Profs one step closer to keeping secrets

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

Over the objections of one of its members, a Board of Regents committee voted Monday to recommend approving a policy that would allow university faculty members to continue keeping confidential records of their outside employment.

Regent James Dean Leavitt, the lone opposition in the 3-1 vote, said the proposed policy would not serve the public's interest.

"I think the public's right to know on a call like that should trump the professor's right to privacy," Leavitt said, promising more debate when the entire 13-member board takes up the subject Friday.

The policy was crafted following Sun requests last summer for records detailing UNLV faculty members' outside work.

UNLV officials acknowledged at the time that they had no idea how many faculty members earned income off campus and had no system in place to monitor potential conflicts of interest. Officials have since tightened up the reporting process but have refused to provide the Sun with copies of outside income disclosure forms they collected from professors, insisting the forms are considered confidential personnel records.

The new policy would put that in writing but also increase pressure on UNLV and other institutions in the Nevada System of Higher Education to keep watch over their faculty members. Under the proposal, each institution would have to submit an annual report with basic information, such as how many professors earned outside income.

The names of the professors, along with the names of their employers, however, would remain confidential under the policy and would not be subject to public scrutiny.

The public still would have no way of knowing which faculty members have jobs off campus that pose potential conflicts with their university duties - a professor, for example, could skew a course syllabus to further his business interests with a private company - and whether and how those conflicts are resolved.

At Monday's hearing before the regents' Research and Development Committee, university system officials said their research of what other universities across the country are doing to report professors' outside work turned up mixed results. Some require full disclosure and others keep that information confidential. Universities with full disclosure policies include Arizona, Ohio State, Wisconsin and North Carolina State, officials said.

UNLV and UNR faculty senate representatives supported the more restrictive Nevada proposal, saying public disclosure would discourage professors from doing outside research that could benefit the public. Some companies, protective of their proprietary information, also would be reluctant to hire faculty members under those conditions, the faculty representatives said.

But Leavitt argued the public would be harmed by a policy that gives blanket confidentiality to professors.

"It's the opposite of open government," he said.

The burden, Leavitt said, should be placed on the faculty members to demonstrate why their off-campus income should be shielded from taxpayers.

That view was shared after the meeting by Regent Steve Sisolak, who is not a committee member but who has pushed for full disclosure.

"I still maintain that the taxpayer, who is the employer of these faculty members, has a right to know what their employees are engaged in," Sisolak said. "It might be in the best interests of the faculty to hide disclosure, but I don't think it's in the public's best interest."