Meeting minutes from second round of negotiations before the CUNY-wide sexual-assault taskforce was formed

CUNY Central- 80th Street
CUNY-wide Sexual Assault Policy
Preliminary Meeting
Thursday, July 24, 2008

Persons in attendance: Elischia Fludd, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Jerin Alam, Hunter College, Nicolas Kanellopolous, University Student Senate Vice Chair, Frederick Schaffer, General Counsel and Senior Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs

Called to Order: 2:30pm

Topic: Validity of a University-wide policy
Discussion:
• Policies for the University are currently addressing some programming, but are not addressed by CUNY as a mandate throughout all of its schools.
• Vice Chancellor Schaffer would like to see where each CUNY school’s sexual assault policy is located, if available. Currently, those schools that have a sexual assault policy have it hidden beneath erudite language and other distractions on the web. Therefore, the argument could be made that students from their respective schools are not knowledgeable on their rights or the process once they report. Furthermore, the policies are not prevention focused.

Resolution: A CUNY-wide sexual assault policy is warranted and further research would be useful to obtain so that the University is better able to assess the scope of the problem as well as what services are desired by students. Orientation curriculum should be tweaked, and a possible central location for monitoring, implementing and the offering of student services is an option on the table for negotiations.

Topic: Process to obtain a CUNY-wide policy
Discussion:
• A taskforce should be formed first instead of a survey taken to assess the needs of the students so that there is a group of people that are collating the same information to use when a policy is drafted by them.
• The taskforce should contain Presidents or more than likely VP’s from the Student Development/Student Affairs offices (2), a representative from CUNY Legal (1), David Crook from Institutional Research (1), a representative from VC Moore’s office (1), and around five students, including Jerin Alam and Elischia Fludd (5).
• At least one representative from the coalition of women’s centers is necessary (1) and perhaps a representative from the LGBTQ community within the current number of persons agreed to be on the taskforce (11).
• The nomination of students to the taskforce will be filtered by USS in collaboration with the two current student taskforce members and Senior VP Schaffer. Students would be considered based on geographic location, community and senior college status.
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Meeting minutes 2

• The CUNY-wide policy should be prevention-focused rather than solely focusing on disciplinary procedures following an assault.

Resolution: The taskforce would be formed first, with a maximum of 11 members. An outside advisory role is up for negotiations, perhaps from ACLU or NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault. The next meeting will take place in two weeks, on August 7th at 2pm via conference call. Senior Vice Chancellor Schaffer will email a conference calling number. The goal
for the next meeting is to continue negotiations on the names of persons to participate on the taskforce.

Adjournment: 3:40 pm

Minutes submitted by: Elischia Fludd