Faculty Council discusses safety, diversity

Thursday meeting handles taser use, concealed weapons and syllabi.

By Katie Moritz

Published April 9, 2009

The Faculty Council met Thursday to discuss campus safety and intellectual diversity.

MU Police Chief Jack Watring spoke to the council about Taser use and concealed weapons on campus.

Watring said although MUPD officers do not carry Tasers, they have thought about the issue a great deal.

"We did quite a bit of investigative work into Tasers, the good and the bad," Watring said.

He said MUPD decided the Tasers weren't worth the hassle they caused the Columbia Police Department.

"The city was catching so much flack over it that we didn't need that headache," Watring said.

The police at the other universities in Columbia carry Tasers. Over the last seven years, there have only been one or two instances where having the weapons would have been beneficial, Watring said.

The carrying of concealed weapons on campus is another important issue for MUPD, Watring said. He said if a bill is passed allowing students to carry weapons on campus, many people, including police officers, would feel less safe.

"There's so many things that could go wrong with that," Watring said.

The council also discussed the proposed MSA legislation to make language about intellectual diversity a mandatory addition to syllabi. Many faculty members are uncomfortable about the passage being mandatory, council member Frank Schmidt said.

The passage would urge students to contact the MU Equity Office and report any quality of instruction issue they might experience, including sexual harassment or unfair bias from a professor. The intellectual diversity passage is already available on the Provost Web site for professors to include in their syllabi if they choose.

Faculty are concerned syllabi would become so long that students would stop reading them altogether and become ignorant to the policies professors might have.

"The syllabus has become like one of those things that you click on when you download software," Schmidt said. "Nobody reads them."

The UM system Board of Curators raised the issue of intellectual diversity several years ago, Schmidt said. The council's response to the board's decision to address the issue was to suggest language for professors to add to their syllabi.

Although Schmidt has not heard of any instances in which intellectual diversity was violated, he agrees students need a place to go if they feel a professor is wronging them.

"If that happens, there should be a place where students can get their concerns met," Schmidt said.

The council intends to consider the language of the passage and change it to something that would be less convoluted. He said the goal is to avoid ambiguous language.

"What we're going to do is come up with something that will make it clearer," Schmidt said. "Support original intent of the information but also make sure you don't go trotting off to the equity office because your teacher writes funny on the board."

Schmidt said the biggest problem attached to the issue is confusion about where to report problems a student might have with a teacher, whether the problems are serious or easy to handle.

"This is a concern that requires more than a syllabus statement to fix," Schmidt said.

Council member Clyde Bentley said including the passage in syllabi might be beneficial in that it would give students a comprehensive and readily available list of offices to go to if ever they feel violated by their professors.

The council will continue to discuss the problems surrounding the intellectual diversity issue. Council member Victoria Johnson pointed out the importance of settling the issue as quickly as possible.

"If students wrote this, then they're concerned about it," she said.