1. Shared governance is a crucial element of these procedures, because the authority to impose discipline lies with the Chancellor and her designees within the Administration (e.g. the Executive Vice Chancellor).Therefore the Senate's role must be advisory. It is useful to consider the example of personnel actions, in which the involvement of the Administration and the Senate are intertwined as cases move from the faculty to the Chancellor, who has the final decision.

2. Confidentiality is another element, as it is in personnel actions. The level of confidentiality must be adjusted carefully to avoid on the one hand, violating privacy rights, and, on the other, making actions so secret that there are no checks and balances and little accountability; these latter conditions can lead to general Senate members lacking confidence in the system.

3. Due process is necessary to safeguard the rights of participants in any case involving discipline or redress. For this reason it is necessary to consider the legal ramifications of any suggested procedure, and to assure all parties that their rights are being respected. Examples of issues that have arisen in this area are: what standard of proof should be required in a hearing; whether a complainant should be informed of progress in a case; how to assure the separation of an investigative panel from its corresponding judicial panel; and how to assure that faculty members have legal counsel, both in individual cases and in formulating policy. There has been the suggestion that this is an over-riding concern, and that it requires that a committee such as ours have legal expertise within its membership. Our committee, which does not have legal expertise, believes that we at UCSC can answer legal questions by consulting with legal experts without having them be members of our committees. We point out that since UCSC does not have a law school, we have no ready source of legal expertise on our campus.

4. Avoidance of conflict of interest is the final principle to be upheld. Any peer-review system requires that participants be perceived as objective. For this reason, for example, members of the Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP) who are in the same department as the faculty member under consideration recuse themselves from the case. In the case of Faculty Discipline and Redress, conflicts of interest can arise in a number of ways; these have to be foreseen and procedures developed that avoid them.

1. A student, faculty member, or member of the Administration has a complaint in mind. There must be a place for the complaint to be submitted, or at least discussed.

2. At this stage, the procedures for discipline and grievance cases diverge. In a discipline case, the complaint must be investigated, with enough information gathered for someone to decide whether there is enough evidence to show that a violation of the Faculty Code of Conduct may have indeed occurred. This stage is associated with the Charges Committee, if one exists. In a grievance case, this stage, particularly at the informal level, may be handled by the Administration, or it may be taken immediately to P&T. Either the Charges Committee (for disciplinary cases)or P&T (in grievance cases) makes a recommendation to the Administration.

3. Resolution without a formal hearing is possible at this stage if all parties agree to abide by the recommendation arising from step 2.

4. If a formal hearing is necessary, it will take place before the Committee on Privilege and Tenure (P&T), which recommends action if it is decided that a violation indeed occurred.

5. The Chancellor or her designate, upon receiving the report of P&T, decides on the action to be taken.

1. Undue Delay: the most serious cause of undue delay was identified as due to the existence of two full investigations: one at the Charges stage and one at the stage of the hearing before P&T.

2. Lack of Participation by the Complainant: Because of confidentiality requirements, complainants are not fully informed about: the charges against the faculty member as they are developed by the Administration; procedural delays; informal negotiations and settlements; and the outcome of the final hearing. This problem could equally well be entitled "Excessive confidentiality".

3. Lengthy and Complex Hearings: The issues at stake in matters of faculty discipline are extremely serious, often career-threatening. Therefore legal rights come to the fore, attorneys are involved, and the faculty committees that have to conduct hearings and make decisions are put in very difficult situations.

4. Sanctions: Lack of Flexibility and Uncertain Confidentiality: The Academic Personnel Manual provides for punitive sanctions but lacks remedial [rehabilitative] ones. Furthermore, there is "great uncertainty about the extent to which the University may make known to others the fact of discipline or the grounds therefore."

5. Confusion between Disciplinary and Grievance Proceedings: "There is confusion among potential complainants, and also among the University personnel advising them, about whether and when to pursue a grievance either instead of, as prelude to, or in conjunction with a disciplinary complaint."

6. Lack of Standard of Proof: The bylaws and regulations do not set down the standard of proof to be used in the formal hearings of P&T. The possibilities range from "preponderance of the evidence", through "strong probability", to "clear and convincing evidence that".

1. Identify an ombudsperson who will be the initial contact for a potential complainant. This ombudsperson will serve to advise the complainant whether the matter is a disciplinary or grievance case, and how to proceed in attempting informal resolution, or in filing a formal complaint. The ombudsperson should be beholden to the Academic Senate as a whole, so that faculty have confidence in advice received. The ombudsperson needs to have experience and training in cases of discipline and redress. An ombudsperson who is somewhat independent of the individual faculty complainant and of administrators who will be directly involved in the case can advise a complainant in an objective fashion. One suggestion is to identify and train a member of the Academic Senate staff as the ombudsperson. Academic Senate staff are ultimately hired and supervised by the Chair of the Academic Senate, which provides some independence from the administration. For this purpose, it might be appropriate to use the Academic Senate Coordinator(presently Elaine Wheeler, previously Julie Dryden). This recommendation would reduce or avoid a number of conflicts of interest.

