- Greater than students. So, they made up and taken as a complete spectrum of interested individuals in the university. We began meeting in March, one of our first things... One of the first things we did was to develop an interim complaint procedure which I think has been mentioned on some of these programs already, so that any woman or minority individual felt that he or she was being discriminated against would have some recourse, some method of trying to resolve the complaint within the university. Since that time we've been deliberating, quite intensively. We've been meeting once a week or more often most of that time and discussing a plan trying to work out at an organization for a plan and discussing many specific points that we would like to see in a plan we're now, well along we started early this month, threw up a draft of a plan and we've been meeting our last three or four meetings have been primarily to discuss this. We've been revising it and going over it point by point really discussing quite intensively. We hope by the end of this week to submit this plan to the chancellor as a provisional plan for the university. I say provisional, because a complete plan, according to federal regulations has to include some detailed information on the present makeup of the workforce and some analysis of these and detailed goals and timetables for correcting under utilization of women and minority groups. We don't have all the information yet for that part. So our plan is intended to be in effect during this interim period, while the more detailed material can be assembled and then add it in to make a full plan. - Surely, what part will your office play in actualizing this plan? - Well, my office shares with the office of minority affairs responsibility for monitoring certain practices, which are recommended in the plan and which will be required if the plan is approved as it stands. Additionally, and and perhaps more importantly, we will serve to assist the... All the people in the university as they go about actualizing the plan. My role is not one of being the actual advisor but rather helping all of those many many people who will have the responsibility for carrying it out. And I hope to help them in a lot of different ways. For example, if a department is looking for someone to fill a vacant position, they will hopefully want to interview all kinds of people for that job. If they have difficulty locating women who are qualified in the area which needs to be filled, I will help them find someone for the job or someone who will be considered as a candidate for the job. That's just one of the many ways I'm trying to help. - You're really a resource present to people in informing plan. - Yes, that's the way I view my responsibility. - And Julie, who... Did you say that the plan will have to be approved? And what do you mean by approve, who grant this approval and what's involved? - Do you mean at the university level? Well, we'll submit this to the chancellor. We're a chancellor's committee and we are supposed to develop our recommendations to submit to him. Now he will have to find me the final person to say go ahead with this plan of course and I imagine that he won't do that right away. He will probably want to ask others university officials to look at this and give us some feedback. And so there may be a period. I don't believe there'll be a very long period of considering changes because I know that he would like to have a plan on hand when our compliance review comes from the department of health education and welfare, and that's expected fairly soon now. - Will this approval come without any or that the review by university governing boards like the Senate, where you will ultimately have to go to the regions? Is it that kind of a thing? - I don't know whether the regions will have to approve everything in the plan. There will be some things in the plan that would might take regions action. I don't know. I had assumed that the chancellor would be the final person to approve this. There are, as I say, requests of the regions in various places in the plan, but otherwise I don't believe that they will be involved as a whole in the plan. - As we're talking about the provisional plan and about how it will be reviewed for acceptance, I think it might be relevant to mention that one of the plans of the affirmative action board is that both the office of affirmative action for women in the office of minority affairs, will set up cluster groups. And that is for example a group of... For my office a group of women from the classified staff of the university, another group of women, students, perhaps a group of women graduate students, a group of women faculty, and so forth. And these cluster groups, we hope will give us feedback about how they feel about the provisional plan. And then when we're ready to formulate the final plan, we will have some input from everybody who is involved in the university. We, of course would like to have done it before we wrote the provisional plan. But, during the summer when we were putting it together, too many people were away from the campus. And that really is at the heart of the idea of having a provisional plan. Although it is very precise and we think complete. We know that others won't be able to provide some valuable input. - And do you think that faculty women have a great interest in the plan and will wanna make some inputs in the plan? - and you should certainly thanks though, and I been involved with this last year with a peer committee and there is a group with a