Nearly three dozen Texas A&M University faculty and staff members gathered last week to protest a new systemwide regulation that allows employees to be fired following an arrest, rather than a conviction.
The nine-page regulation states that a criminal background check can be done on any employee -- including graduate assistants and student workers -- at any time. It also indicates that any applicant with a first- or second-degree felony conviction or a candidate who is required to register as a sex offender is barred from employment unless a waiver is obtained.
The lengthy document also requires employees to report within 24 hours -- or at the earliest opportunity thereafter -- any arrest or criminal charges filed against them. It does not include misdemeanor traffic offenses.
Faculty members say the regulation is too stringent and could prevent people from wanting to work in the Texas A&M System. They also expressed concern that the regulation, at the very least, gives the appearance of doing away with due process.
"It just seems overboard compared with what I've seen other places do," said Clint Magill, speaker-elect for the Texas A&M Faculty Senate.
But Texas A&M System administrators said that was not the case. Rather, they said, the regulation is a move to keep campuses and state agencies safe while putting all employees on an equal footing. The Legislature is set to take up this issue in its next session, and A&M is simply trying to get ahead of the curve, administrators said.
"I do miss the '60s a lot -- the cars and the music," Jay Kimbrough, deputy chancellor and general counsel for the Texas A&M System, said as he explained that the arrest records were public information. "I also miss some of the anonymity, but the reality is, this is the world we live in."
The regulation was adopted last month by the Texas A&M System, which governs the flagship campus in College Station as well as 15 other universities and state agencies and the Health Science Center. It is considered one of the most stringent regulations adopted by an institution of higher education, system administrators and faculty said.
The A&M Faculty Senate organized a forum to discuss the new regulation after Senate Speaker Angie Price received roughly 100 e-mails from faculty members expressing their concerns. Though fewer than three dozen people attended the Thursday afternoon forum, the meeting was, at times, heated.
Kimbrough told the crowd that arrest records -- seemingly the most controversial part of the new regulation -- were public information and likely would be made public by media outlets whether or not employees reported them to the university. He pointed to the double homicide that happened days earlier in Burleson County as proof that bad things do happen.
One man watching the forum via teleconference from the Galveston campus suggested that the system presume that its employees are innocent rather than guilty and noted that a man accused of killing two people probably wouldn't be working for the university system.
"That ain't gonna happen here," Kimbrough said. "Well, it ain't gonna happen at Virginia Tech either, but it did."
The forum took an even more adversarial turn when Louis Tassinary, a professor and associate dean in the College of Architecture, questioned whether the new policy would protect A&M from a similar attack. Kimbrough initially ignored the question, prompting some in the room to call him a bully.
"This is not adversarial," Tassinary said, as he tossed papers into the air in frustration. "Why are you making it that way?"
Most of the two-hour forum, however, was less hostile.
Many in the room seemed to take issue most with the requirement that employees report all arrests -- a move that could prompt a range of disciplinary action, including termination. They questioned how human resources officials would be able to make a decision in a case without a conviction.
Kimbrough told the group that university officials would review police reports. When facts were disputed, it would be important to talk to the employee, he said.
One man suggested that if employees had to go through such extensive background checks, students should have to do the same. Kimbrough explained that couldn't be required of students who weren't also employees. However, he noted, comprehensive student checks might one day be employed.
Several in the room complained that the regulation would simply perpetuate an ongoing bias against minorities, who they said are more likely to be arrested.
Kimbrough said before the open forum that the regulation was simply an effort to make practice match policy.
He noted that Texas A&M and the Health Science Center already had fired employees who had been arrested and not convicted. He pointed to Brian Lancaster, a former A&M administrator who was fired after being arrested this year and accused of child molestation. He eventually pleaded guilty.
The deputy chancellor also referred to P. David Romei, who became the Health Science Center's vice president for external affairs and development after leaving his post as director of the Arts Council of Brazos Valley. Romei was fired last fall shortly after being indicted on felony theft charges linked to his time with the Arts Council.
The regulation does not override the tenure process, though an arrest or conviction could be considered along with the standard tenure review, Kimbrough said. An employee also has the right to appeal a termination or another disciplinary action, he said.
Kimbrough also explained that Texas A&M administrators could create a "rule" that would serve as a subset of the A&M System regulation. That rule could address some concerns specific to A&M employees, he said, encouraging the faculty members to take part in that process.
"We're all looking for the same thing," Kimbrough said. "Nobody wants to have anybody here who has some kind of record that would be alarming."
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