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Photo: Santa Barbara City College
By Lauren Bray, edhat staff
The detailed comments of an anonymous Santa Barbara City College (SBCC) employee survey may become public and the employees fear possible retaliation.
This past April, SBCC and its Interim President Dr. Helen Benjamin urged employees to participate in a survey asking for opinions and detailed grievances to help better the public institution. Employees were reportedly reassured numerous times by Dr. Benjamin and SBCC leadership that the survey would be anonymous.
As a summary of the results were released last week, employees are now learning several Public Records Requests, also known as the California Public Records Act, were filed with the school to obtain the detailed survey responses that include narrative experiences and personal information.
The California Public Records Act is a law stating any citizen can request public business records unless exempted by law. The exemptions are rather minimal and have been described as “only purely personal information unrelated to ‘the conduct of the public’s business’ could be considered exempt from this definition, i.e., the shopping list phoned from home, the letter to a public officer from a friend which is totally void of reference to governmental activities,” according to a 1983 California court ruling.
The survey was prompted after a year of contention between students, employees, and SBCC’s leadership. The nationally-ranked community college suffered lawsuits and protests surrounding Title IX complaints, claims of free-speech infringement over the Pledge of Allegiance, and an administrator using the n-word during a meeting.
Leadership upheaval followed. Former Superintendent/President Dr. Anthony Beebe announced his retirement in February over serious health concerns. In March the Board of Trustees selected Dr. Benjamin, a community college leader with 44 years of experience, as Interim Superintendent/President. She’s set to exit this coming December as the Board reviews 42 applicants for the position, a majority of candidates being outside California, according to Board President Robert Miller.
In an effort to fully understand the employee’s concerns and rebuild trust, SBCC hired the New-Jersey based company Quantisoft to create an “Employee Campus EDI Climate Survey focused on equity, diversity, inclusion and culture.” The online survey was emailed to 2,294 SBCC employees from April 25 through May 15 with 64 questions ranging from diversity and inclusion, college’s response to discrimination and abuse, and employee trust and satisfaction in senior leadership. Approximately 30%, 711 employees, responded to the survey with a total of 588 pages of detailed comments.
The compiled results stated the overall college climate and culture are “unhealthy” and “highly polarized” as well as involving “numerous diversity, equity and inclusion incidents and a perceived degradation of leadership and overall conditions.”
According to the summary, many employees “don’t trust and have little confidence in some senior leaders, some Board of Trustee members, and managers.” A question asking employees if there is a high level of trust between the senior leadership team and employees received the lowest score, just 24% said yes.
At the September 17 Board of Trustees meeting, Quantisoft representative Howard Deutsch discussed the survey’s findings and stated employees don’t believe this survey is anonymous. The survey results echoed this indicating some employees shared their concerns of anonymity in the comment section. Deutsch guaranteed the survey is “100% anonymous” with the company having “no way to figure out who these people are.”
However, Deutsch went on to say there are some ways where it may not be anonymous as some employees named names or specific departments and positions in their comments. “The other thing is some people start talking about themselves and their situation. I’m a mother, I have two children of the following age, I’ve been here X years. Well, there’s probably only one person with that profile… and there are quite a few of the comments that had that type of thing,” he said.
In the meeting, Dr. Benjamin said, “there was some concern among [SBCC] employees on whether or not they would participate because they didn’t feel that it would be anonymous and many other things… We’re pretty impressed with the way people participated. They kinda laid their souls bare and really said what they thought. That was what we wanted people to do just so they felt safe in sharing how they feel […] we promised people that it would be anonymous and not traceable back to them, and I think that was one of the reasons for the high level of participation and for the huge number of comments we received.”
Two SBCC employees, who spoke to edhat on the condition of anonymity, stated they feel exposed and unsafe after sharing their personal experiences. They fear this puts themselves and fellow employees at risk for potential retaliation from administrators, co-workers, students, and/or community members.
They also said it further deepens the mistrust between SBCC leadership and employees when they were repeatedly told everything will be anonymous and confidential, and having their comments made public could easily identify them.
“This latest revelation is just another example of broken trust between campus administrators and faculty/staff. A survey that validated many concerns of the most marginalized on our campus was administered in a way which puts folk who reported harm at further risk. Community colleges are meant to serve and support the community, right now city college is falling short of their mission,” said one employee.
A spokesperson for SBCC confirmed the school has received Public Records Requests for the survey comments.
