The University began conducting criminal background checks for faculty on April 1 after months of deliberation over the procedures.
The background checks will take place for any incoming faculty member or ones who transfer departments within the University.
According to Barbara Carroll, associate vice chancellor for human resources, credit checks will only be conducted to faculty “whose positions have financial decisions to make or have financial access to the institution.”
Criminal background checks are already being done for staff, and a number of universities in North Carolina already do the checks for faculty.
“It’s not a new practice — universities nationwide are doing it,” Carroll said.
But members of the Faculty Senate, such as Jim Martin who will become chair of the Senate in July, say the wording of the policy could cause potential problems.
“There has been extensive communication about the wording of the policy,” Martin said. “The document isn’t clear, and it opens up the possibility of more extensive background checks than were intended.”
In their meetings with human resources, the faculty asked for more a more concrete policy on sections such as the credit background checks.
“The wording implies that all faculty would be subject to credit and DMV checks,” Martin said. “Every faculty member is dealing with financial issues. It’s difficult to give a blanket statement like that.”
However, some revisions were made to the credit check policy, according to Carroll.
“For instances such as the chemistry department hiring an assistant professor, a credit background check won’t be needed,” Carroll said.
One of the reasons for this check, according to Martin, is because the University is already doing it for staff members. He said the provost wanted consistency throughout the University.
“I personally can respect the provost’s perspective of if criminal background checks are being done on staff, you should not create a multilateral system with the checks not being done on faculty,” Martin said.
Last week — the first week the program had been in use — human resources performed 75 background checks and had four people turn up with what Carroll called “pretty impressive criminal records.”
“Those are people who before April 1 would have gone through unchecked,” Carroll said.
In these cases, human resources sends word to the hiring department that the employee’s record is so problematic that it recommends not hiring the applicant.
This checking process is done under guidelines made by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which provides rules for how the background checks are to be handled.
According to Carroll, very few people are looking at the records.
“We have a background check coordinator, and a backup in case he’s out,” she said. “Records are locked in the office, and only a handful of people may see them.”
But one of the problems the Faculty Senate had with the procedure, according to Martin, is the privacy violation of the checks.
“As far as we’re aware, there has been no effort made to run the policy by a legal rights or privacy rights expert,” Martin said.
Martin noted, though, that some of the advantages of the current system were the size of the faculty being manageable enough to perform these checks and the relative cost of the checks being low.