great deal of interest in this. In fact, some of us served on the grievance board that was mentioned earlier, and I think that that's a continuing interest. And so there should be no problem about finding faculty with an interest in the kind of proposals that are being made. - When I was talking about the cluster groups, I failed to mention one very important group of which I am a member and I should... I should add that. And that is the unclassified non-faculty people who work throughout the university were a rather amorphous group because we are widely scattered and we're not... We don't have a central organization as most of the other groups do have. But we are also very much interested in hearing from women who serving in these kinds of positions then classified non-faculty - When you referred to classified employees of the university you're talking about civil service employees. - That's right. - And then the other people who are being talked about in the affirmative action plan or the other groups would be students, this is an area? - There is a student section. - And classified faculty and then your own situation being unclassified. What are some examples besides yourself with people who are in classified? - Oh, I'm a woman counselor in the guidance bureau. A woman in a extra mental independent study center who works with the correspondence courses and counsel students with gender. The assistant Dean of women. - So it's really a sort of a diverse group? - Oh, yes, it's quite diverse and includes people who are doing research and people who are working in student services. And it's really difficult for us to know who we are. And I always hesitate to give examples because I'm afraid I'll leave out a very important example, I don't intend to do so. - Well I think that one of the differences is when you pointed out already that there isn't a governing body and like a student Senate committee or a faculty Senate committee to reach this group of people, is this right? - All right. How large a group is it? I don't know. I'll know better after we've collected the support data which is being required by H.A.W and which will serve as the basis for our goals and time tables, which will be established later. But so there are many side benefits and support data that we're being required to collect. - You asked one question Betty that we didn't answer yet. And that was to what extent the government of the university government structure would be involved in reviewing the plan. I really don't know. I imagine in the case of this provisional plan that it won't be able to go through any full review by the governing structure because of the time pressure involved. But I'm sure that the final plan, I should say I'm sure I feel fairly sure that the chancellor will want to involve the university governing structure to a greater extent in the final plan we will have more time based on the feedback and on the detailed information we'll have more time to develop that in a more gradual way. - No, it would seem to me that it would be something that would be desirable, but perhaps difficult to know exactly how to work. Because it's definitely.. - On the other hand for our plan to succeed, it really needs involvement of everyone. That's one of the things we've thought about quite a great deal and tried to build into our provisional plan, ways of getting everybody involved, knowledgeable and involved and interested because the plan can't succeed unless an awful lot of people and an awful lot of physicians know what is involved and are interested in furthering it. - Be a good educational opportunity because there must be one of the major stumbling blocks as we were talking, even before the program about people who refuse to admit that there really are difficulties here. And so certainly that would be a wonderful opportunity to present the facts and get a lot of support hopefully. - There is a great deal of misunderstanding about what affirmative action is. And some parts of the university, I find people who think that affirmative action is only for women. And other parts of the university I find people who think affirmative action is only for minority persons. And actually of course, it's for all of what AGW values calls effective classes. - In some of the supporting data that you're submitting with the plan, have you been able to prove that this will be beneficial to the university as a whole, in providing affirmative action for these affected groups? Do you think that it is positive? Can it benefit the people who might be resisting it in some ways? - I'm not sure where the resistance comes from. So that's a rather difficult question to answer. The data, the support data really is going to result in a description, a general description, of the employees of the university, the permanent employees. It will show us where in the hierarchy of job classifications, women and minority persons are found and in what proportions. So, it's going to be very revealing when it is compiled. And they, we have to go through a process of collection of information about all the employees. Then that information will be put through what is called a utilization analysis which sounds terribly impressive. but what it really means is, how many women and minorities is the university employing and in what capacities. So that we may have a great number of women serving is a clerk typist but not very many women at all, serving as administrators. And this is the kind of information will come out of utilization analysis. - And then on the basis of this information, this