DEI Incident Recording Protocol

By default, the reporting contact will record the following items about each incident:

1. Reporter’s information: Name and (optionally) demographics, e.g., gender, race, disability, student/staff/faculty

2. Names and relevant demographics of others involved in or witnesses to the incident

3. Date(s) and time(s) of the incident(s)

4. Location of the incident(s)

5. Category of the incident(s) (see Reportable Incidents for options)

6. Description of the incident

7. Response plan (see Incident Response Process)

Protecting the privacy of people reporting incidents is extremely important. Hence, this process aims to protect the confidentiality of the person reporting an incident to the extent possible. In particular, the reporter may choose, for each of the data items above, whether it is included in the recorded report, and if so, whether it may be reported “up the chain”.

However, this is subject to a few caveats. To ensure the department leadership can monitor the department’s culture and detect systemic problems, for each report, it will always be recorded that an incident took place, the category of the incident, and the position (student, staff, faculty, other) of the person responsible for the incident.  

In addition, incidents subject to Mandatory-Reporting will be referred to the appropriate university official for review (see DEI Incident Response Process). 

All reporting contacts will maintain records of the reports they receive, containing the information detailed above, subject to the privacy protections discussed above. The Department Chair will also maintain a complete record of all reports they receive.

All reporting contacts, as well as the Department Chair, will take all reasonable steps to maintain the security of the data they collect, so that only they have access to it. Full report data will be retained for 5 years, after which it will be securely deleted, although aggregated statistics will be retained for up to 20 years.

Once a year, the Department Chair will share a (totally anonymized) statistical summary of all reported cases with the DEI committee, to help assess the impact of current DEI efforts and guide future DEI efforts. In the interest of transparency, the Department Chair will share this data with the broader faculty and CSD community as well.