America’s longest-operating Office of the Ombudsman turns 40

Contact: Stanley Soffin, Office of the Ombudsman: 517-353-8830, soffin@msu.edu; or Ike Val Iyioke, University Relations: (517) 432-0924, cell (517) 281-4236, ike@msu.edu

Sept. 19, 2007

EAST LANSING, Mich. — “That professor is out to get me.”

Michigan State University Ombudsman Stanley Soffin’s job is to hear and pay attention to complaints such as this from students. His office listens to students vent their feelings, something they have been doing on campus for the last 40 years, making his the longest continually operating ombudsman office at a college or university in the country.

Appointed by MSU’s president, the ombudsman is a senior faculty member whose job it is to help students resolve problems within the university in an informal, independent, confidential and neutral manner.

“We serve far more students than any other group, including faculty, staff, alumni and parents,” said Soffin, former director of MSU’s School of Journalism and professor of journalism. “While the AFR (Academic Freedom Report) specifically charges us, among other things, to receive requests, complaints and grievances of students – in the past 10 years, we have had an increasing number of contacts with instructors and administrators.”

A student’s academic life has never been without challenges. In addressing those challenges, theombudsman’s approach has both maintained tradition and also applied some changes to reflect the changing times.

“The fundamental standards of practice for this office – confidentiality, neutrality, independence and informality – were established by James Rust, the university’s first ombudsman and honed by his successors,” Soffin said. “Also, we have used essentially the same coding system to track cases that Dr. Rust developed during his first few years on the job.”

What has changed, however, is students’ use of e-mail to contact the office. This has substantially altered the way the office conducts business.

“During the 2006-07 reporting period (mid-May to mid-May), we recorded 1,720 contacts – a record number. Many of those contacts resulted in multiple phone calls, visits or e-mail exchanges before the cases were resolved,” according to Soffin.

About 20 percent of all contacts in the past reporting period were from faculty members, and parents represent about 6 percent of all contacts with the office, he said.

“We are happy to answer parents’ questions and explain specific MSU policies that might be at issue, but we do not divulge any specific information about their sons or daughters without the student’s permission,” Soffin noted.

“However, we still ask students who present more complicated cases to meet with us. Also, the Internet has allowed us to develop a Web site that addresses a variety of issues for students, faculty and staff.

“Finally, our new electronic database allows students to file complaints or questions online and allows us to respond to their concerns while capturing all sorts of data about student, faculty and staff issues. That data helps us recommend changes in university policies,” Soffin said.

The idea to create the ombudsman office was born in 1965, when the Committee for Student Rights distributed a four-page newsletter called Logos in the residence halls without permission. The events that followed eventually led former MSU President John Hannah and the university governance system to create the document, “Academic Freedom Report for Students at Michigan State University.”

The AFR went into effect in fall of 1967, an exceptionally volatile time on campuses across the nation. To ensure that the student rights set down in the AFR were not overlooked, the AFR included a section that created the MSU Office of the Ombudsman.

Although, Eastern Montana College in Billings (now the University of Montana, Billings) opened the first college ombudsman’s office in 1966, one year before the MSU office opened, it has since closed.

As the office turns 40, Soffin likes to think that MSU’s collective goal should be to establish a campus culture that doesn’t need an ombudsman’s office. Soffin has been the university’s ombudsman since 1998.

For more information, visit www.msu.edu/unit/ombud.

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