plan will set goals to to change these figures, is that correct? - Well, not necessarily to change them. For example, in the department of human development and family life, we know that there are 54, 54% of the faculty there are women. Now, one would not need to change that. That is as it should be when you consider the number of the women in the population. However, where the utilization analysis reveals under utilization of women or minorities. Then some goals will be established. And this should not be confused with quotas which is quite a different thing. A quota is a set number of people who you have to employ from a certain category. A goal on the other hand should simply reflect the number of women or minorities available in the total workforce. And this is a kind of yardstick by which we can measure our utilization. In the case of women faculty, we'll look at one measure which has been used rather widely and which I think is is pretty fair is what proportion of the doctorates in each discipline were earned by women during the past decade. And all of those figures are readily available. In fact, I have quite a file built up in my office. So that if a department in the university has no women on its faculty, and yet we know that 32% of the doctorates in that field were earned by women in the last 10 years. And we can safely say that the department is under-utilizing women. - Within in this process there shouldn't be any compromise and the quality of the instruction of the quality of the people employed, on them whatever. In fact, we hope that women who find positions at this university will raise its standards even higher. - One important factor in the plan in this respect is that, the point is to broaden the recruitment base to recruit from populations that have usually been left out of the process to advertise or publicize openings far enough to reach minorities and women who might otherwise never heard of him. Now this can't help, but be beneficial because the more people who are aware of an opening and apply for it, the greater the chance of getting people who really would be good to have at the school. And I think all schools will benefit in this way by reaching farther and trying to get in and find out about and inform groups where they may be potential applicants. This way you give yourself a better chance. You can hardly hurt yourself by opening up recruitment to alarm the population. - And oh women and minority people do have a an need to be encouraged to seek positions. Too many times, we have been turned away, ignored, refused to be considered... Refused consideration so that many universities now and they announced a vacancy, say applications from women and minority persons are encouraged. And this of course is facilitates the implementation of their affirmative action plan. And also tells those of us who are part of the effective classes that we are welcomed there, which is good. - Do you think this will be a real difference from the way recruitment is handled now and in the cases that you're familiar with? - Oh I think so. I think that there is that show that the attitude is is so strong that in many areas that a woman is not a good risk and once women have been given some opportunities and improve that they stay on with their employment and can handle all those situations as well, or as better as men. Why they certainly I think you'll find a change in the pattern of a woman in many areas. - Is this sort of open acknowledgement and publication vote needs to take place now, or is it how has it handled now at the present time? I know that at least in some departments that I have direct contact with there's no open publicizing positions. Many departments, some little department or maybe perhaps several department members write to schools that they feel would be good places to recruit from or write to friends of theirs and other schools mentioning and opening and asking for suggestions. I would imagine the table this way in most departments but I can't say for sure certainly the ones I've had experience with this seems to be the usual pattern. So that many openings aren't even known, except like people who get contacted from this limited network. Many schools now are beginning to publicize openings more widely because they've gone into this affirmative action area. But until recently it was looked on as a rather an institution with prestige didn't do this. Only lesser institutions would openly ask for people. So now if it's looked on as, I'm dignified. - And we have an employment kind of sort of an employment service for classics and which booklets are published, and one thing or another. And someone that I know comes from, has a PhD from a well-known university we were told not to put ourselves in the book because it was beneath us to engage in that kind of commercial. - It's exactly the attitude. The institution would feel, you know, we don't advertise or mention this openly to the public. Maybe some other school, secondary school does, we wouldn't do anything like that. - And this varies from department to department within the university to the way they went about. - Well, I would say that in the major universities probably they never advertised openings in the academic departments. - Now this will affect the faculty. What kinds of things might affect classified on our students as far as affirmative action. - Well again, publicizing openings is the importance. It's a different group of courses involved. They're not, it doesn't snap students of course can come from a national pool. So