by Jenna Pierson
The University Senate met on Dec. 4 for their last session of the fall semester, during which they discussed upcoming changes in leadership for the senate and house, adenovirus on campus, the review and alteration of current sexual assault policies on campus and the future of College Park.
President Loh emphasized to the senate body the upcoming social and economic changes that the University of Maryland will experience with the introduction of the Purple Line to the area and with Amazon coming to northern Virginia.
“It is fair to say that starting with this session… we are entering into a whole new era of politics, and this is monumental for this university,” Loh said in reference to changes in leadership for the university as well as the nation.
According to Loh, the state of Maryland has a projected $700 million deficit for 2020, and the state will continue to prioritize their $4 billion long-term initiative to improve K-12 education.
“We have received over a billion dollars over the past nine years for building improvements on campus, but it didn’t come from taxpayer dollars, it came from borrowing from Wall Street,” Loh said as he explained past expenditures.
Some senators expressed concerns over what these financial changes would mean for the university and how allocated money would be handled in the future.
“What are our priorities as a university for upcoming state funding?” asked Benjamin Blake, a senator who represents the University of Maryland’s library system.
Loh explained that the university has a 10-year plan in effect for money use, and that a top priority will be salary increases for employees in each year’s annual budget.
“Over the next four or five years one of the most important strategies for the next president will be managing growth,” Loh said. “People will now be able to get from College Park to Crystal City [new Amazon Headquarters] in 26 minutes via the purple line … the spillover effect is going to come to College Park and we have to be ready for that.”
Another topic of conversation within the presidential address was the anniversary of the death of former student Olivia Paregol from adenovirus last fall.
“This is a largely centralized institution, so we need to work better together to improve communication,” Loh said regarding the results found by an independent panel. The panel determined that the university did not violate any specific health protocol that could have directly caused the death of Paregol, but they confirmed that there needs to be a greater level of prompt communication between entities such as resident life and the health center.
According to an article by The Washington Post, the university waited 18 days to alert students that the adenovirus was on campus.
The senate also reviewed the university’s sexual misconduct policy, as well as the procedures that students, faculty and staff are required to follow when an alleged event is reported to the university.
According to Director of Student Conduct Andrea Goodwin, certain changes made to details of the current policies are largely due to the initiative passed by the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) in 2018, which created a fund to allow students greater access to legal representation at either a reduced cost or pro bono for Title IX cases.
Changes to current policy in light of this new fund include a greater articulation of the rights afforded to students through the new MHEC fund, the redefinition of some terminology for greater clarity and changes to protocol that may not align with trauma-informed approaches for victims.
The change in policy, which is required for all state-funded universities, raised some concerns.
“If the university is dedicating increased funds to offenders for equal resources, victims may feel they are being treated as equals to their offenders [and] this could be a major cause for students to not report their sexual assault,” said Stephen Kenny, an undergraduate senator from the school of behavioral and social sciences. “How directly is the law requiring equal legal representation funds?”
Goodwin assured Kenny that certain specific protections for victims reporting assaults have not changed under the new MHEC fund, but that direct consideration was not given to this specific question.
Other orders of business included the approval of a new post-baccalaureate certification for educators entitled “Supporting Children with Intensive Needs,” which seeks to create a better understanding of the neuroscience behind children with behavioral disorders and to help lead them succeed in the classroom. The senate also approved a new master’s program of international relations through the department of government and politics.
The senate will meet for their first session of the spring semester on Feb. 5, 2020.