“At the time the Equity Survey was sent out, there was not an explicit disclaimer that comments could be subject to a Public Records Request. The Public Records Requests are currently under review by legal counsel. A determination on the request is expected later this month,” SBCC said in a comment to edhat.
The SBCC employees feel the school should have adequately informed them ahead of taking the survey and leadership should have known a public records request was a possibility.
“I hope SBCC takes seriously the urgent need for systemic change and accountability at the top levels of the institution. The repeated calls to just ‘move on’ without any semblance of the above suggests that we have a long way to go,” stated an SBCC employee.
Edhat reached out to Howard Deutsch of Quantisoft asking if his company has ever experienced a situation where detailed comments were made public and if there would be any changes to the way their surveys were conducted with that in mind. There was no responses at the time of this publication.
So SBCC and its Board who are well versed in public info requests because its their job, just forgot to mention to their employees this might happen? Who dropped the ball on this one? Feel bad for those trying to better their work environment and this happens.
This reminds me of that episode in The Office where Michael Scott starts reading the anonymous suggestion box and then pinpoints who wrote them and chastises them. [season 2, episode 8.. for the die hard fans]
I agree, if admin made the choice to collect names as part of the survey, that was a huge mistake. The survey should have been collected anonymously in the first place, no names provided at any point, if they promised anonymity to employees.
70% of the employees refused to even participate in the survey. 30% are always unhappy anyway. What did this prove except the vast majority knew not to participate at all. How many tax dollars were wasted on the ill-fated survey and even more now on legal costs defending it?
Factotum – In the board meeting the survey company said the response percentage is normal for public schools based on their experience. He also said he suspects more people didn’t respond because they feared it wasn’t anonymous.
SBCC is not trying to make these comments public. It’s a community member who requested them through public records. We all know there is group in town trying to do everything they can to destroy relationships in SB Unified and SBCC because they are afraid equality means less power and privilege for them. And for the employees who spoke to Edhat to say this is further damaging trust – it’s not SBCC doing the damage. Don’t let the Equality Haters win this round.
Sounds like SBCC employees forget they are public servants, paid by the taxpayers, who are their ultimate bosses. They were writing their responses for public review, even if not identified by name which is appropriate. This internal review is what the public is paying for, so the public has a right to the work product. These public employees are not answerable only to themselves, under their own made up rules or misunderstandings. Time everyone better understands the role of community in our local community college job title. We are partners on the same team. So let’s not demonize community members who want more information about internal studies they as taxpayers paid for.
Someone truly needs to grab the keys back from the loose loonies running about.
All in transparency and full authenticity of course.
I would love to see a complete audit and admin clean up of the entire campus… I would like to see how funding and grants for out of area and non-U.S. citizens is applying with real numbers attached (transparency). There is only room for a left / liberal agenda or doctrine of ideas, which is the exact opposite of the “diversity” they preach…
HEADS UP! Is the community finally willing to listen? SB’s DCC progressive majority controls this town and now SBCC: indoctrinate versus educate, and if you don’t- WHAMO! Fear for your job, reputation, and historic decades long friends. .Some highly dedicated volunteer members of the public have been following and documenting SBCC activities since October, 2018. We have attempted to call community and donor attention to concerns and problems, falling on deaf ears locally for the most part or being attacked, and told to move: @You don’t belong here.” .Personally I started my involvement with SBCC in March 1980, working with others to build the SBCC Foundation organization to take SBCC into the 21st Century as a top-ranked national community college. I co-founded Business & Industry with Attr Alum Mike Schley; the SBCC Theater Group w David Hull and Ursula Henderson MD; The Nursing Program with local non-profit retirement communities. I know SBCC as a great school: my son started math and music there at age 10 and went onto MIT thanks to being ‘prepared’ by exceptional faculty! What has happened at SBCC is tragic, allowed to happen by progressive donors and top-heavy administration. We , the taxpayers supporting high quality educational opportunities, appealed to major donors to listen. We appealed to the public through the media. We captured national media attention hoping locals who support SBCC ‘preparing versus indoctrinating students’ would choose to become informed and demand value, a ROO on their tax dollars. We’ve tried what what we could to make others aware. Volunteers generously attend , speak, document meetings, contact media, prepare video clips. Does the community care enough to get involved? Schools determine the future of our community and country. Thanks EdHat. Signed: Denice Spangler Adams