Faculty Senate met Wednesday in a special session with the district director of human resources, Celso Guzman.
Dr. Terry Walch asked questions that had been submitted by faculty.
The topics ranged from a compensation study being conducted by human resources to the recent reminder of district policy restricting use of district equipment and resources.
In December, the district sent e-mails and notified all district employees that personal use of district computers would not be tolerated.
The main topic of discussion was what prompted the policy and how it would be enforced.
"Employees were receiving personal e-mails, packages from Fedex and UPS to their offices or in mailrooms," Guzman said.
Guzman explained that the district has a responsibility to taxpayers and it would not be right to let employees use district property to run their personal business. He also said that random monitoring of computer hard drives might be a way to enforce the policy.
"There has been some discussion about random monitoring of usage. Nobody has said that it's going to happen," Guzman said. "It's not something new; nonacademic institutions do this."
But Guzman did explain that there might be a problem when it came to differentiating research from personal use.
"If the faculty is doing research on the sexual practices of carpentry ants - very valid research - how are we going to deal with that? We need to define what applies to staff and identify faculty use."
A concern brought on by the possible monitoring was who will be doing the actual monitoring.
Jeff Hunt, theater and speech communications chair, said that this brought up the past ethical challenges that have come from the district level. "Who would be doing the watching?" Hunt said. "People shouldn't be running a business in the computer in their office, but when I hear random monitoring, who are the people doing this? Is anyone watching them?"
Guzman assured the senate that there is no plan, as of yet, to do any random monitoring.
The discussion he was referring to earlier, he explained, was a casual one in which the subject was brought up and compared to random auditing.
English Professor Ignacio "Nacho" Orozco shared his views on employee morale throughout the district.
He explained that there was low morale in the district with people worrying needlessly and that policies like this one might contribute to that situation.
Biology Professor Jerry Purcell agreed with Orozco that district leaders such as Chancellor Bruce Leslie should set an example.
"When something comes from Dr. Leslie saying be careful about getting doctor calls at work, then I hear that he gets a district car for personal and business use and a home office, that drags down morale," Purcell said.
"Lets me know there are two kinds of people," Purcell continued to a round of applause from the room.
Purcell also mentioned that the authorized use of computers and the specified things would be fine as long as the faculty was allowed in on the decision-making.
English Professor Mekonnen Haile explained that what he was seeing was a mixture of business ethos and education ethos.
Haile said it was a disastrous combination because what might be fine in the education world might be misinterpreted in the business world or vice versa.
For example, he said that he reads The New York Times in his office every morning to be able to discuss subjects with his classes but that it could be misinterpreted as a waste of time.
Business Professor Val Calvert joined the conversation by agreeing that employee morale was low and explaining that the policy could have been sent in a more positive way.
"I don't care if they monitor me; it's done everywhere. Whatever you do on your system, there are footprints. You can say you don't do it, but maybe someone goes into your office at night - which has been done before. The main thing is that we remember those negative things."
Guzman responded that morale is built by everyone. "If you are in a bad mood, you just build a culture. It's going to be repeated," Guzman said. "If you go out of your way to help somebody, you build a culture."
Walch, in behalf of the senate, wanted to find out how human resources would support Faculty Senate on a pay increase.
Would human resources help the senate the way they helped with the presidents and vice chancellors pay increases?
Guzman said that HR would not support a specific increase, but they would work with the senate regarding data and presentation.
The compensation study will be finished and presented to the board in April, Guzman said.
Be the first to comment on this article!