Summer Project Suggestion: A policy to get my head around compliancy

Speical Guest post by Lois Flagstad, Public Policy Division Chair Region IV-West

Vice-President for Student Life, Black Hills State University

Remember the good old days when summers meant cleaning one’s office, taking a vacation and just having time for lunch?  It seems that the frenzied pace of the life of student affairs professionals continues year-around.  I still occasionally have a community member say to me, ‘oh you work at the college – what are you doing with your time off this summer?’  Well, let me tell you about summer orientation and registration and summer classes and camps and conferences and so on and so forth.  

I must admit that I have started my summer to-do list, which is really a list that seems to grow and take on a life of its own and seems to never get shorter.  My to-do list continues to roam around my desk and my mind.  It is time to dust it off and make concrete plans and goals for my summer’s work.  A wise man once said to me “get the big things in place and the little things will fall into place.”  I know this to be true with many years of experience and knowing full well that taking time to plan and strategize does have its rewards. 

So, enough of my rambling and here is the number one item on my summer list:  review the items that fall into my prevue of compliancy.   The four main categories into which compliancy fall for me are HEA, Clery, FERPA, and the recent Department of Education’s letter regarding sexual violence on campus and my system Board of Regents policies and mandates.   

A few comments and the questions I will ask myself this summer:

HEA – Higher Education Amendment Act: 

Campus Safety:  What are my campus’ emergency notification policies and procedures?  Who is responsible for notifications? 

Peer-to-peer file-sharing:  How do students know about copyright-related issues?  How does our discipline code address such issues?

Fire Safety:  Where is our fire report published?  How is it shared with local emergency response agencies? 

Textbook cost containment:  Who oversees communication between publisher and faculty and students about textbooks, including the format of required class materials and consumer (retail) information?

Missing persons:  What is our missing person policy and who is involved in responding to a report of a missing student?  How will our resident hall student inform us about whom to contact in the event that they are missing? 

Protection of student speech and protection rights:  How do we encourage and support open discourse in an environment that is free from intimidation, harassment, and discrimination and chilling of student speech?