Tenured faculty member files bias report against UK Board of Trustees

Tenured+faculty+member+files+bias+report+against+UK+Board+of+Trustees

Barkley Truax

A Bias Incident Report has been filed against the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees for failing to respond to requests for bias training, according to a copy of the report obtained by the Kentucky Kernel through an open records request.

The report was filed on Aug. 12 by an anonymous, tenured faculty member, who requested “immediate bias training for all faculty before classes start so students are spared the microaggressions, bias and EEO violations that have been reported by students and tenured faculty for at least 10 years.”

The faculty member stated that similar requests for bias training and overview had been made for over a decade, and that one faculty member recently submitted a comment saying this was “the 25th time I have written this [a request for bias training] on a survey with no action taken by the university.”

According to the report, the Board of Trustees has committed bias by ignoring specific comments and quantitative responses to annual surveys on climate and on the performance of UK president Eli Capilouto, including memos to three unidentified directors and a human resources representative. The faculty member who filed the complaint said in the report that the board ignored “directly reported widespread racial and gender microaggressions, direct bias and specific EEO violation and not implementing the earnest, imploring request for Bias training for all faculty.”

UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said the bias incident complaint has been reviewed by UK’s Office of Institutional Equity and Equal Opportunity (IEEO), which found, “insufficient information to proceed with an investigation under UK Administrative Regulation 6.1 Policy on Discrimination and Harassment.”

According to AR 6.1, discrimination is “an action or behavior that results in negative or different treatment of an individual based upon race, color, national origin, ethnic origin, religion, creed, age, physical or mental disability, veteran status, uniformed service, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, marital status, genetic information, social oreconomic status, or whether the person is a smoker or nonsmoker.”

The policy applies to all university community members, even visitors.

Blanton said that UK recently announced anti-racist training that started this week among senior administrators and academic leaders. UK’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity efforts will work to examine issues around training and curriculum for UK students, faculty and staff.

“The institution within the last few years has provided implicit and unconscious bias training for the campus and expanded this kind of training and capacity. Several thousand members of our campus community have participated in this training,” Blanton said.

According to the report, the complaint about bias was also submitted to human resources, the Board of Trustees subcommittee that evaluates Capilouto and the recently formed task force on race.