This summer, the College hired EthicsPoint, a regulatory compliance company, to run its compliance and ethics hotline, which allows community members to anonymously report violations of College policy as well as state and national laws. Program administrators said they hope the hotline will allow for people to report issues without fear of being identified.
Kate Lark, director of Dartmouth’s risk and internal control services offices, which operates the hotline, explained that anyone, including those unaffiliated with the College, can call in tips. The College provides several categories that it believes most complaints fall into to guide those reporting — academic and research misconduct, discrimination and harassment, sexual assault and abuse and hazing.
When a report is made, the data from the report is sent to EthicsPoint, which uses its software to contextualize the report within all other reports it receives from Dartmouth. It then provides the details of the report to Dartmouth’s Office of Risk and Internal Controls Services.
Administrators then determine whether the report provides significant basis to move forward with an investigation. If it does, they will contact an internal organization at the College that they believe could most effectively adjudicate or address the issue. If the complaint is serious enough, the office may contact Hanover Police or other larger law enforcement bodies.
The office operated a similar hotline, called the Business Ethics Helpline, starting in the early 2000s, Lark said.
Similar to the compliance and ethics hotline, it was a resource that anyone, inside or outside of the Dartmouth community, could use to file complaints via phone or email, both of which were handled directly by the Office, without use of an intermediary like EthicsPoint.
Lark explained that Dartmouth renamed the hotline and hired EthicsPoint because they wanted to encourage broader use of the service and to reduce the office’s workload.
“When we called it ‘Business Ethics’ it gave the connotation that it was only business that we were concerned about, and we weren’t,” said Lark. “It was really supposed to be very open.”
In choosing EthicsPoint, Dartmouth joined its Ivy League peers Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University, all of which have existing contracts with the company.
Benjamin Evans, director of the office of Risk Management and Insurance at Penn, which runs a hotline called P-Comply, said his office chose EthicsPoint because the company simplifies the complaint process.
“I think the access to individuals, whether internal or external, and the response back to folks creates an efficiency that otherwise would not be there,” he said.
Despite the hotline’s convenience and broad utility, those involved with its creation cautioned that it has limitations, and should not be seen as a core component of ethics programs at Dartmouth.
Aine Donovan, director of the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth, said she believes the ethics hotline should not be seen as the first step in conflict resolution.
“The anonymous hotline is simply a mechanism to be used as a last resort,” she said. “It should be rarely used.”
Lark said the hotline does not intend to take precedence over other campus resources.
“We don’t mean for the hotline to take over other resources, or to be the primary resource — our preference is actually to use the resources that are already out there,” she said. “It really is there if you don’t know how to handle the concern you have or if you don’t believe it’s being handled someplace else.”
Donovan said Dartmouth should emphasize transparency.
“An ethical environment in any organization should have free flow of information — if someone has a question about [misconduct], they shouldn’t feel that they have to run right to an anonymous hotline,” she said.
In addition to the hotline, Dartmouth has structures in place to create an ethical environment on campus.
“At Dartmouth, we do have an overall ethics program,” Donovan said. “We do ethics education, there’s ethics leadership, and the management is constantly thinking about these issues.”
When asked if EthicsPoint was contracted as a response to the death threats leveled at Dimensions protesters in April, Lark said there was no connection between the two events.
“We made the request for proposal before any of that happened,” she said.