especially in graduate students we draw quite heavily on not just Kansas but the nation as a whole. The classified staff for them primarily from the local area. But even within a local area, you can publicize in ways to reach women and minorities more effectively particularly minority groups. For instance, with Haskell Institute here certainly increased our publicity. Actually, even for students, this might be a source of students here that we haven't fully exploited. So that advertising there is also important. There are many other things such as considering the qualifications of the people presently in the classified and being sure that if people are qualified for higher level positions in civil service, that they get the chance to fill them when openings occur. So we do have a whole set of principles, some of them similar, some of them a little different because of the different pool of people that we're currently calling upon for classified positions. - What are some of the other areas besides recruitment that might be covered in any actually kinds of proposals? - I hesitate to go into them in too much detail because I don't know how much they've changed before we finally get out, have them approved. We have material on promotions, which is cost... I'd say another very important area, a ten-year-old solving cases where that applies. Financial aid in the case of students. Things like health service in case of women matters dealing with maternity leave benefits and so on. Some statements on other issues that seem far removed until you get into this and realize how all embracing a concept for affirmative action for big material on housing when has to consider the total environment really in order to design an effective affirmative action plan because all aspects of the lives of minority and women, students, and faculty and classified staff and others are important in order to attract people and correct our organization. - So really almost every area of the university might be effected by the implementation of affirmative action? - They're definitely. And actually according to federal guidelines that are operating under, we're even supposed to be concerned with community affairs because of people who come here, particularly minorities and to some extent, women in families of people here will be involved in the communities perhaps seeking employment there so that the whole community structure becomes important to the university. - We'll continue with our discussion of proposals to end sex discrimination at the University of Kansas falling gestation - This is Jim Seaver, and you're listenin to Opera Is My Hobby at eight o'clock Friday evening. At that time, we will be hearing recordings from Leon Cavalo's famous opera, Pagliacci. I'm going to focus in this program on the role of Connie on the opera. Connie owes one of the most famous roles for tenor, of course in all of the operatic repertoire. It was the part as an example most associated with Enrico Curtis, all during his reign at the metropolitan in the first 20 years of the century and possibly Martinelli's greatest part also as successor to Cardozo. But there are many other great Connie's too. And so I planned to play recordings from a number of them for instance, Paoli and Marilee will sing on Grundy's Pacl from the act one, the second short Aria for cannula and act one. And the famous lament Estee Lauder above chorus will be done by coders on Martinelli, probably the most famous of all interpreters of the part. From act two, we'll be hearing the tragic and you'll see Berlin. And the dramatic finale of the opera with this exciting by Mario Del Monaco and Placido Domingo of who, of course is the present Connie on our metropolitan. So far a galaxy of great tenors as Connie and listening for opera is my hobby. - This is Jan Siri substituting for Dr. Taylor and tonight we were discussing affirmative action plans to and sex discrimination at KU. Our guests this evening are Dr. Julie Shafer, chairwoman of the affirmative action board. Shirley Gillam director of the office of affirmative action for women at the University of Kansas and Dr. Betty Banks from the Classics Department who has been involved over the past few years in affirmative action plans for women and active in committee of AUP. We were talking about the far reaching effects that affirmative action plans might have that they reach almost every part of the university and even into the community. I think one area in the community that would be involved would be finding housing for minorities or for women or single women with children. Then this would be an area where there might be some discrimination existing currently that would have to be affected. - Well, we know that on occasion minority persons who were being considered or positions on faculty have been I don't know exactly how to say this. But one of the considerations has been would that person want to live in this community? And sometimes the conclusion as well they probably wouldn't. So, when we know that housing is a problem, or are they the total environment community can be a problem. I'm not sure that that excuse is justifiable one in the case of the city of Lawrence. I think that that kind of thing can be used to perhaps perpetuate discrimination. - You mean, in some instances, the department might give that as an excuse why someone wouldn't come when when really there the effort hadn't been completed in making them feel comfortable - Right. That can happen. - Oh, the thing is very important to move that transportation is another thing