Jeff Charis-Carlson

jcharisc@press-citizen.com

Citing concerns about the possible impact on academic freedom, the University of Iowa's chief diversity officer said Thursday that her office no longer is planning to develop a bias assessment and response team on campus.

In January, UI Chief Diversity Officer Georgina Dodge proposed such a team at UI — which would be known by the acronym BART — to address complaints of racial or other bias on campus concerning incidents that “skirt the line between a policy violation or even a crime.”

Dodge said UI officials remain committed to developing a centralized resource for students experiencing bias on campus, but that team no longer will be based on the BART model.

"After working thoughtfully and carefully on how to develop such a team here, we came to conclusion that how we initially had envisioned the BART might not be effective," she said.

Over the past eight months, she said, bias response teams at other institutions have become more punitive in their focus and overreached their authority and good intentions.

"There has been a high failure rate in the BARTs at other institutions," she said. "By that I mean we are seeing the way in which they are not meeting the needs of any of the parties involved. ... Frankly, the (word) BART has become a bit tainted because of the actions that these people have taken."

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Dodge specifically pointed to concerns at the University of Northern Colorado, in which the bias response team recently received criticism nationally for overreaching its authority and improperly instructing professors to avoid controversial subjects.

"One of the things that we've seen at many schools is that the BARTs have become almost punitive in nature," she said. "When we are dealing with incidents that do not rise to the level of a policy violation, how you are going penalize someone is a big question."

The initial plans for a BART at UI called for the team serving only as a means of identifying and assessing questionable incidents in a more timely fashion. There were no plans to include any disciplinary components.

Dodge said some of the BARTs across the nation have begun to sound more like "scolding panels."

"That's not what we want," she said. "That accomplishes nothing."

Initial plans were to have BART in place by the end of the spring semester. Those plans were pushed back until the end of the summer.

Dodge said she hopes to work with the UI Student Government and the UI Office of Student Life to have a new, as-of-yet unnamed team named in place by the end of the fall semester.

"(Our goal remains) to ensure that there is a well known and safe place in which anyone who is subjected to biased treatment can go to find resources and to get help in coping," she said.

The final version is likely to resemble UI's Office of the Sexual Misconduct Response Coordinator in terms of providing a centralized structure for addressing student concerns, Dodge said. It also is likely to be housed in the Center for Diversity and Enrichment because "that's a venue that the students already use."

"Other than that, everything else is up in the air," she said.

Over the past two years, there have been repeated calls from students for UI to create a bias assessment team — especially after a visiting UI art professor displayed a controversial KKK-effigy on the Pentacrest. Although the artist said the unauthorized sculpture was intended to raise awareness of ongoing racial violence in the U.S., many students viewed the sculpture as a threat.

The December 2014 incident — which violated no university policy other than the unauthorized use of the Pentacrest — sparked a campuswide debate over the conflicts between the university’s commitment to academic freedom and its responsibility to create a safe and inclusive environment for all students.

Free speech advocates have said their there is “reason to be wary” about UI making plans for a bias response team, but described such policies as being “not impermissible” as long as they are not tied in any way to disciplinary action.

Reach Jeff Charis-Carlson at jcharisc@press-citizen.com or 319-887-5435. Follow him on Twitter at @jeffcharis.