A policy proposal was drafted recently concerning romantic, consensual relationships among RIT faculty and staff. The policy will highlight the positive aspects of consensual relationships among RIT employees, as well as detailing possible negative implications and results. “It’s still in its relative infancy,” said Josh Bauroth, Staff Council chair. It is expected to be officially proposed for voting later this year.
Building Numbers Eliminated
“I am proud to say... the numbers are going to be going away,” said Nicole Boulais, a member of the Campus Building Identity Committee. Aside for the purposes of Information & Technology Services, Facilities Management Services and the fire department, the numbers assigned to different buildings at RIT will be dropped.
Also, academic buildings will no longer be called “buildings,” they will be referred to as “halls.” (e.g. Building 01 becomes George Eastman Hall) This will affect signage, letterheads and shorthand abbreviations. Acronyms will now be used, and a three letter code will be assigned to each building. (e.g. the code for George Eastman Hall is EAS) “It’s a cultural shift intended to make this campus sound and feel more like a college campus,” explained Boulais.
Changes online are expected to occur on June 1, and physical changes are expected to be made gradually. There will be a memo explaining how the physical changes will be made sent to all faculty and staff members in the school so that there will be little confusion with what to do with letterheads and other ordered items.
Record Retention Policies Cause Confusion
Boulais also raised a concern about how staff members have been trained in implementing new policies about record keeping. The RIT Records Management Policy, made effective on May 13, 2009, was intended “to ensure that RIT records, especially those that are required for compliance with the law, are retained for a sufficient period of time.” This applies to a host of documents and information around RIT, including student grades and discipline records, billing records and general correspondence emails. The policy is available at http://rit.edu/policiesmanual under section C.22 Records Management Policy.
Boulais indicated that because of the open Q&A format of the training session, the information discussed was not consistent among the sessions. In addition to this, she commented that because many staff members are unfamiliar with all of the changes, the infrastructure to support these changes may not be in place. Said Boulais, “People need to know the how [to implement the changes], after they find out the what.”
Mark Fragale of ETC production services raised concerns about where to permanently store hours of video information. “There’s no plan anywhere to support this,” he said.
Bauroth asked individuals to summarize their concerns in writing to present to other governance leaders about the issue. “I think this is more of a question of implementation of policy more than anything else,” he said.
