In the coming months, the University will be focusing on the results of the recent sexual assault climate survey, energy efficiency initiatives and changes to public safety procedures, Interim University President Lisa Lynch announced at Friday’s faculty meeting.

Lynch began her president’s report by discussing the sexual assault climate survey and its results, mentioning the Town Hall meeting about the survey that took place the previous night. Lynch noted that there will be another town hall on sexual assault at the beginning of November and told the faculty that these actions are “just the beginning. … This is a continuation of a lot of work and resources that have addressed this issue over the last few years.”

Lynch also discussed how representative the survey is of the whole undergraduate population, as only 34 percent of students responded. She noted that the administration is unsure of whether students who have been assaulted will be more or less likely to respond to the survey.

Of the 34 percent who responded, Lynch said, “over 200 of those respondents reported that they were sexually assaulted. Over fifty of those respondents said they were raped.” Additionally, 45 percent of students who said they were assaulted said that they have not shared that information with anyone, she added.

“We have a lot of people carrying that burden all by themselves,” Lynch told the faculty. “We’re Brandeis. We have to do better.”

Lynch also touched on the University’s divestment and energy initiatives, noting that sustainability as a whole is “such an important issue,” and the University’s next president “needs to take up this issue.”

“One of the categories that will receive higher priority … for funding will be proposals that advance our pedagogy and teaching about climate change and our research on the science, so that we’re informing the public discourse on that.”

She also stated that she will be formally announcing the establishment of a president’s task force on sustainability with respect to greenhouse gasses later this week.

In 2009, Lynch noted, former University President Jehuda Reinharz announced initiatives to make the University “carbon neutral by 2050 and to reduce greenhouse gasses by 15% by 2015, using 2008 as a base year. Well, we’re … mighty close to the end of 2015, and we are now consuming 1% more greenhouse gases than we were in our base year.”

“There were a lot of other schools that announced this commitment [around the same time], and we’re an outlier in a bad way,” she added. “Quite frankly, I think a serious discussion … with respect to divestment, will require us to show our own ability to step up and take action on this front.”

She noted that the new task force would make recommendations by January and would also address the issues of overheating buildings in the winter and overcooling them in the summer.

Interim Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Irving Epstein then delivered his Provost’s report, touching briefly on his meetings with the integrated budget and planning committee and their discussions about how to do business more effectively at the University.

He also noted that he has seen presentations from Vice Provost, Chief Information Officer and University Librarian John Unsworth, Senior Vice President for Finance and Treasurer Marianna Cwalina and Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel.

Epstein also said that the Diversity Steering Committee has discussed “a couple of upcoming conferences and set an agenda for the coming year, breaking things up into five areas: discussion of the proposed position of a vice president or vice provost for diversity and inclusion, issues on staff hiring, faculty hiring, programing for the year and curriculum.”

He also added that he has been setting up a series of lunches with junior faculty members to get to know them and to get “a different view of what faculty life is like in the trenches.” He concluded his Provost’s report by congratulating faculty members and departments that have recently received awards, grants or honors.

Lynch then addressed the faculty again, noting that there had been two campus shootings on Friday at Northern Arizona University and Texas Southern University. She used this news as a segue into a brief discussion on increased campus safety procedures, mentioning specifically the recently updated emergency notification system, BENS, which she said is “so important. …If, God forbid, we have a situation where we have a campus lockdown, I want everyone to know what’s going on as soon as possible.”

Senate Chair Prof. Susan Curnan (Heller), then gave a brief PowerPoint introducing the faculty to their representatives and discussing ongoing initiatives, including revisiting the no-tipping policy at the Faculty Club and investigating the possibility of offering part-time faculty members low-interest faculty loans.

The faculty then transitioned into a discussion of ongoing faculty unionization efforts. Lynch described the process of voting on unionization that faculty members could expect to see in the coming months and noted that the University has not yet received a petition for voting from the Service Employees International Union Local 509, the group leading the unionization efforts on camps.

Curnan stated that unionization is “not a hypothetical issue … it’s a fast moving train,” adding that she expects the SEIU to file a petition for a vote sometime this semester.

After a brief discussion about unionization efforts at similar universities, the meeting transitioned to a presentation from Flagel on student enrollment trends from 2007 to 2015. According to his presentation, the overall number of students enrolled at the University has risen from 5,333 in 2007 to 5,764 in 2015. In terms of undergraduate population, enrollment has risen from 3,233 to 3,627.

According to the presentation, the University received 10,528 undergraduate applications last year, admitting 3,591 applicants, or roughly 34.11 percent, as compared to 2,886 acceptances out of 6,766 applications—42.65 percent—in 2009. Flagel noted that these figures are “keeping us on track in relation to our peers,” as universities are having to admit more students in order to get the right yield rate.

Flagel also noted that the University’s accepted SAT and ACT range has stayed consistent, and, in its second cycle of the test optional policy — a policy that allows applicants to submit AP or IB scores or a graded portfolio in place of SAT or ACT scores — the University has seen a rise in the number of underrepresented minority applicants who choose to forego submitting SAT or ACT scores. Specifically, Flagel noted, 35 percent of the test-optional applicant pool were underrepresented minorities, while only 12 percent of the regular applicant pool were underrepresented minorities.

Associate Provost for Academic Affairs Kim Godsoe then gave a brief presentation on the Faculty Work Life survey, which went out to 626 University faculty members in November of 2014, according to the Brandeis website. Godsoe noted that 80 percent of respondents noted that they were satisfied working at the University, yet 56.3 percent said their workload was too heavy. Still, Godsoe noted, the area of greatest satisfaction among faculty members was the equality of the undergraduate students.