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Report of the Ombudsman
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April 1, 2008, Volume 54, No. 27

Report of the Ombudsman
Academic Year 2006-2007

John C. Keene, University Ombudsman

Every year, the University Ombudsman reports to the University community on the activities of the prior year, giving summary data on the types of complainants that consulted the office and a general idea of the variety of problems that concerned them. This year, I will also review briefly the panoply of informal and formal dispute resolution options that are available to members of the University community—a community, we should realize, that consists of over 58,000 people. (As of the fall of 2007, there were: 10,163 full-time undergraduates, 9,653 full-time graduate and professional students, 4,164 part-time students, and 20,381 employees (including 2,488 standing faculty and 2,119 associated faculty). In addition, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania had 14,487 employees.)

I must note that Dr. Gulbun O’Connor has retired, after serving as Associate Ombudsman for over 20 years. She discharged her duties with remarkable intelligence, exceptional compassion, and profound insight into the beauties, the strengths, the ugliness, and the frailties of the human condition. She left an indelible mark on the Office and was, along with those faculty members who served as Ombudsman, responsible for its reputation for thoroughness, integrity, and impartiality.

The Office

The word “Ombudsman” is Swedish and means “representative.” It is not gender specific, although many universities are using the terms, “ombuds,” or “ombudsperson,” in an effort to make the word gender neutral. The modern use of the term began in 1809, when the Swedish government created the office, although the idea for the office goes back as far as the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century. The ombudsman is an “official appointed to safeguard citizens’ rights by investigating complaints of injustice made against the government or its employees” (Philip’s Millennium Encyclopedia). Sweden and several other European countries appointed a relatively senior and respected official who would have access to all levels of government, from the prime minister, through the heads of ministries, to directors of lower-level administrative agencies, and could cut through red tape and work out resolutions of problems relatively expeditiously. Since the 1950s, many states, universities, and businesses have created ombudsman offices.

The University of Pennsylvania established the Office of University Ombudsman in 1971. It is staffed by the University Ombudsman (part-time), a tenured faculty member, and the Associate Ombudsman (full-time). Having responded with considerable insight, wisdom, and flexibility to the demands of members of the Penn community in the late 1960s, the administration sought to create an innovative way of addressing their complaints of unfairness or failure to follow university policies and procedures. Penn’s Ombudsman has direct access to all levels of the University administration from the President and the Provost through the Deans, Vice Presidents, chairs, professors, and directors, to all the other people on campus with responsibility for the work, educational, residential, and recreational environments of faculty, staff and students. 

The driving concept behind the office is that, if an individual believes that he or she has not been treated fairly and the regular procedures do not appear to be leading to an acceptable resolution, he or she can come to the Ombudsman and lay out the facts underlying the complaint. The Ombudsman can help the complainant clarify his or her goals, discuss possible avenues that might be available for resolving the issue, and map out appropriate strategies. With the complainant’s authorization, the Ombudsman will undertake an independent investigation of the matter in order to develop an objective, impartial understanding of exactly what had happened, and then to propose some method of resolving the dispute. The Ombudsman has no power to order any individual to take a given action: He or she relies on a clear exposition of the facts and the competing considerations underlying each side’s position as the basis for working out a satisfactory solution. 

Consulting the Ombudsman

All members of the University community—faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students and alumni—may avail themselves of the services of the Ombudsman, except for employees of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and members of a labor union, who have their own grievance procedures. The office is located in the Duhring Wing of the Fisher Fine Arts Library on 34th Street, just north of the Irvine Auditorium. During the first meeting with the prospective complainant, we explain the purpose of the office and the procedures we follow, emphasizing that the discussion will remain confidential if the complainant so wishes (unless the discussions reveal possible criminal conduct or a threat of imminent danger to an individual), and then seek to understand the nature of the dispute as fully as possible. The discussion may end there with a consideration of what remedies may be available to the complaint. However, if the complainant wishes to proceed with an investigation, we will meet with the other people involved in the controversy to get as complete an understanding as possible of the facts of the situation and the University policies that govern it. We then meet with the complainant to decide on the next steps to be taken.