2. Change the Charges Committee into a Committee of the Academic Senate. This change will primarily avoid conflict of interest by taking responsibility for the committee out of the hands of administrators who may have conflicts of interest, yet without diluting the committee's effectiveness as an advisor to the Administration. It thus does not decrease the sharing in shared governance. We are not recommending specific legislation at this time, because there are still several choices to be made, which should be discussed by the Senate and the choice of which should be part of the charge to next year's committee. In particular, should the Charges Committee be a Standing Committee, or should it be a committee appointed for each case? In the latter choice, should the appointing committee be the Committee on Committees or P&T? What restrictions should be placed on the membership of a Charges Committee? As a committee of the Senate, the Charges Committee would ultimately report back to the Senate about its work, either directly or through P&T; such reports present both an advantage and a difficulty. The advantage is that the Senate may get information (like CAP reports) on the extent to which the Charges Committee(s) and the Administration agree or disagree. The difficulty is that there are relatively few discipline cases on this campus, and a way must be found to avoid violating confidentiality with such reporting.

3. In cases in which the accused is an administrator, develop specific procedures to insure that the administrators involved in prosecution or judgment do not have a conflict of interest. This may be as simple as using a Dean from another Division or as complicated as requiring an administrator from another campus. The main concern here is conflict of interest. This recommendation requires thought on the part of the Administration as well as detailed discussions between the Senate and the Administration.

4. Decide between two alternatives for dealing with the confusion between disciplinary and grievance cases. The first alternative is to distinguish them sharply, writing different legislation for each. The second is to write legislation that applies to both without distinction. Our SSC feels that the latter is possible and should be explored. Both disciplinary and grievance cases would follow the same sequence of steps listed above in the Outline of Procedures. The key difference between the two that has led to their distinction in the past is the role of the Administration; in disciplinary cases the role of the investigator/prosecution is played informally by an administrator, and formally by University Counsel, while in grievance cases the defendant is often either the University as a Whole, or an individual administrator, again represented by University Counsel. This difference has led to a difference in procedure: in disciplinary cases, the procedure starts with the Charges Committee; in grievance cases, the procedure starts with P&T. In the latter case, a difficulty arises with regard to the separation between the investigative and judicial panels. If it becomes an Academic Senate committee, the Charges Committee could serve as the investigatory panel in both discipline and grievance cases. (We should also change its name in this event.) This would entail a significant change in the responsibilities of P&T, and it would require a real collaboration between the Charges Committee and P&T in advising the Senate on policy issues related to grievance and discipline.

5. Define responsibilities for investigation so as to minimize duplication between the investigations at the Charges level and those of later stages of preparation for a hearing before P&T. The reduction of duplication in the investigative process is a decided improvement in due process. Excessive delays are deleterious for numerous reasons, such as: they can cause a faculty member under investigation to lose career opportunities; they cause memory loss in witnesses' recollection; and they cause a lack of continuity in the membership of key panels involved in a case.

6. Increase openness and accountability by informing complainants of procedures under way, of decisions and the reasons given, and of final resolutions. The complainant will be required to hold some, if not most, of this information in confidence. In the present system, complainants can be kept completely in the dark as to the procedures and disposition of a case. By informing complainants of these matters, the process is made much more open, and therefore the possibility of abuse is much less. The concomitant loss of confidentiality is a small price to pay for this openness. There is a question here of due process, because the Information Practices Act makes clear that a person has considerable rights to access information about oneself, but almost no right to access information about any other person. Yet, in the UCSC Policy on Research Integrity, which covers scientific misconduct, the complainant is in fact informed at every step. Thus keeping the complainant informed has a precedent.

7. Find ways for the Senate and its individual members to receive legal counsel by some means other than hiring and paying personal attorneys. Legal advice is necessary not only from the general consideration of due process, but also from the perspective of specific regulations in the area of Sexual Harassment, and specific provisions in the Information Practices Act. For many years the issue of legal counsel for members of the Academic Senate has been under consideration. The Simmons report mentioned the possibilities only long enough to dismiss them for reasons that are unconvincing to our SSC. It is clearly necessary for due process for faculty members to have legal representation in the formal hearings involving discipline or redress. As noted above, the present use of University Counsel is essentially restricted to representation of the University as a Whole, which translates into the Administration. Other possibilities include defining another Universitywide office in parallel with the present University counsel, using faculty from the University's law schools, identifying fund sources for hiring attorneys, and paying the attorney fees for Senate members who have been exonerated. This is a Universitywide problem that may be difficult to solve unilaterally at UCSC.

8. Expand the range of available sanctions from the present four (written censure, suspension, demotion, or dismissal). Suggestions of the Simmons report are: public censure, withdrawal of faculty privileges, and conditional suspension, demotion, or dismissal. The flexibility provided by an expanded list of possible sanctions would allow much more attention to be paid to rehabilitation of the guilty party rather than concentration on punishment. This suggestion, made by the Simmons committee, does not relate to our four general principles. However, another aspect of sanctions; that is, whether the imposition of sanctions ought to be made public or not, does relate to confidentiality. The idea of public censure is not attractive, but it can be effective.

· Manual of the Santa Cruz Division of the Academic Senate

· Appendix 002.015 to the above Manual on "Campus Procedures for Implementation of University Policy on Faculty Conduct and the Administration of Discipline",

· Academic Personnel Manual