Vol.25, No. 11	Jan. 21, 2000

CU Senate Mulls Proposals on Sexual Misconduct, Anti-Sweatshop Policy

The 32 senators who showed up in the midst of final exams for the December meeting on the 17th may not have expected to spend nearly two hours talking about the revised report of the Senate Task Force on Sexual Misconduct and a proposed new code of labor standards for Columbia's licensees.

Since the November Senate meeting, attended by nearly 200 spectators (many of them students troubled about the sexual misconduct policy), the Task Force had overhauled the recommendations it had presented there, drawing on that discussion, an open hearing on Nov. 18, and many other exchanges.

The revised proposal calls for stepped-up education and data-gathering efforts on sexual misconduct, partly by creating a new position, "Coordinator, Sexual Misconduct Education and Prevention," to be based in Student Services, and partly by expanding the duties of the President's Advisory Committee on Campus Security, a group whose basic responsibilities are mandated by New York State law. The revised proposal also adds a student to the panel of two deans that would hear complaints of sexual misconduct: both deans on a panel must agree on the decision and the penalty recommended, but the student panelist could write a dissenting opinion.

A coalition of student groups that had criticized the November recommendations as inadequate praised the Task Force's efforts since then, and endorsed the revised report.

The students, representing the Policy Reform Organization of the Columbia/Barnard Rape Crisis Center (PRO), Students Active for Ending Rape (SAFER), Columbia Men Against Violence and Take Back the Night, expressed one main remaining reservation—about a new provision that the hearing panel would discuss the case with deans of the schools of the accused and the accuser before reaching a final decision.

Several senators, noting that the dean of the accused's school already has the right to reverse a hearing panel's verdict on appeal, agreed that the added provision appeared to compromise the autonomy of the hearing process.

Some senators objected to the absence of guarantees of due process in the proposed hearing procedure. Sen. Gerard Lynch (Tenured, Law), who had also raised this issue in November, said only one of these guarantees is essential: "The idea that someone is not present to hear the evidence against them in a proceeding that can lead to a sanction of this severity [suspension or expulsion], and in a proceeding where they can be adjudicated to have done something that is a felony ...[and] a grave damage to their reputation—that just strikes me as a violation of fundamental fairness. The only amendment I would propose to this is one that restores the right of an accused student to be present to hear the evidence against him or her. The rest I can live with."

After considering remaining objections, and any others that might arise at the Senate on Jan. 28, the Task Force may bring resolutions enacting a new sexual misconduct policy to the floor in February. The present policy expires on May 31.

The other main agenda item was a proposal from the External Relations Committee for a stronger code of workplace conduct for companies licensed to provide products bearing Columbia's name. Columbia now requires its licensees to follow a code of conduct promulgated by the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a group of corporations, universities, and non-governmental organizations created to monitor labor conditions around the world.

Robert Moskovitz, Columbia's director of business services, said at the meeting that 70 percent of Columbia's licensees, providing 90 percent of its licensing revenue, have signed on to the FLA code. In addition to these standards, the University decided last fall to require its licensees to disclose the locations of their factories by the end of 1999. Moskovitz said 21 percent of Columbia's licensees, representing 6 percent of licensing revenues, had disclosed factory locations.

The most important additions in the code offered by External Relations were provisions for a "living wage" and overtime compensation, as determined by studies to be completed by September 2000. The conditional language of these requirements prompted debate.

President George Rupp asked how a licensee could sign a code with obligations still unknown. Greg Smith, a graduate student and member of Columbia Students Against Sweatshops, defended the committee's approach, saying it was essential to establish standards, even without precise definitions, before ratcheting up requirements for licensees. He also said it is fairer to let suppliers know now that the standard will be defined in six months, than to simply add a new standard six months later.

Some senators said the code seemed to fuse two separate aims—offering a kind of ideal or goal for companies to work toward, as well as a set of requirements to follow now. One suggestion for reconciling the two strains was to continue to rely on the present code, including the disclosure requirement, while seeking consensus among universities for stronger provisions, and then urging those upon the FLA.

Moskovitz said he considered this approach reasonable, adding that Columbia's FLA affiliation, with more than 120 other universities, is the main reason why the University's two largest licensees, Champion and Gear, recently agreed to disclose the locations of their factories.

The strongest objections came from Rupp, who thanked the committee for its work, but urged it to look at the proposal again. He opposed pressing an idealistic code on suppliers that is not enforceable or even monitorable now, an approach that he said "undermines the seriousness of the enterprise and makes it seem as if we're more interested in posturing than in getting an implementable code."

He said that if the University focuses instead on building consensus among universities for stronger provisions, "at least we're not pretending we've already done something by just announcing that Columbia is the cleanest and purest, which...makes me kind of cringe as a posture for us as an institution to be in."

Rupp also urged the committee to draw on the expertise of Columbia's own Economics Dept. in assessing the idea of a living wage. Finally, he criticized a provision of the code that bans child labor without allowing an exception for part-time work that doesn't interfere with schooling, a prohibition he said was based on "the assumption that the whole world looks the way upper middle class parts of the United States look."

The External Relations Committee will return this semester with a resolution and a code for Senate action. They are also charged by an April 1999 Senate resolution to provide the first of a series of regular reviews of the performance of the FLA by March 1.

Anyone with a CUID is welcome at University Senate meetings, which this term are on Jan. 28, Feb. 25, March 31 and April 28 (all Fridays) at 1:15 p.m. in 301 Uris. Senate minutes, reports, and pending resolutions are on the web at www.columbia.edu/cu/senate.