somewhat along those lines, or be sure that, for instance if you want to attract more people onto the staff from the minority community in town then you have to consider transportation to work. And actually I was talking to someone involved in affirmative action at Rutgers at a conference I went to in the spring and they have a whole department concerned with housing and transportation. The whole office within their total affirmative action efforts, concerned with those matters. So they can be quite important. - How do... How is something like that handled in terms of improving the situation? Did you get any idea of how they work at their.. - They hadn't done enough time. I talked to her and she was actually involved in a different area of the plan so that I didn't get that. I was only surprised to hear that this was a whole office by itself, but they'll just with those problems. - Could be very difficult I would see.. - Very and I think what you find when you get into this is that you you're surprised over and over by the number of things you do have to think about. And you finally begin to realize how old and compensating you have to be to to work at a successful plan. - One of the problems that you have faced instead of defining the limits of your activity. - Yes. I think it's a problem in the sense that we decide on something. And then we realize we really ought to consider some other area. And it seems to be almost a never ending process, et cetera that sooner or later we're going to just have to decide to stop. I'm sure if we went on discussing we could just keep on adding points. In fact, since we started our discussions with trying to get this provisional plan into shape it just keeps getting edited. It's expanded greatly since our first draft came out because we have all sorts of other areas that we should be sure to include. And no doubt there'll be many that aren't. Then we have very little right now really dealing with. I mentioned housing, but I'm sure that in a final plan they will have to be much more. One of the things we've given us something that we hope the office in affirmative action for women and the office of minority affairs will do is establish liaisons with the community organizations in this area like the Lawrence human relations convention, and work out... Work on problems in the community in relation to the university. So that's a whole area that we've really dealt very little with in this plan. - Actually, the job of repairing an affirmative action plan difficult though it is is many big deals simpler by the things order number four which serves as our Bible and our reference book. It's a rather lengthy document but it describes in some detail precisely what an affirmative action plan must do and the areas which it must cover that that is not to say that it can't go beyond that but it must at least cover certain things. And that list is quite lengthy. And each one occurs. And we prepare the plan when we read and re-read and re-read order number four which it isn't in as many times as I've ran in. I still have to go back to it again because it's information packed document. - This is different from the AHU guidelines. That this summer there was a great deal of discussion in the local press about waiting to formulate our affirmative action plan for KU. Until we got a list of guidelines from AGW. - Why is this? - And well, you see order number four, which is very useful and describes how to go about establishing affirmative action, was actually written for businesses and industries. Now, the problem is to interpret order number four in such a way that it fits the university. And it does fit pretty well. There are references to a few things which simply don't apply to the university but most of the things do fit. Well, in order to end whatever confusion there may be because of the terms and they are used in the present order number four, AGW is in the process of preparing guidelines written specifically for colleges and universities. - But they still haven't appeared then. - Well, they have appeared to a certain extent. They have appeared to the extent that they have to someone and I'm sorry, I can't remember who sent out a synopsis of what the guidelines are going to contain. But the health education and welfare lawyers are still working with the guidelines and there and it is... And those guidelines aren't ready for release. Julie did say that they'd be done by the end of the day. - That's the latest word? What I understand is that a first draft of the guidelines has been circulated among the limited group of people. I don't know who no one here has received it as far as I know. For discussion, and that this will be fed back into AGW and that they will from this revise this and when they're ready, send this out to everyone. It's been promised for a long time. The last word was that it should be here before the end of this year. However, as Shirley pointed out, we don't have to wait because the revised order number four, which is issued by the office of federal contract compliance does apply to us even though it wasn't formulated with the universities in mind so that the language is a little hard in spots to interpret and connection with universities. It does apply to universities. We are ultimately under the department of labor so that everything in there does apply to us. And we are governed by the regulations in that order. So that it's, after you read it for a while you begin to be less bothered by the different language. That sounds like it doesn't apply. You begin to see that you