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OU to give scooter company exclusive rights on campus
New SGA leaders discuss goals, hope to leave lasting impact on university
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Beloved mascot ‘Top Daug’ returns to OU basketball this week
Recently inaugurated student President Justin Norris prepares to take reigns of executive branch
OU INVESTIGATING TOM ORR Former School of Drama director placed on administrative leave JANA ALLEN @jana_allen21
JORDAN MILLER @jordanrmillerr
Tom Orr, former director of OU’s Helmerich School of Drama and current performance professor, has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation in light of “recent allegations,” according to an OU spokesperson. T h o u g h t h e n a t u re o f t h e new allegations against Orr are
unknow n, cur rent School of Drama director Seth Gordon sent a message Sunday to students and faculty within the school explaining Orr would be on leave. Upon inquiry, OU spokesperson Kesha Keith said in an email the university was investigating allegations related to Orr. In Gordon’s message, he explained Orr had chosen to withdraw from directing an upcoming production due to an “increase in research and creative activity and health issues at home.” However, the message also said he would be continuing to be involved in the production in his capacity as a producer of the Lab Theatre. Orr was previously
investigated by OU’s Title IX office in the summer of 2018 after multiple accusations of sexual harassment by students. An OU Daily investigation found at least two School of Drama alumni filed sexual harassment complaints against Orr with the university’s Title IX office that resulted in no actions taken against him. Multiple other alumni who did not file Title IX complaints spoke with The Daily in 2018 about personal experiences with Orr inside and outside the classroom, saying his behavior was sexually charged and emotionally harmful. “Due to the confidential nature of this personnel issue, this is the extent of the university’s
comment at this time,” said Kesha Keith, O U dire ctor of me dia relations in an email Sunday night. “The university’s primary concern is the welfare of its students.” Orr resigned from his post as the director of the School of Drama Aug. 16, 2018, after a Title IX investigation into the school’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against former professor emeritus and donor John Scamehorn. Orr’s resignation was “in support of necessary changes within the school,” but he remained a “valued member of the faculty,” according to a statement released after Orr’s resignation by Mary Margaret Holt, dean of the
Weitzenhoffer College of Fine Arts. A professor within the School of Drama, who asked to remain unnamed, told The Daily in 2018 they had more than a dozen students come to them over the years with complaints of verbal sexual harassment from Orr. The Daily attempted to contact Orr by phone and email Sunday night but did not receive a response by time of publication. Jana Allen
jana.r.allen-1@ou.edu
Jordan Miller
jordan.r.miller-1@ou.edu
Harroz to present strategic plan
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Interim OU president to share framework, goals with Board of Regents
We have the opportunity to define what the next generation of OU excellence is.
JORDAN MILLER @jordanrmillerr
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After two administration changes in three years, interim OU President Joseph Harroz will present a regent-requested plan for the university’s future in the coming weeks. This plan — designated as the university’s strategic framework — was initially outlined at the Sept. 11 OU Board of Regents meeting, according to an OU News press release, and will likely be presented to the board in January. The framework is intended to present the university’s goals and how it will pursue them, echoed by priorities outlined in the framework’s survey, community conversations with campus leaders and town halls held last semester. “We are at a pivotal moment,” Harroz said in an October video from the office of the president. “We have the opportunity to define what the next generation of OU excellence is.” In October, the president’s office sent an email to the OU community explaining the strategic framework, and that a committee of 11 faculty members — the President’s Academic Planning and Budget Advisory Committee — would draft the Norman campus framework. The email also asked students, faculty, staff and alumni to participate in the framework’s survey, which received over 5,000 responses and organized the priorities of these community stakeholders. It also created a word cloud of the most popular responses, with priorities like diversity, excellence and innovation being some of the most common. Alisa Fryar, an expert on higher education administration and an OU professor who has been involved with the President’s Academic Planning and Budget Advisory Committee, said surveys like these are often used in this kind of strategic planning for institutions. But she said those plans usually take about a year to draft, given the level of research they include. Fryar said the participation that went into the framework — the survey, leadership meetings with community stakeholders and town halls — may have been more than the committee could’ve asked for to have completed the framework in one semester. Strategic planning as a practice is more than just a simple
-Joseph Harroz, interim OU president
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CAITLYN EPES & CARLY OREWILER/THE DAILY
outline of steps. A study by Charles Goldman, a policy expert on strategic planning for education systems, said strategic plans consist of an institution’s vision for the future, mission statement, strategic goals, defined objectives and key performance indicators — or measurable targets — at the base of the plan.
