The compass September 2024 vol. 19, no. 1
Guidance for University leaders on governance topics facing UToledo and our peer institutions
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
"Do your job."
- - Bill Belichick, Former Head Coach, New England Patriots NFL Team
A Summer Recap
Last month we completed our compilation of the Institutional Compliance Annual Report, which is a distillation of all the arduous work led by our compliance partners and executed by you, to keep our university safe. This month I want to look back once more at the top issues from every key compliance category. Summer is a wonderful time to prepare for the coming academic year.
These are the top issues along with one quick suggestion to avoid becoming the headline:
Information Technology – Data Breaches:
Do not click on stuff if you are not sure where it is from.
Fraud & Ethics – Occupational Fraud:
Monitor what is happening financially in your area and ask questions when things seem off.
Compliance & Legal – Title IX:
Pay attention to potential changes and ensure you have policies and procedures that are legal and followed consistently and fairly with all parties.
Campus Life – Campus Safety:
If you see something, say something. It truly does take a village to keep our campus safe.
Admittedly, nothing above is profound, but the ''simple'' things create a solid foundation. There are other actions that can reduce risk in each of these critical areas.
As a reminder, we suggest you look at the synopsis of each story we link and determine if it is a risk that is related to your responsibility. If so, we suggest you read the article and think about how you can prevent a similar event from occurring in your operation. That is strong risk management and what this publication is all about.
David L. Cutri, CPA, CISA, CIA
Chief Compliance Officer and Chief Audit Executive
Recognition: Dr. Todd Crail
In this Recognition section, we would like to acknowledge Dr. Todd Crail, Distinguished University Lecturer in Environmental Sciences, for his dedication to his students with disabilities and his ongoing, initiative-taking efforts in ensuring that they have a welcoming environment that maximizes their success in the classroom. In addition to promoting strong governance at UToledo, both Dr. Crail and Dr. Jonathan Bossenbroek serve as faculty advisors for the GUTS program (Greening UToledo Through Service Learning), which among other activities, is partnering with our Grounds Department is to find locations for no-mow native prairie plantings across campus. To learn more about GUTS student project and how to get involved, click here.
If you see someone doing the right thing, write to us and tell us about it using The Compass Nomination Form on our website. Who knows, maybe we will feature them in our next The Compass edition.
Sports Wagering Changes Considered by NCAA
Kenny Schank from the Athletics Compliance team authored the following article pertaining to sports wagering involving professional athletics. Athletics is one of the dynamic areas of higher education compliance, in terms to the rate of change in the area. We are certainly on strong footing, due to Kenny’s leadership and Brian Lutz', as well as the compliance oversight team they lead. Please read on …
The NCAA Board of Directors reviewed and discussed a potential legislative concept that could permit wagering on professional sports activities soon.
During their recent June 2024 meetings, the Division I Council generally agreed on the deregulation of the prohibition on sports wagering involving professional athletics. The Division I Council forwarded to the Board of Directors the below items to consider as conversations advance on potentially deregulating certain current NCAA rules on sports wagering:
- In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which banned sports betting in most states. Since that decision, there has been an unprecedented proliferation of legal and regulated sports wagering in the United States.
- In a sign of how the landscape has changed in recent times, institutions and conferences have entered official partnerships with gaming entities.
iii. Providing a permissible avenue for wagering on professional athletics may reduce the likelihood of student-athletes and staff wagering on intercollegiate athletics.
- Education related to gambling will continue regardless of changes to NCAA sports gambling rules. Enhanced educational efforts and collaboration with gaming entities and integrity services may be necessary.
Two of the proposed sports betting concepts under consideration include:
- Concept #1: Permit student-athletes and athletics department and conference office staff members to wager, as permitted by law, on professional athletics activities in sports other than their own or the sports in which they participate.
- Background: This concept would deregulate the current legislation to allow student-athletes to wager, through legal and regulated methods, on professional sports other than the sport or sports in which they participate. Sport specific institutional staff members may wager on professional sports other than the sport or sports in which they perform most duties.
- Concept #2: Permit student-athletes and athletics department and conference office staff members to wager, as permitted by law, on any professional athletics activity.
- Background: This concept would deregulate the current legislation to allow student-athletes and staff members to wager, through legal and regulated methods, on any professional sports.
Stay tuned, as the continued evolution of intercollegiate athletics continues at a pace never seen before.
Enact CAMPUS Act
Ohio governor Mike DeWine signed the Enact CAMPUS Act into law in July, requiring the state’s public and private higher education institutions to adopt and enforce policies on racial, religious and ethnic harassment and intimidation, The Ohio Capital Journal reported. "We want to make sure that we are creating an environment where every student--no matter who they are, who they pray to, what ethnicity or religious background they have--have the best opportunity to learn and to live and be on campuses and be spaces of community," Democratic state representative Dontavius Jarrells, who co-sponsored the legislation, said last month. The law comes in response to a reported rise in anti-semitic incidents on college campuses since the Israel-Hamas war started last October.
HHS Updates HIPAA Civil Penalty Amounts
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has applied the annual inflation update to its civil monetary penalty (CMP) amounts, as required by the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015. Despite typically being late, HHS confirmed on August 8, 2024, the application of the update, increasing CMP amounts by the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) multiplier of 1.03241. This adjustment is based on the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (CPI-U) for October 2023, mandated for application by January 15th each year.
