes longer term recommendations. Review and decisions on implementation of the full report will begin immediately in the Fall 2018 semester under the direction of the new university committee. The full report can be found here.

We are grateful to all who have given their time to this constructive dialogue and process to date, and to those who will help us carry out the work still to be done. We offer a special thank you to the members of the Campus Safety Task Force:

Ally Crays, Vice President, BW Student Body
Clara Harb, Middle East Culture Club
Melanie Jones, Director of Multicultural Student Services
Alex Leslie, Cleveland Rape Crisis Center
Sarah Mamula, Conservatory student
Terrell Mitchell, Black Student Alliance
Aaron Montgomery, Assistant Professor, Mathematics
Kathleen Moser, Student Led Safety
Olivia Murphy, Student Senate
Kyriakos Nalmpantis, Assistant Professor, History Department
Jen Perry, Professor and Chair, Psychology Department
Vanessa Sampsel, Cleveland Rape Crisis Center
Eric Warman, Student Senate
Sophia Kallergis, Psy.D., Task Force Co-chair
Tom Sutton, Ph.D., Task Force Co-chair

All good wishes,

Bob Helmer
President
Baldwin Wallace University