can apply much of that in the university context, so that we have been, it would have been nice to have the guidelines from AGW written specifically for schools. But it hasn't really meant that we couldn't do anything in the fact that we haven't gotten these guidelines. - I discussed the guideline question with Mr. Jael Thomas who is chief of the contract compliance division in our regional office in Kansas City and the man who will be heading up the team, the review team, which will come here sometime this fall. I mentioned that we were anxious to see guidelines. And he said, well, really, there's not... There are don't anticipate in changes. You might anticipate some additions but with no delations. So, we are at least on the right track with our plan which is really based on order number four, interpreted in the light of the needs of the University of Kansas which is of course, a unique situation. As we review the proposed plans in different schools and universities across the country, we occasionally come across a few, which are almost identical to one another. Our plan is really not copied from anybody else's. We considered, you know what, how much can we profit from studying other universities plans? And the general conclusion was that, this is the University of Kansas. It's not Columbia University and it's not the university of Michigan. And we're different here. Although we have many things in common, we do feel that that our plan should be precisely tailored to this university and we've tried to make it so. - And before we continue our discussion, I'd like to invite any listeners to call in if they have any questions concerning affirmative action. The number is 864 4530. As we're waiting for the plan to be made public and approved, are there some areas of the university that are going ahead and initiating their own affirmative action programs, or at least aware of the problems of sex discrimination? And I'm trying to make some changes? - Well, the library it has had for some time, and I'm sorry, I don't know exactly how long an affirmative action task force for women. The women in the library have worked very hard on compiling statistics, investigating salaries, investigating promotion, and all of the other things that figure into employment they have. In fact, within the past month completed their survey is this situation. The librarian has prepared a report which has been submitted to the library director. And that report of course contains recommendations. And they've done a really fine job, I think looking into it. - But they started, I think, last spring because the question rose when you university affirmative action board was pointed whether they should stop t he activity that they were starting on. And I remember that Julie said, means no, Oh, go ahead. And, and they have been able to pursue it. Karen was not the program last, can't assume that. Well, it's very very helpful when various segments of the university decided to go out on their own because eventually everyone's going to be involved in affirmative action. - Anyway, when you were saying that the union has affirmative action committee. - Yes, for women. And that committee has just started their work or within the last two weeks but they're moving him very well with it. And the women in the union are involved in participating and free to participate as much as they wish or as little as they wish. of course. And we certainly shouldn't neglect to mention the affirmative action provision or interim affirmative action plan of the office of business affairs, which was set up to function while the board, affirmative action board was preparing the university-wide plan. Business affairs has had its own.. - So we're not really just all waiting for this plan and there are things going on now. - I was to say it's certainly confusing in a way to have lots of different people working on their own to develop plans but it's far more desirable to have a confusing situation than to have a situation where no one's doing anything. And in fact, everyone feels all you can do is wait until the major plan comes along. I think I certainly would much rather suffer through the confusion and feel that people are really acting all around. Even though we may have trouble coordinating everything. At least I really feel that I have always encouraged people who wanted to go ahead to do something, to get going and not wait around for anything to come out centrally. - This is true. The involvement of individuals and of departments and so forth is going on at all levels and in very small ways and in very big ways. And I get phone calls all the time from people who say now what we will want to do, what we hope to do is this. And how do you think we could go about it? Or are there... Is there anything wrong with our trying this approach so that it's really encouraging to talk to these people because they're interested they're excited, for example in the graduate program in one department, the admissions committee is working very hard to see that there is... That there are women and that there are minority people who aren't being admitted to the program. And they're watching and they're trying to do everything they can to facilitate the entry of women and minorities into the profession by getting them into the postgraduate program. Which of course is extremely important. Well you must be concerned about graduate level education. This is the source of faculty. And unless we provide now for future, then we'll never reach those goals and well, our timetables will be