Oxy Faculty Vote “No Confidence” for Dean of Student Barbara Avery and College Counsel Carl Botterud

After several weeks devoted to special “Teaching Faculty Meetings” on sexual assault issues on campus and passing a Faculty Resolution, the Oxy Faculty this morning voted “no confidence” for Dean of Students Barbara Avery and College Counsel Carl Botterud in an Executive Session held today to vote on the resolutions. The meeting lasted 1.5 hours and came to a vote on both of the resolutions below. After the votes were tallied and announced, those faculty remaining cheered. This has been a long struggle to create a safe and equitable campus, but the process to repairing the damage to our campus must begin here.

As OSAC discovered in filing federal Clery and Office for Civil Rights complaints, the sexual assault problems at Oxy have been more of a “people problem” than a “policy problem.” Oxy can have the best policies and procedures in the nation, but if the administrators responsible for implementing them are unwilling or unable to uphold these policies and procedures, we are still left with a broken institution and system.

Once again, we applaud the Oxy Faculty for stepping up in supporting survivors and students across our campus and sending a message to the rest of the nation that college and university Administrations must take sexual assault issues on their campuses seriously. From an email Faculty Council President Amy Lyford:

Today, at the Special Meeting of the Occidental Faculty, the Teaching Faculty went into Executive Session.

During that executive session, the faculty voted (by paper ballot) on Two Motions .

Motion 1.  A vote of no confidence in the College Counsel, Carl Botterud.
Motion 2.  A vote of no confidence in the Dean of Students, Barbara Avery.

These motions were approved by majority vote as follows, and are now being forwarded to the President:

Motion 1:  70 Yes, 6 No, 4 Abstain.
Motion 2:  65 Yes, 9 No, 6 Abstain.

While these votes are not binding, we hope this large symbolic victory will be one of many more moves among faculty and staff to push the Occidental College Administration to implement real, immediate, and meaningful change around sexual assault issues on campus. It will now be up to President Jonathan Veitch to stand with the faculty, students, alumni, parents, and staff in leading Occidental College toward being a national leader on campus sexual assault issues.