[media-credit name=’SUNDEEP MALLADI/Herald Photo’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]The University of Wisconsin's Faculty Senate passed a resolution Monday that will check the criminal background of all new employees and current ones moving into "positions of trust."

According to Stephen Lund, human resources manager for classified staff, the resolution was originally adopted by the UW System Board of Regents last December to ensure the University of Wisconsin has a systemwide policy for background checks that coincides with current state and federal standards.

Even though the resolution passed 90 to 31, part of the Senate had reservations about the resolution.

English professor Richard Knowles asked whether it was necessary to require all new employees to be checked, because the process is time-consuming and expensive and may not be worth it for teaching and research assistants.

"It applies to all new hires, and that's the bear behind the tree, because you have to think about all the people that transfer in and who leave the university and then come back," Lund said.

Other members also stressed the importance of confidentiality for new hires, but particularly those who will be checked on account of their move to a position of trust, as a leak in information may damage their reputation.

"The latest draft makes it clear that certain information related to non-criminal or criminal matters that are unrelated to a respective position we will not keep in a personnel file," Lund said. "We've gone through it with a fine-tooth comb and tried to make the procedure [of confidentiality] as safe and secure as we could."

The Senate also questioned some potential problems about how efficient the system was in getting the right background information and how the system was going to be funded.

"A Wisconsin person should be relatively quick [to check] because they can use the department of justice database … online," said Bob Mathieu, UW professor of astronomy and a Senate speaker. "If this person is an international hire it could take substantially longer because we'll have to go through an outside vendor, HireRight, to do those kinds of checks."

Mark Walters, the human resources manager for unclassified staff, addressed the issue of financing the system and said it is an "expensive" program and as an unfunded mandate, "each branch within the university will have to pay for their own [background] checks."

According to Lund, however, the program does as little as possible to enforce rules that would result in more background checks, and that the only reason they are taking the issue on was due to the importance of a unified policy on campus, but also to cover rules already put in place by higher authority.

"The committee believes that we should go with a minimalist approach," Lund said. "We should apply this policy only when it's called for by the law or demanded by the regents."

Mathieu noted that, although not much can be done to change the system in place, it may affect how potential faculty and staff look upon Wisconsin and might also have them looking elsewhere as a result.