useless. - Well, surely from the activity in your office then you feel like there's a lot going on in a university. - Well, if a woman feels that she is being discriminated against on the basis of her sex at this point, what can she do? - Well, she can come to room seven Strong Hall and ask to talk to Shirley Gillum. And that's the first step. Then I will discuss with her the various options which are open to her. And of course we'll discuss the situation with her. And I can, first of all recommend to her our complaint procedure, which way which has proven to be very effective. - Now, can she remain anonymous through this process through the complaint procedures? - Well, she can't remain completely anonymous. She, in other words, she's going to have to eventually face the person she is complaining against. And many women I must've been are reluctant to file a complaint because they feel that they will suffer consequences later. I try to always point out to them that this is illegal. If a woman or any person complains about being... Complains that she is discriminated against. It is a crime punishable by law for the employer whoever it is to in turn do something to punish her for that. - Oh, surely I think maybe we should point out that that you can remain anonymous in the initial stages. Certainly when she comes to talk to you, she's still anonymous. She gets together with a small group of women to go over the facts of the complaint and so on and have them discuss it with her. She is still anonymous. - She's anonymous except.. - To those people still confidential. So it's only if it gets to the point where they feel she has a real case and they want to go out and start trying to help her so that they'd have to speak to some of the people concerned. Only at that point with the question come up. - Right. It'd might be a good idea to just talk about the steps in the procedure. First one is that she talked with me. Then we have the second or the... Well, actually the first step and talking with me as a preliminary. The first step in the procedure is a consultation with what is called the advisory review committee. This past summer, so numbers of committee very graciously served as this advisory review committee for people. Unfortunately that the load became a little heavy. And so in searching for a way to take some of the responsibility and heavy responsibility off every member of the group this fall, we've said we are setting up a committee of 24, which is much better sized group. And that committee will include representatives from undergraduates, graduate students, faculty women, unclassified staff, and classified staff. So, when the complaint is registered and if the individual decides to pursue it, then she will select from this list of people on the committee, three names. And those three people will work with her in the initial stage, which is a very informal process. - So I think one of those advantages is that even if a woman really suspect that something may not be quite right, you can still start out in this initial phase. You're not giving, you're not blasting anyone at this point. You're just kind of investigating and questioning, and it's perfectly appropriate to have any suspicion that's not.. - Quite right. - But at that point, it's very hard To have proof as we know when we work with things like this. So that that's the point. It is necessary to be able to prove anything. But if you have any grounds for suspecting, this is the time to go in and start at least on this informal level, exploring the situation. - And very often a solution can be found at that stage without going any farther. But if no solution appears the next part of the process is to conduct an informal discussion. And I have great faith in this process because it does not polarize the people who are involved. - With the person making the complaint and the person who gets to the complaint is made. - Yes. And in fact, at this first level of the complaint procedure those two people need never meet. They don't have to encounter each other. Even members of the advisory review committee can speak on behalf of the person who is having a difficulty. We find in all summer, we didn't get past the stage of the complaint procedure. Things were resolved at this level. And there were no ill feelings between people involved. And I, I felt that there was a happy solution to every problem which came before the committee. - And I mentioned that there's a parallel structure in the office of minority affairs, so that any minority person who feels discriminated against can go there and there and their review committees, advisory community review committee, they're made up of a minority of people to do the same, go through the same process. Now, a minority woman, I would assume could either choose either office or else as both offices could become involved jointly in this procedure. - Have you had many women take advantage of this, of this process for making a complaint? - Not a great many, no. - Like three, five, 10? - Three last summer and none this fall. - I think part of the problem is that we must get the procedure publicized. It was only adopted last spring and has not been widely publicized yet. So part of what we're doing here, I hope is publicizing it so that.. - I think.. - That you have complaints. No, that there is a procedure. - I think it's important that the things you pointed out that you don't have to have proof, you can just have a sort of feeling and someone else will help you explore that before you make any sort of accusations. And I think