JIO Blum won't sign UA pledge

Says would be 'premature' Steven Blum, the University's new Judicial Inquiry Officer, indicated Tuesday night that he will not sign an Undergraduate Assembly resolution asking him to pledge to uphold First Amendment rights. "To sign anything or to commit to anything like [the resolution] is terribly premature for me," said Blum, who had not seen or heard of the resolution prior to the interview. "But I'm excited because it sounds like [the University is] a community full of people who are excited about issues and full ideas, and I want to join you all in that." The resolution, sponsored by UA member Dan Schorr's First Amendment Task Force, was passed by the UA Monday and sent to Blum, who is currently the undergraduate judicial affairs officer at Dartmouth College. Blum said he wants to meet with all University groups concerned about the judicial process. "I look forward to meeting [student groups] and sharing their concerns and some of mine," he said. "I am truly very excited and quite anxious about getting to Penn. My first month will be one of my getting to know Penn and of my getting Penn to know me." Schorr has said he wants Blum to sign the resolution prior to his arrival on campus October 13. Some UA members have threatened to take action against Blum, possibly including picketing his office, if he does not sign the pledge. Blum said he could not comment further on the pledge without seeing it. At the University, Blum said he hopes he will be able to ease campus tensions. "The JIO position seems like a very challenging one in which I sincerely hope and believe my experience can bring about some positive results by making disciplinary procedures at Penn less confrontational and less adversarial," he said. Blum received a specialization in negotiation and dispute resolution from Harvard University Law School in 1989 and has been moonlighting as a divorce, family and small business mediator in Hanover, N.H. He would like to do similar mediation here in Philadelphia and teach two courses at the University on negotiation and conflict resolution. The new JIO gave little indication as to what kind of judicial officer he will be once he arrives at the University. He refused to say how he would have handled recent controversial University cases, including the "water buffalo" case and the "DP" case. Blum said he had "heard some vague stories" about those events which received widespread national media attention last spring. He would not answer a question about what role he thinks the First Amendment should take in University judicial systems. Blum's position on speech codes also remains a mystery. "I'm not going to answer to [speech code questions] just yet," he said. "I will say Dartmouth doesn't have [a speech code], but each community needs to have community-specific rules." "Some [speech codes] may be good ones and some may call for more examination," he said. "I am aware of court decisions addressing speech codes at public Universities and have read those decisions, but I need to look into what laws govern private Universities." Blum also said he was "not prepared to answer" questions about what balance should be struck between privacy and the community's right to know in University judicial proceedings. Blum was clearer in his thoughts about why universities need their own judicial systems. "The university has a set of rules which as a community of learners and teachers it feels are necessary for the university to do its job," he said. "The purpose of the university judicial system is to deal with a violation of these rules. It is like a family with its own internal rules, quite separate from municipal, state, or federal rules." Soon after Blum started working at Dartmouth in 1990, the school's judicial system received national scrutiny after a student was suspended for alleged sexual harassment even though there was never any attempt to charge him criminally with the offense. Blum said he had no role in the case, but did learn from observing events at Dartmouth. "That case had begun before I got here," he said. "But [it] gave me an opportunity to see that when the national media decides to examine a disciplinary case on a college campus, it is very easy for them to stray very far from the actual events and from the actual motivations of people involved." The hardest cases for Blum at Dartmouth involve inter-group conflicts because "frequently the appropriate sanction for the behavior involved will not satisfactorily meet the larger goals of the groups involved." Blum graduated from Wesleyan University in 1981 and received his law degree from Northeastern University in 1984. He has a degree in education from Harvard University as well as the specialization in negotiation and dispute resolution from Harvard. Blum worked in various non-academic legal positions before coming to Dartmouth in 1990.