Fresno State president: Here is the plan to cultivate new trust at the university
As my late mother taught me: Trust is like a plant; it needs continuous water and care. After the painful revelations of the past few weeks, we are actively working to earn back the trust that has been eroded at Fresno State.
I have met extensively with students, faculty, staff and community members. I have heard their pain, disappointment and anger. I vow to work tirelessly to promote a safer, more equitable environment built on inclusivity and respect. I thank you for your courage in entrusting me with your experiences and perspectives.
We are taking immediate action by investing additional resources in supporting students, faculty and staff facing the scourge of sexual misconduct.
This investment will include hiring a second survivor advocate — an individual trained in supporting survivors of sexual assault, regardless of whether they opt to go through a formal grievance process. We will also hire a deputy coordinator of discrimination, retaliation and harassment, to further expand our ability to conduct workplace climate investigations and stop inappropriate behavior. Finally, we will hire a full-time deputy Title IX coordinator who will allow us to better manage investigations and reach resolutions for cases going through the Title IX process.
These three key positions are just the beginning of the important work we must do. We must also change elements of our administrative culture that allowed inappropriate behavior to persist. To that end, we will engage in a series of efforts aimed at measuring, understanding and improving our overall campus climate. This work will focus on providing analytical tools to measure the prevalence of sexual misconduct, discrimination and bias. We will chart a clear path to dealing with myriad micro- and macro-aggressions that target our populations so together we can build a culture that is both empowering and respectful of our entire campus community.
Accountability will be expected of everyone: senior administrators, faculty, staff and students.
As I previously announced, we are launching a Title IX Task Force, and today I am excited to be able to share that this task force will be chaired by Dr. Bernadette Muscat – a renowned scholar of victimology and our dean of undergraduate studies.
Comprised of students, faculty, staff and community members, the task force is charged with ensuring that Fresno State learns from these painful lessons to become a leader in preventing and combating harassment and sexual misconduct. That group will look at current Title IX implementation and levels of misconduct at Fresno State and will develop a plan focusing on prevention, education and more transparent, informative and streamlined processes. Our task force will provide regular updates in the coming months via their landing page, which I encourage you to visit.
As we communicated recently to the campus community, we are redoubling our efforts to ensure full compliance in reporting sexual misconduct cases. We recently became aware of two cases that should have been coded differently in our daily crime logs. While we’ve addressed these matters, we want to reiterate our commitment to transparency and accountability.
I firmly believe that we must change institutional elements of our university, as our culture becomes codified into our policies and procedures. Protecting our Bulldog family must begin with deliberate goals based on principles of equity, trust and transparency, bolstered by a willingness to recognize past shortcomings. We must learn to recognize the blind spots or privilege structures that have derailed past efforts.
We want to empower our campus community to speak the truth, and I trust that our efforts will lead us along an illuminated path. If we take wisdom from the adage that “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” the willingness to be vulnerable and open in our discourse — even in painful circumstances — will help us use our newfound clarity to reinforce and build practices to achieve our shared vision.
