By SHANNON O. WELLS
A Pitt form that asks applicants for faculty positions to authorize release of information from former employers is getting a new look after concerns were raised about language in the document and about how it was developed.
Implemented about two and a half years ago by former Provost Ann Cudd’s office and the Council of Deans, the form authorizes previous employers to release information about “formal or informal and substantiated allegations or findings” against the applicant of “unprofessional conduct, sexual misconduct, sexual harassment, or hostile work environment,” or “discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.”
Provost Joe McCarthy said Senate Council President Robin Kear brought the matter to his attention in spring semester 2024, including concerns related to unclear language in the document, the implementation of the practice “and the degree to which the decision-making process engaged the broader community.”
Digging into the requirement’s origins, McCarthy said it was “essentially a purely administration-level decision” that was discussed among Pitt deans, campus presidents, center directors, and Provost Cudd’s cabinet.
“It was implemented in sort of a rapid fashion,” he said. “Frankly, we found a little bit of unevenness as to where those release forms were stored, how the release authority that was given to the University was operationalized, and ultimately — if records were ever attained — what the impact of those records were.”
McCarthy, who led a presentation on the form at the Oct. 9 Faculty Assembly meeting, is proposing that an interim policy be developed to clarify the requirement’s language and strengthen its legal and ethical basis, and then have the form go through the full policy development process.
“We're going to form an interim policy,” he said. “Because this is such a critical issue, we don't want to stop using the current form completely and go through the policy process. Instead, we're going to put together a working group to draft an interim policy that will essentially authorize the practice that's been going on.”
The working group will include representation from the provost’s office, University counsel and Human Resources, among others, he said. Human Resources will work with Senate leadership to determine who from the Faculty Assembly should be part of the working group.
Based on University policy AO-01, the recommendations from the working group will become a formal charter, with the drafted policy posted for comment. The aim, McCarthy noted, is to “draft something relatively rapidly that achieves those goals in as best of a fashion as we can on an interim basis while we go through a full permanent-policy development process.”
Seeking a balance
When John Stoner, teaching professor in the Department of History, asked whether the re-examination concerns the ethical nature of the “informal allegations” mentioned in the requirement, Kear said it does.
“It wasn't always clear if something could be an informal substantiated allegation or an informal substantiated finding, right?” she said. “And what that means and how that would be presented from another place of employment to Pitt. How would that be presented?”
Kear said as a matter of practice, “generally, we, as an institution, would not substantiate informal things, right?”
Asked if the employment form requires disclosure of unsubstantiated allegations, McCarthy said Pitt’s legal team explained that “’formal and informal’ both then connect to ‘And substantiated.’
“The requirement was that there were substantiated allegations and findings against an individual, so nothing unsubstantiated would have been reportable under this document."
Kear emphasized the importance as well as complexity of screening potential hires for prior indiscretions without violating their sense of privacy and dignity.
“I know we do not necessarily want people in our community who have had substantiated sexual misconduct investigations,” she said. “However … in the spring I heard that there was at least one hire in a department that didn't happen because (the candidate) didn't want to sign the form.
“Now, we don't know if they didn't sign the form because they had (incidents) in their past employment record, or because they didn't want to sign it upon a principle of signing it,” she added. "We don't know for exactly what reason, but if your hire doesn't want to sign it, then they won't get an offer, basically. It is required.”
Connecting past and future
Emphasizing the importance of clarity and full disclosure during the hiring process, Juan Taboas, associate professor in the Swanson School of Engineering, suggested an addendum to better explain the requirement’s implications.
“I'm aware of deans of schools that have unsubstantiated allegations made against them,” he said, of those who were fully investigated and exonerated. “But they're the kind of people that may not want to sign this form, and they don't understand that ‘unsubstantiated’ isn't covered … My preference is to opt for the conservative approach, where you immediately modify this form before using it, or you don't use it at all.”
An explanatory addendum, he added, could avoid losing promising candidates. “Because there are a lot of people that will have had unsubstantiated allegation against them, because of multiple reasons.”
Responding to the observations and concerns, McCarthy said the new form’s purpose is to be “both backward and forward looking.” Therefore, if a similar form was not signed at the potential hire’s places of prior employment, those employers would not be legally allowed to release those records to Pitt.
“Part of this is us getting the legal right to ask those prior employers, so they would now be legally allowed to share that information with us,” he explained. “The second (or) forward looking part is, when someone leaves (Pitt), they're also signing that if a future employer comes back to us, we don't have to ask for proof that they signed a new form, because they’ve allowed us to push that information forward.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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