Action Plan
Dear USC community,
The recent matter involving a former
physician at our student health center has been profoundly troubling for our
community, and has disturbed us all very deeply. This matter has
generated a fresh wave of discussions on our campuses, building on those
related to one of our former deans. These discussions are imperative in
recognizing deficits in our culture. Unacceptable behavior by anyone in
our community is a profound breach of trust, and we must change the culture at
the university, and instill a higher level of professionalism and ethics.
We owe it to our students, to each other, and, indeed, to our entire community
to do better. I am truly sorry these events happened within our
community, and deeply regret how much distress they have caused. From the
sorrow comes determination to lead change in our culture.
At USC, we have a particular
responsibility to uphold and model the nobler values of our humanity. We
are a world-class university, whose very mission is driven by the search for
truth, and whose core values remain stitched in every piece of scholarly and
creative work we produce. Our nation—and indeed, the world—turn to
institutions of higher learning to model the highest ideals of our society, and
USC¡¯s scholars, researchers, and artists take this responsibility most
seriously.
Our discussion of these two matters has
echoed those we have heard throughout higher education, as well as those in
other professional and personal settings, including the political, financial,
and entertainment spheres. The voices from these discussions—coming from
a range of communities, and reverberating across race, class, and gender—have
been profoundly instructive, as they illuminate the complexity surrounding
these issues, and heighten our empathy in responding. Indeed, over the
past year, many of us at USC have become more sensitive to these issues¡¯
pervasiveness, lingering consequences, and complexities.
Moving forward, all of us, and
especially anyone who holds a leadership position at USC, will be held to a
higher standard, one that lives up to our core values, our Code of Ethics, and
an enhanced culture change on our campuses. Whenever our university has
had to deal with a major incident, our philosophy as a community has not
wavered: learn from the experience and the mistakes made, and make sure we do
better in the future.
Our path forward is clear. Our
core values must be a means of creating and sustaining an environment of trust
and fairness. To this end, I formally announce the establishment of the President¡¯s Campus Culture Commission, co-chaired by
Paula Cannon, a former president of the faculty and a distinguished professor
of molecular microbiology and immunology at our Keck School of Medicine, and
John Gaspari, a staff member in our human resources division who serves as the
executive director of the USC Center for Work and Family Life. This
commission will report directly to me, and I will work closely with its
co-chairs and members. Varun Soni, our dean of religious life and the
head of our Office of Campus Wellness and Crisis Intervention, will be a
special advisor to this commission. I am in the process of recruiting
members, consisting of faculty and staff from both campuses, and the full
composition will be announced before the beginning of the academic year.
The commission¡¯s charge is to provide
advice to the university¡¯s senior leadership, and to assess the execution of
the action plan we share with you today. Its work will be ongoing, and
will begin at the start of the academic year with a half-day retreat, which
will be attended by the university¡¯s entire senior leadership, all deans,
academic department chairs, directors of institutes, as well as other members
of our community, drawn from both campuses. It will also include the
executive boards of both the Academic Senate and the Staff Assembly.
Beyond the President¡¯s Campus Culture
Commission, we must move quickly and decisively to establish an improved
culture, one that is based on equity, professionalism, and ethics. This
will be a culture of Care, Concern,
Consultation, and Compliance—four cornerstones that we will describe in
greater detail in subsequent sections. With this in mind, we must develop
coherent and centralized systems for receiving and handling—in a timely
manner—complaints of any nature. And we must ensure protection when
possible for anyone who steps forward with a complaint. This protection
extends to any persons who are witnesses and are willing to share information
regarding a complaint, as well. We must be committed to bringing issues
that affect our environment to light, and hold each other accountable for
living up to our core values. Retaliation against those who come forward
will not be tolerated; indeed, discretion, transparency, and accountability
must define our response. At USC, our ultimate goal is to maintain the
highest standard among all universities.
At the same time, we must never forget
our university¡¯s mission—that will never change. Our mission guides our
work: to educate our students; to create new knowledge through research and
creative work; and to take good care of our patients.
Today, we take a significant step
forward. At the request of the board of trustees, my senior leadership
team and I prepared a wide-ranging action plan to revisit our
core values, revise our existing employment policies, and improve our campus
culture, as well as to implement a major restructuring of a number of the
university¡¯s operations. Our action plan reflects the recommendations and
feedback from four distinct areas. (1) First, it directly and
comprehensively answers the external review prepared by the law firm, Gibson
Dunn. (2) Second, it incorporates considerable input from the
university¡¯s internal Task Force on Workplace Standards and Employee
Wellness. (3) Third, it addresses new lessons learned from the recent
matter involving our student health center. (4) And finally, it places
all of these recommendations within the context of larger, national discussions
currently taking place. In this way, the action plan we present today
reflects a truly collaborative and broadly informed effort, one that draws on
the rigorous observations of an external law firm, but also benefits from the
far-reaching insights of those who best know our community: the faculty, staff,
and students who spend each day at USC.
In this collaborative spirit—and as you
absorb the changes and initiatives of the action plan—I will add: each one of
us has a role moving forward. Recently, we have received direct feedback
from the executive boards of both the Academic Senate and the Staff Assembly,
and this has been tremendously helpful. Additionally, we will refine this
action plan based on input we receive from you, members of the USC
community. Our environment is only as strong as our character, and we all
have a shared commitment to upholding—and even championing—our core
values. We ask that you read the following action plan very carefully, and
that we collectively rededicate ourselves to an ethos rooted in respect,
compassion, and inclusion.
May 22, 2018
Dear USC Community,
The Board of Trustees is troubled by the
distressing reports about USC¡¯s former student health center physician, and we
offer our deepest sympathies to those affected.
We have zero tolerance for this conduct and will ensure that people are
held accountable for actions that threaten the university student body and that
do not reflect our culture of respect, care, and ethics.
The executive committee of the board has
full confidence in President Nikias¡¯ leadership, ethics, and values and is
certain that he will successfully guide our community forward. We strongly support President Nikias¡¯
implementation of a thorough and comprehensive action plan that addresses these
issues and enables USC to continue exemplifying our Trojan Family values as we
move forward.
Sincerely,
John Mork Chairman, USC Board of Trustees