The Board of Visitors’ Committee on Audit and Compliance discussed heightened security measures at commencement May 12 as well as the auditor of public accounts’ presentation at the Thursday morning meeting at the College of William and Mary.
Vice President for Administration Anna Martin told the committee that there would be heightened security at this year’s commencement ceremony.
“There are questions … after what happened in Boston, about what are universities going to do for commencement exercises and those sorts of things, and because of the speaker this year, we’ll have an increased presence around William and Mary Hall,” Martin said. “We’ll have bomb detection dogs, explosive technicians and explosive device container trailers around.”
She added that there will be multiple security sweeps of the interior building and that audience members will not be allowed to bring backpacks into the ceremony.
Auditor of Public Accounts Laurie Hicks also delivered her report to the committee, noting a lack of unusual transactions and accounting fallacies during the audit period. However, she emphasized that the work could move away from manual auditing to further reduce possible errors.
“We found that the process of reporting should be more automated to lower the risk of errors and that type of thing,” Hicks said. “We’d like it to be more in line with what William and Mary does, and one of our recommendations is more collaborations as well, to make sure William and Mary is getting accurate data and complete data for their financial report.”
Hicks added that there were no major errors during the audit period.
Following the committee’s closed session, Director of Internal Audit Michael Stump presented several ongoing auditing projects, one of which is an analysis of the effects of the Board’s policies at the College.
“It is simply a look-see at resolutions passed by the board that may have policy implications for the institution, and are we doing those things?” Stump said. “In other words, ensuring that the resolutions of the board that became policy actually have effect.”
The committee also reviewed several other ongoing projects. Compliance and Policy Officer Kiersten Boyce discussed two recently completed initiatives that dealt with discrimination compliance and the deterrence of sexual misconduct.
“Of course, these issues never go away, so it’s not something we can check off and say are absolutely done, but we’ve made some real progress on both of them,” Boyce said.
In terms of upcoming projects, Boyce outlined a new initiative to enhance awareness of rules, policies and laws related to conflict of interest.
She explained that College employees will review these statutes annually and that a review will be part of the process involved in network authentication. New employees will also go over the rules during their orientation to the College.
After Martin’s report, the committee entered executive session and adjourned.