For the first time, almost all University of Minnesota employees will be required to report incidents of sexual assault and sexual harassment directed at students.
The mandate, which takes effect Jan. 1, is part of a new policy approved Friday by the Board of Regents.
In the past, only supervisors and staffers with advisory responsibilities were required to notify the U if they learned of reports of sexual misconduct.
The new rules broaden those obligations to faculty, staff and student employees.
One of the goals is to ensure that students who come forward with reports of sexual misconduct, even in private conversations, are referred to the help they need, according to Tina Marisam, director of the Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action.
But some faculty members and graduate students have raised concerns that students might not confide in them at all if they knew such conversations had to be reported.
"The biggest concern that I heard is that required reporting sets up a barrier between a student and somebody who may be their most trusted contact on this campus," said Joseph Konstan, a computer science professor who chairs the Faculty Consultative Committee. "None of us wants that barrier to stop someone from telling us something."
Last month, the Graduate Student Assembly passed a resolution urging the U to exempt its members, who often work as teaching assistants or in other campus roles, from the reporting requirement. "Making student employees mandatory reporters is a drastic change from current policy," the resolution said, "and we have not heard any compelling reason why we should do it." They argued that graduate students who are also employees will be in a difficult bind if a fellow student tells them something in confidence.