“We’ve got a leadership team that I think genuinely wants to pivot.”
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-Alisa Fryar, OU professor
Goldman, who has consulted with institutions professionally on strategic planning, said OU’s plan to create a framework first is a good start — especially since the framework is being conducted with input by those familiar with OU internally rather than an external firm — but that he would recommend the university to eventually go through with a longer process to create a more actionable plan. Fryar previously worked on a strategic plan for the College of Arts and Sciences. As a full strategic plan rather than a strategic framework, Fryar said its creation took more time. “It was a year of collecting information, doing a ton of meetings, doing surveys — multiple surveys — more research and
benchmarking institutions, and more multiple drafts that went through a lot of different committees,” Fryar said. “And it was quite a bit longer even, too, but it was for a different purpose.” Universities typically undergo a strategic planning process for one of two reasons, according to Goldman’s study: internal pressures to increase efficiency or external pressures to increase value for community stakeholders. Goldman said external pressures can come from students, faculty, staff or alumni asking for more from the university in response to repeated university issues, such as racist incidents, investigations into upper administrators and financial disputes. It is also common for universities that go through a leadership change to engage in some type of planning process to chart a way forward, he said. “Immediate crisis may signal that there are longer-term issues that the institution needs to address in order to become effective, and so that may then lead to a strategic planning process,” Goldman said. Regional accreditors that provide accreditation to American institutions are increasingly requiring member universities to develop formal strategic plans, which is also a reason many have developed them, Goldman said. The U.S. has seven regional accreditors, including the Higher Learning Commission, of which OU is a member. The commission requires that institutions specify their missions
through systematic and integrated planning, according to the HLC’s criteria for accreditation, and also states that this planning process should include the institution as a whole — considering “the perspectives of internal and external constituent groups.” “If you want to change strategy, usually you have to reallocate resources, because a lot of the activities in the university are really directly related to where the resources are,” Goldman said. “And to the extent you need people to carry out this strategy, it tends to be very difficult if there hasn’t been some mechanism of involvement along the way.” Fryar said she felt the process of creating the framework engaged with the community through town halls and the survey, and it helped create conversations on how OU compares to peer institutions. “President Boren was a president who people really appreciated how much he was able to communicate a vision for OU,” Fryar said. “But that vision was often fairly limited by his perspective, and kind of where he was in the institution and his own history. This is a space where I feel like, if nothing else, a lot of people have been able to say out loud, in public, what they think OU should be.” Although Fryar said she does not know what the framework is going to look like or how it will be implemented, she said the process really showed upper administration what different community stakeholders aspire for OU to become. “I’ve seen the president and provost — their rhetoric around the
university, the way they talk about plans — and I’ve seen some responsiveness with that. Just small ways a lot of times, but that they are responsive to these conversations,” Fryar said. “But it certainly created a world in which it feels a little bit more like the future of OU is something we’re talking about, as opposed to something we’re told is going to happen to us.” Fryar said she believes the strategic framework would’ve been conducted regardless of who the president was, since the regents requested it, but the process is well-suited for Harroz and his leadership style. “We’ve got a leadership team that I think genuinely wants to pivot,” Fryar said. “But there are folks that have been here for a really long time. And untying the knot that has been created over decades — if they really want to pivot, it’s going to take some time.” Harroz told The Daily in a December interview that he hopes his interim administration is remembered as one that was honest about the difficult times but came together to address them and plan ahead. “What I would hope for the next increment of time is that we, as a community, came together and laid out a really bold, really honest, really clear path to accomplishing this really sacred mission that matters to the individual and matters to society,” Harroz said. “I mean, that’s why I spend my time here.” Jordan Miller
jordan.r.miller-1@ou.edu