BY ALEXIS DEMINTER
Edgewood College is implementing complex, technical software to organize and track campus misconduct complaints from students and faculty.
In addition to the new software, the dean of students plans to update the Student Code of Conduct.
Heather Harbach, interim dean of students, said the Dean of Students plans to make the Student Code of Conduct processes easier to read for students.
Harbach said the office plans to make parts of the handbook, such as authority and jurisdiction, more transparent for students. Harbach did not provide details of what will be changed. There will be a new Director of Student Conduct starting in June to investigate and help with student conduct cases.
In regard to the new software, Tony Garcia, director of diversity and inclusion at Edgewood College, said staff will be trained this summer on how to properly use the system, which is called Maxient. Garcia said he did not know yet who would have access to the software.
Maxient is software that manages and stores behavior records at 800 colleges and universities across North America. The Maxient website said the software is designed for student conduct and students’ overall well-being.
Cerxio Guerrero Noguez, a member of the club, Latinx Students, said the new system sounds good to him. He said sometimes he does not know when to report an incident because he thinks it will be seen as minor to the college. “If it’s student-oriented, that’s even better because I think adults, staff, and faculty are definitely the ones to see and look past things.”
Harbach said students are experiencing discrimination on campus. “I know from conversations with students that things may happen, microaggressions, stereotypes, inappropriate comments, hateful comments, and racism. I know students are experiencing them”
Noguez agreed. For example, Noguez said during the vandalism of the Martin Luther King Jr. poster in February, staff assumed someone had scribbled across the poster in the hallway, twice.
Noguez said about the vandalized poster, “it was very obviously intentional.”
At press time, Garcia had not provided statistics of discrimination complaints from the years 2016-2018. Pamela LaValliere, the college’s Title IX coordinator, also did not provide statistics on sexual misconduct complaints at press time.
Misconduct cases are handled on a case-by-case basis at Edgewood College. Garcia said the new system will make for better communication for the deans of different schools.
“What we have seen here at Edgewood for the past decade is when incidents are reported, whether it’s to myself the dean of students, human resources, academic dean, often times, and this is changing now, the one person it was reported to would handle the situation.”
For example, sometimes if an incident is reported to a certain dean, then that dean handles it separately, said Garcia. The other deans did not communicate about the incident and Garcia said he thinks Maxient will help with overall dean communication.
Noguez said he thinks it is too soon to tell if the new system will improve the school overall. He said he thinks it will mean a lot to diverse communities on campus and they would like the change and security Maxient may bring.
Ethicspoint is the current system Edgewood College uses to store complaints on campus. The current system has five main categories for students to submit an anonymous complaint. A specific questionnaire follows the complaint. Categories include: unethical financial abuse, unethical personal conduct, unethical treatment of college property, unethical use of information technology, and students and academic purposes.
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