Read this article from The HIPAA Journal to learn more.
HHS Updates HIPAA Civil Penalty Amounts
New FAFSA Delay Sparks Fear
The Education Department’s new deadline for the launch of the 2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms is leaving advocacy groups in a tough spot as they say the move is the best of bad options but brings up feelings of dread after the FAFSA situation last year.
Why Students Leave College for More Than 1 Term
Three out of five students surveyed said academic underperformance played a key role in their decision to leave college for more than one term. Financial constraints and family responsibilities were also big drivers of students stopping out, according to a new report from the American Council on Education (ACE) and the School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. The two entities have partnered to “strengthen and lead” the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA, according to the report.
Why Do Students Stop out of College?
NCAA Violations
Notre Dame suspended its men's swimming program in August for at least one year after an external review found members of the team violated NCAA rules by wagering among themselves on results of their competitions and failed to "treat one another with dignity and respect." "In order to ensure that this behavior ends and to rebuild a culture of dignity, respect, and exemplary conduct, we have decided to suspend the men's swimming program for at least one academic year," athletic director Pete Bevacqua said in a statement. According to a person with knowledge of the situation, members of the team had set up a makeshift, internal sportsbook where athletes could wager on the times posted by themselves or teammates at meets. Athletes were not found to have bet on opposing teams or on any other Notre Dame athletic events, the person said.
Intellectual Diversity in the Classroom
The Office of the Indiana Attorney General this week argued a federal judge should dismiss a lawsuit led by university professors and the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana challenging a state law requiring "intellectual diversity" in the classroom. The plaintiffs assert that Senate Enrolled Act 202 violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The measure was adopted by the General Assembly over concerns that conservative viewpoints were being stifled on campuses and signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb in March. As summarized in a June filing, 202 "requires that faculty members be denied tenure or promotion, and threatens them with discipline through and including termination, if they are deemed "unlikely" to "foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity" within their institution, or if they are deemed to have failed to foster such cultures in the past."
Intellectual Diversity in the Classroom
NCAA Compliance
A Division I Committee on Infractions panel determined former Michigan head football coach Jim Harbaugh violated recruiting and inducement rules, engaged in unethical conduct, failed to promote an atmosphere of compliance and violated head coach responsibility obligations, resulting in a four-year show-cause order. Michigan and five individuals who currently or previously worked for its football program earlier reached agreement with NCAA enforcement staff on violations concerning recruiting and coaching activities by noncoaching staff members that occurred within the football program. The school also agreed that it failed to monitor the football program.
Lawsuit
A Penn State trustee is suing the board for allegedly withholding information about how the university manages its $4.6 billion endowment, which provides financial stability for the institution and includes donations intended to benefit Penn State and its students. The lawsuit was filed days before the trustees' July meeting in Altoona and comes as Penn State plans steep budget cuts and pays some employees to leave. It is also the latest in a series of public grievances by board members about university operations. Barry Fenchak, an alumni-elected trustee, said that university leaders and fellow trustees have blocked him for years from reviewing data he requested, including details about what assets Penn State has and administrative fees charged to those holdings.
Campus Protests, Part 1
Police arrested four pro-Palestinian protesters in August at the University of Michigan after a group tried to disrupt a university event, a school official said. During a Festifall event being held Wednesday afternoon, some protesters who oppose Israel showed up at the Diag and started demonstrating. The group of about 50 protesters were asked to disperse, Colleen Mastony, assistant vice president for public affairs, told the Free Press. None of the four arrested were students, Mastony said. "For more than an hour, they were given multiple warnings that made clear they were blocking pedestrian traffic and violating university policy," she said in a statement. "Most eventually dispersed although some refused to leave and, as a result, four people were arrested. None of the people who were arrested were students. Three were unaffiliated with the university, and the fourth is a temporary employee."
Campus Protests, Part 2
Students were braced for a stalemate. There was an Ultimate Frisbee team without money to compete, an airport shuttle whose cost to students almost doubled without a campus subsidy, and a ballroom dance team unable to rent rehearsal space. At the University of Michigan, many student activities are usually funded or subsidized by the Central Student Government, known as C.S.G., an elected undergraduate and graduate council that decides how to dole out roughly $1.3 million annually to about 400 groups. But last spring, pro-Palestinian activists, running under the Shut It Down party, won control over the student government. They immediately moved to withhold funding for all activities, until the university committed to divest from companies that profit from Israel's war in Gaza.
Hazing
Two former Pennsylvania State University fraternity members involved in a 2017 fraternity hazing case in which student Tim Piazza died have entered guilty pleas, bringing closure to a case that has dragged on for more than seven years, Pennsylvania's attorney general announced in late-July. [The former] president of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, and [the former] vice president and pledge master, have pleaded guilty to 14 counts of hazing and one count of reckless endangerment -- all misdemeanors, according to the office of Attorney General Michelle Henry. The case drew national attention as video surveillance from the fraternity house on the night Piazza was fatally injured was played in court, showing Piazza, who was from Hunterdon County, N.J., and others moving through a drinking obstacle course and chugging alcohol.
If you have any suggestions, questions or feedback, please e-mail david.cutri@utoledo.edu, including suggestions for items to include in future newsletters Feel free to forward this email to your colleagues, employees. Back issues of this newsletter are available on the Internal Audit and Compliance website.
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