Most Frequently Raised Issues; Types of Complainants

The data summarizing the types of cases and classes of complaints for the last three years appear in the tables accompanying this report.  A few comments are in order. The distributions of both the types of complaints and the classes of complainants have held fairly stable over the last three years.

Issues Raised: Approximate Percentage of Total

Employment Procedures

37%

Improper Procedures

19%

Academic Procedures

13%

Academic Integrity

5%

Academic Issues

4%

Collections

3%

Benefits

2%

Discrimination

1%

Promotion

1%

Student Services

1%

Miscellaneous

14%

Complainants: Approximate Percentage of Total

A-1 Employees

27%

Graduate Students

17%

A-2 Employees

13%

Undergraduates

11%

A-3 Employees

10%

Post-docs

2%

Other

20%

These general distributions and the broad categories in the tables that accompany this report mask the variety and degrees of complexity that characterize individual cases. As for the task of detecting trends in types of cases, it presents two problems. First, the fact that there is a change in the number of cases of a certain type coming to the Ombudsman’s Office in one year as compared to prior years does not prove that there is a trend in the cases coming to the Office. The difference may be simply a random variation. Second, the fact that the Ombudsman’s Office observes a detectable trend in the types of complaints that are brought to it does not mean that there is a similar trend across the University as a whole. There are many offices across the University that deal with similar kinds of cases so that the variation might be attributable to the paths that complainants follow rather than the absolute number of conflicts.

A review of the data over the last decade indicates that there have been no significant changes in the broad distribution of types of cases during that period. With some annual variation, the percentages have been roughly the same as shown in the above tables. I think it is worth mentioning that discrimination cases have constituted only about 1% of the total caseload in the last three years, probably because other offices, such as the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity, are the primary actors in the area. Also, fewer students have come to the Ombudsman’s Office than was the case more than ten years ago. I surmise that the University has instituted more effective advising procedures so that there are fewer conflicts between students and their professors, and the word has gotten out that the Office does not handle grade disputes, only complaints about unfair or unannounced procedures.

Employment termination decisions present particularly difficult and poignant situations. Last year, we dealt with a number of them. On the one hand, the supervisor believes that the employee has not performed well or, if a faculty member is involved, that he or she has not met the requirements for reappointment or promotion. On the other hand, the employee or faculty member may see the termination as being based on an unfair evaluation of his or her work or in retaliation for actions taken by the individual. Often the facts are complex and the explanations, contradictory, or the controversy involves judgments of adequacy of performance or of academic quality that are beyond the scope of the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction. Also, once relationships have deteriorated to the point where the supervisor has determined that the employment should end, it is usually impossible to re-establish a working relationship, so that a transfer is the only alternative to termination. One thing is certain: the decision is devastating for the individual and often disruptive to the school or division in which he or she has been working.

In the case of employees, these experiences demonstrate the importance of supervisors’ making careful annual performance evaluations (set out in Human Resource Division Policy #619) and observing both the letter and the spirit of the University’s progressive disciplinary procedures (set out in Human Resources Division Policy #621). They allow the supervisor and employee to interact with each other and should both encourage better performance and forestall inappropriate terminations. In the case of faculty members, these experiences reconfirm the importance of thoughtful mentoring of junior faculty by senior faculty and department heads.

The Ombudsman’s primary responsibility is to work with complainants and respondents to achieve satisfactory resolutions to the disputes that exist between them. A secondary responsibility is to identify systemic issues, spot developing trends, and note recurring problems that become apparent in the course of the Office’s investigations, and to recommend innovative or revised policies to address them. Some of these trouble spots may exist in a particular school, administrative division or office. In such cases the Ombudsman may consult with the dean, the division director or the office supervisor. Others may be more broadly based and reflect widely spread attitudes or types of behavior. Here the Ombudsman may consult with the President or the Provost.

There is a potential for conflict between these two objectives. Identifying endemic problems in a school or an administrative division may complicate relations between the Ombudsman and the Dean or the director of the division, a situation that may make it more difficult to resolve a specific current dispute or disputes that might develop in the future. Also, if the Ombudsman is perceived as being too closely allied with the central or school administrations, because he or she is becoming involved in proposing new University policies, it may jeopardize his or her independence – and, what’s more, the appearance of independence—that is so crucial to the effectiveness of the Office. With careful attention to these issues, however, these negative impacts can be avoided.