perhaps maybe more people will take advantage of it. - I'd also like to say that that sometimes a complaint will not go through the complaint procedure. Sometimes if a woman will simply call attention to a problem, then I can call that problem to the attention of somebody in a position to do something to change the situation without ever getting involved in accusations, in a formal complaint procedure. You see and I really have faith in this that in this university wants to do the thing which is best for all people concerned so that if a problem exists and if they're aware of the problem, they will attempt to resolve it or to remove the thing which has caused problems. - Let's pose the problem, if it isn't resolved at the informal discussion level. Then what kind of steps out of there beyond. - Okay, the next step is that the complaint is taken before the university human relations committee, with one member of the advisory review committee acting as this either a support person or a spokesperson or whatever that the complaint wants that person to do. And if that fails, then there is... it can come before the committee action board. Isn't that correct? - Well, it depends at that point. It could be appealed to the judiciary or if the human relations committee makes a finding and then the person who the complaint is against refuses to implement or does not implement the recommendations, then the person complaining can come to the affirmative action board. - Right. - The things will not have to go to that extreme. I'm sure that the majority won't, but there is a procedure for going on for too far the levels. If the informal level doesn't work out. - Now, the university human relations committee is an appointed committee. Isn't it appointed by senate just to clarify what that is.. - Yes. - That the regular committee of university Senate with students and faculty members. - Right. - No classified, anything like that. And the committee is appointed. The chairman is appointed by us senate. Is that the way it works right now? - Right. - Do you think that that I'll step will stand out in any tentative or final proposals for affirmative action? - Well, it's hard to say, it's going to depend to a certain extent on the kind of feedback we get from the cluster groups. If we find, for example that people who are unclassified non-faculty, and people who are classified employees in the university aren't satisfied with that, then we'll probably have to seek out a better solution. - Because it would seem to me it's... There's so many things about it that are very satisfactory and it might be a step that could be.. - Yeah. Extra members can be added to the committee. Yes. And of course now the organization and administration committee is considering changes in the code. - And affecting committee structure. - Yes. - And so some of those changes will help to remedy some of the problems in the way the committee is set up. But there will probably, there may have to be more done in this respect. Surely spent quite a bit of time with that committee, giving and we discussed some of the things we wanted to recommend for changes in the code that would affect the whole affirmative action area. And we hope that there will be some changes that will be of benefit to the affirmative action program. - What got us started on that is that, when we attended a contract compliance review conference, one of the speakers who was at that time, they had him for civil rights office in Washington, sent that to when we conduct an onsite review at a university, we expected to find women in minority, serving on all policy making committees, which I think is probably very good idea. - Would end here at the end of our program this evening. I do want to ask one more question. If you, Julie, when do you expect that the affirmative action proposal will be public in the sense that interested parties in the university could have access to it? - I wish I could answer it. I know that we expect to get it to the chancellor. I recommended provisional plan by the end of this week and the rest is up to him. - Okay. - I don't think he'll delay long, but I know I assume he will want some feedback from others. And so, I would say it shouldn't be too long but I couldn't say exactly because it doesn't depend on us. - Okay. Well, I think I hope that our listeners have at least know now that they don't have to wait for the plan. If they do have a complaint about discrimination on account of sex or race there is a procedure that they can take advantage of now. And one that hopefully will allow some resolution of their difficulties. So I want to thank Dr. Schaefer and Shirley Kellam and Dr. Banks for being with us this evening. I also want to announce that October 12th, Shirley Chisholm will be on campus speaking in Hoke Auditorium. And during that week there will be a symposium on women in politics. And the women's political caucus from Lawrence will be taking part in that and will be information on now on the women's equity action league and other ways in which women can become involved in the political process. If you have any questions or would like additional information, I hope you will call our office. A Feminist Perspective is brought to you by the office of a women's resources and career planning located in the Dean of women's office at 222 Strong Hall. If you would like any further information or have any questions you would like to raise, I hope you will call our office or come by any time. And next week Dr. Taylor will be back with you, to continue the series of programs.