Provost explains university decision to remain open
To read the accompanying article, which outlines student responses to the university decision made last Thursday, click here.
Despite negative student response, USC Aiken officials believe that based on information available to them at the time, they made the right decision in maintaining classes and activities for Thursday, Feb. 6.
Dr. Daren Timmons, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, defended the decision in an interview with Pacer Times, noting the nuances that are involved in the procedure used by USCA administrators.
“I think the process is fairly straightforward, although the decision-making is complicated,” he said, listing the many officials that are involved in the system, which begins with potentially threatening weather reports from the National Weather Service in Columbia to the local Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
The EOC is an inter-agency gathering, according to USCA News and Information Specialist Leslie Hull-Ryde. Meetings are called “in the event of a weather situation” and involve branches of many area officials, including a representative from the University Police Department.
From the EOC meeting, information is brought back to members of the cabinets, including the chancellor and other university leaders, who meet and discuss options for the campus.
Each leader has an area of expertise and brings a different checklist to the table, allowing for several perspectives to “form the almighty decision,” she said. It was noted that no student representative is present at these proceedings, though Timmons said that he would consider implementing the change.
A decision is made “within about an hour’s radius—because we know we have commuter students and that’s really important to take into consideration as well.”
Students commonly mistake choices made by Aiken County public schools as indicative of what the university will decide, but Hull-Ryde clarified that their decisions are completely different.
“The governor directed that we take our lead from the county administration,” said Timmons, mentioning that “each institution has to make its own decision about the potential impacts.”
He referenced Aiken Technical College, which remained open, and Columbia, where classes were cancelled.
“It feels like we should do whatever Columbia is doing, but it’s an entirely different geography for them,” he said. “Columbia closed late in the afternoon, but they have a really high risk of flooding in the city because of low-lying areas.”
“Really, at the end of the day, it comes down to what makes the most sense for our mission and for the safety of the students, based on what we can predict about the weather.”
Hull-Ryde said that the approach is “definitely not cookie-cutter,” specifying that they consider geographical location of commuting students and whether their path will be impacted by the storm, along with campus activities that might be disrupted, like athletics, cultural events, the life-long learning program and the children’s center hours.
Regardless of decisions made for the campus as a whole, both administrators specified that student safety is of the utmost importance.
“[We] give the students the ability to make the decision that they need to make, to be responsible for being safe,” said Timmons. “And that has been consistent in our message.”
He explained that though classes may be able to continue, “students really need to be aware of travel conditions” and adjust their plans accordingly.
“All faculty and staff commute as well; some as much as an hour away. We all need to take into account our own personal travel directions and, frankly, our comfort level with that.”
Timmons said that while administrators “hope that the faculty would be understanding,” students can dispute disagreements over absences, among other issues.
The process, which is illustrated in the student handbook, begins with a discussion between the student and professor. If an agreement is not made, the student may contact the department head, followed by the dean.
“After that, then the situation or the question or the scenario comes to me,” he said, “as the executive vice chancellor for academic affairs.”
Though he specified that professors are allowed to make their own attendance policies, he did note that he would be willing to consider having a conversation with the department chairs about the impact of weather on attendance policies in the classroom.
When informed of student comments that questioned the university’s regard for student safety, Timmons dissented.
“We take student safety seriously,” he said, mentioning that he had read some of the comments. “In a very short period of time they were recognizing the complexity of the situation.”
He clarified again that the university does believe they made the right decision, though he admitted that it is hard to know in the moment with “imperfect information.”
“We definitely value the student input and every time we have a scenario like this, we go back and we say ‘OK, what was the feedback? What did we learn?’”
Editor’s Note: In a previous version of this article, Dr. Daren Timmons was misspelled. Some previews of the article may still show this, but it has been corrected.
Photo courtesy of the Office of Media and Public Relations.
