This year, as with most years, changes were made to the student handbook at North Central College. But what are those changes, exactly, and why? The person in charge of changing the paper, Kevin McCarthy, the assistant vice president for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, was able to illuminate this process.
There weren’t many changes this year. Some were small, such as title changes or new employees added to the directory. “We don’t tend to do edits in the midst of a year,” McCarthy said, “Unless it was something really significant.”
The first change was how to deal with campus property damage. “We added something called ‘A Statement of Acceptable Use for Campus Property,’ that’s a new policy this year.” It’s not just a rule for students, but for guests and faculty as well.
“Academic Affairs made some changes regarding grade appeals and how that process is managed,” said McCarthy, as well as the plagiarism policy, which is also managed by student affairs. It was only minor tweaks, according to him.
One of the minor tweaks was the way a policy was worded. “We had a policy called the ‘Study Atmosphere’ policy that changed…to ‘Disruption,’” McCarthy said, “We did do some tweaking to some language, but it was primarily just a change to say that that policy was better termed as a disruption policy.” Specifically, he said, so it was less confusing when someone was charged with a violation.
One of the new policies this year is the ‘Retaliation’ policy. It is an expansion of the older ‘Discrimination, Harassment, Sexual Misconduct and Retaliation’ policy covered under Title IX. The new policy covers things not encapsulated by the Title IX one. As he put it, “We have since moved out of that policy and have put it into our general student handbook.”
“Let’s say you call Campus Safety because of a noise issue with your (neighbor), they can’t like egg your door,” McCarthy said, “You calling Campus Safety isn’t a protected class, you didn’t call them because of their race or gender, you did it because they are being noisy, and they’re not targeting you because of your race or gender, they’re targeting you because you called Campus Safety.”
Another big change was ‘The Credentialing Policy for External Media,’ which outlines expectations for any visiting press members on campus.
“We run the handbook every year past a lawyer,” he said, “and we highlight areas where there have been ‘significant changes.'”
The last major change was in the record retention policy. It changed the date the period of retention begins from seven years to ten years after the date of the incident. Suspension or dismissal records are permanent, however.
As for his place in all this, McCarthy makes the first sweep through the handbook and reaches out to the right people to make the right changes such as ITS and business operations. If students want to say anything about it, McCarthy said, they should go to the Student Governing Association or Student Affairs.
