‘Investigations henceforth vetted by independent party’

The Executive Board has agreed to consult a ‘third party’ before commissioning any investigations by external agencies. The Board has announced this in a letter that goes into thirteen questions submitted by the University Council in response to the forensic investigation of ESHCC staff members’ e-mail correspondence. One of the proposals submitted by the Council is the establishment of an independent body to greenlight such measures. The precise form and composition of this ‘third party’ is still to be determined at the time of writing.

In its letter, the Executive Board furthermore promises to consider the actual need for future investigations ‘even more carefully’. “Fortunately, these situations don’t arise very often and if it’s up to us, we wish to avoid [the need for such an investigation] in the future. We hope that this remains an exceptional circumstance, although we naturally can’t offer any guarantees, since we don’t know what the future will bring. As we stated earlier, we will ponder such decisions even more carefully in the future, giving due consideration to the lessons learned in the recent past,” writes EUR rector Rutger Engels in his letter to the Council.

Regulations to be adapted

In addition to setting up an independent committee, the Council has also asked the university to include criteria in its IT regulations that need to be met before engaging a third party investigator like Hoffmann Bedrijfsrecherche. The Executive Board has also promised to take this step.

Finally, the Executive Board has adopted the Council’s suggestion to organise public debates about social safety at the university. “We have discussed this matter with the Diversity & Inclusion team and Human Resources. They will be submitting a proposal regarding how best to organise these debates. Naturally, the University Council is welcome to share its views on the matter. The subject of ‘the third-party investigation at ESHCC’ will be included in the debate programme,” writes Engels.