A WSU working group made up of students, faculty and staff will revisit Executive Policy 15 and propose it this fall to allow students and faculty to better understand the regulations of free speech.

The EP 15 working group deals with sexual misconduct, discrimination and harassment, and is under the Campus Culture and Climate initiative.

Judi McDonald, associate dean for the Graduate School program, said they will present the reconstructed policy this fall semester to the faculty senate and the WSU president who will review it.

“It will take about four to six months to be reviewed,” she said. “And will actually be posted next spring.”

Brandon Chapman, director of marketing and communications, said they will make sure the policy will be transparent for students, faculty and staff to allow them to understand their rights.

They are revisiting the policy because many students in the past few years felt unwelcome or discriminated against at WSU. Controversial political stances of individuals within certain student clubs have caused these feelings, Chapman said.

The working groups began to revisit student issues about the proposed wall demonstration, he said.

McDonald said one of the mandates will be to rewrite the passage to make it understandable to different audiences.

The other is to address campus climate issues that surround free speech including free assembly and hate speech, she said.

“The working group for Executive Policy 15 decided it would be beneficial to take the policy and split it,” Chapman said.

The first part of the policy will deal with issues on discrimination and harassment, he said, and the other will deal with sexual misconduct and assault.

Chapman said the two sub-policies will also be split and geared toward students and the other toward faculty and staff.

The split will allow students to know how to properly report issues and allow faculty to know how to handle the issues, he said.

McDonald said they also want to work to define different guidelines for public spaces, like Terrell mall, and classroom settings.

Chapman said they have so many different groups on campus that deal with so many different things.

“We might have a central point on campus for a student to be able to be routed to the right place,” he said.

McDonald said the working group will help make resources accessible to the public after reworking the policy.

“We want to make it clear what the rights and responsibilities are of each group and writing the policy in an effective way,” she said.