New bill requires background check on all university faculty
The Utah House Education Committee passed a bill Feb. 19 that will require all university faculty to have a federal background check preformed on them before they are hired. Rep. Rhonda Rudd Menlove, R-Garland, pushed this bill to be passed.
“If it’s my daughter in a university class, I want to know she is interacting with people who don’t have something like that (a crime) in their background,” she said.
In the past, it has not been a requirement for prospective faculty to get a background check. Teachers in elementary schools, however, must go through the process of a federal background check in order to be hired.
USU Provost Raymond Coward said administration will work with the faculty senate in order to ensure that it follows the law and creates new policies.
“Background checks are becoming more common around the country, and we will do them in the future,” he said in an email.
But are there currently any convicted criminals teaching classes at the university?
“I am unsure of that because we have not done (background checks in the past,” Coward said.
The bill, HB196, emphasizes the need to perform these checks for positions that require contact with minors. Dorm workers and teachers with contact with students under 21 are at the top of Menlove’s list for getting a background check, she said.
A Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows that many people in the state agree with the bill. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said higher education faculty members should definitely or probably have to get federal background checks as a condition of hiring.
This nonscientific poll also shows that only 9 percent of the 418 respondents statewide said faculty probably or definitely should not be subject to criminal checks.
Some argue, saying background checks are an invasion of privacy. Robert Kreiser, senior program officer at the American Association of University Professors, said there is no indication that there is a problem with ex-convicts on campus.
Kreiser said the only positions that should require background checks are those like a security officer or a position that handles lots of money.
The Board of Regions over all universities in Utah will make sure that institutions of higher education will follow this new law, Coward said.
-emredfie@cc.usu.edu