Informal and Formal Dispute Resolution Procedures at the University of Pennsylvania

Over the years, the University has developed a complex system of informal methods of resolving disputes, procedures that are designed first, to determine the facts underlying a particular dispute and, second, to apply University norms and policies to these facts to resolve the dispute. Taken together with the more formal quasi-judicial procedures, such as those for imposing sanctions on faculty, the Faculty Grievance Procedure, the Senate and School Committees on Academic Freedom and Responsibility, the Procedure Regarding Misconduct in Research by Faculty and Academic Support Staff, the Staff Grievance Procedure, and the formal procedures specified by the Charter of the University’s Student Disciplinary System for violations of the Code of Academic Integrity and the Code of Student Conduct, these methods and the administrative divisions, committees, and commissions that administer them, constitute the judicial function of the University.

The University Ombudsman’s Office is one of the places where people who believe they are not receiving fair or proper treatment or who are concerned about the educational, residential, or work environment in which they find themselves can go to get advice as to what options are available to them and to learn about what strategies they may pursue to deal with the issues that confront them. The other major offices where informal resolution of disputes may occur include the Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs, the Division of Human Resources’ Workplace Issue Resolution Program, the Office of Student Disabilities Services, the University Mediation Program for violations of the Code of Student Conduct, the University Life Division in the Vice Provost for University Life’s Office, the Counseling and Psychological Service, the Office of the University Chaplain, the Division of Public Safety’s Office of Special Services, and the various dispute resolution procedures of schools and academic departments.

This is not the place to explore in any detail the structure, methods of operation, and effectiveness of these dispute resolution procedures. They were last reviewed comprehensively in 1982-83, when the Commission on Judicial Procedures, appointed by President Sheldon Hackney in May 1982, conducted a comprehensive review and evaluation of the University’s judicial system. A summary of the Commission’s Final Report appeared in Almanac December 6, 1983, and a full copy of the report is available in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library. The various components of the University’s Judicial System will be the subject of a later report from the Ombudsman.

Three Years’ Experience in the Ombudsman’s Office:
2004-2007

 

Types of Complaints

Issue

2004-05

2005-06

2006-07

Employment Problems

86

64

77

Improper Procedures

39

39

36

Academic Procedures

23

32

25

Miscellaneous/personal

36

21

30

Academic

8

11

1

Academic Integrity

9

8

12

Promotion Problems

2

7

0

Benefits

3

6

4

Collections/Financial Services

8

6

5

Sexual Harassment

0

0

0

Discrimination

1

3

2

Facilities

4

0

0

Total

219

197

192

 

 

Types of Complainants

Affiliation

2004-05

2005-06

2006-07

A-1 Personnel (monthly-paid)

67

45

57

Graduate students

 

 

 

    Arts and Sciences

9

12

6

    Biomedical

4

2

4

    SEAS

2

1

3

    Wharton MBA & Ph.D.

9

3

6

    Nursing

2

7

4

    Law

2

2

2

    Dental

1

1

0

    Veterinary Medicine

1

0

0

    Design

0

2

1

    GSE

4

5

1

Total graduate students

34

35

27

A-3 Personnel (weekly-paid)

16

20

24

Undergraduates

 

 

 

    Arts and Sciences

15

11

12

    Nursing

0

2

4

    Engineering

2

4

0

    College of General Studies

2

5

3

    Wharton

3

7

2

Total undergraduate students

22

29

21

A-2 Personnel (Faculty)

 

 

 

    Medicine

16

16

10

    Arts and Sciences

7

4

4

    SEAS

1

1

2

    Dental

1

3

2

    Wharton

2

1

2

    Veterinary Medicine

0

0

1

    Social Policy and Practice

0

1

1

    Nursing

0

3

0

    Design

1

4

0

    Law

0

1

0

Total faculty

28

34

22

Others

44

28

27

A-5 Personnel (weekly-paid)

4

1

4

Alumni/ae

0

0

6

Post-doctorates

4

5

4

          Total

219

197

192

 

 

 

Almanac - April 1, 2008, Volume 54, No. 27