Structural changes to civil rights response on campus.
In 2020, the campus reorganized some of its compliance functions, creating a new civil rights portfolio that includes the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD), the Clery Compliance Office (previously under the UC Police Department), and the Whistleblower office. The responsibility for resolving protected category discrimination complaints about employees, which had previously been under HR People & Culture, was consolidated into OPHD at this same time. Kellie Brennan was hired as the inaugural Executive Director for Civil Rights, Whistleblower, and Clery Compliance. Brennan also took on the role of Title IX officer and director of OPHD.
This reorganization strengthened the ability of the campus to respond both to SVSH complaints and to non-SVSH protected category complaints of discrimination and harassment, whose steady increase since 2017 accelerated in the spring of 2020.
An expanded report.
In the 2022-2023 academic year, a decision was made to expand the scope of the Annual SVSH Report to include other protected category discrimination and harassment and whistleblower complaints, along with SVSH. Corresponding closely to the new civil rights portfolio, this newly restructured Annual Civil Rights Report presents data collected by OPHD and Whistleblower, the two primary channels through which civil rights concerns are reported and responded to on the campus. The Civil Rights reports will continue the tradition started by the SVSH reports of presenting available data from surveys and confidential campus resources (particularly the PATH to Care Center and Social Services) as additional lenses on incidence rates and impact.
While not an exhaustive compendium of civil rights concerns on campus, the areas covered in this Civil Rights report provide perspective on the kinds of concerns that are brought to the attention of the campus, the broad affiliations who are reporting those concerns, and in aggregate, how the concerns are responded to.
As a reminder, this 2023 Civil Rights Report covers the 2022 academic/fiscal year (July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2023).