The University of Colorado recommended on Thursday that it rescind a policy on committing to the needs of people with disabilities, potential action that a CU Board of Regents committee did not favor.

A subcommittee at the CU system met for about nine months to review Regent Policy 10M entitled the “Commitment to Needs of Persons with Disabilities.” The policy was adopted in 1993 to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

The CU Board of Regents, the elected board that oversees the CU system, met in a committee meeting on Thursday to hear a recommendation to rescind the policy. Despite the recommendation, the regents on the committee agreed they did not want to rescind it.

“I can’t support rescinding this policy without having something else there.” Regent Ilana Spiegel said, adding, “Our job, you’re right, isn’t to be operational it’s to be aspirational and not just focus on compliance and I’m looking forward to some additional feedback and ideas on what this could be replaced with that gets at our commitment to our community of people with disabilities.”

Regent Frank McNulty agreed.

“I think that we should set the bar high on an item like this and I look forward to having other conversations that I think we need to have here,” McNulty said.

This policy change consideration comes after students reported barriers to accessing disability accommodations last fall and this fall on the Boulder campus.

The recommendation to rescind the policy was made because of certain efforts that effectively replace the policy, according to the policy change memo.

“We are not lessening that commitment (to people with disabilities) with this recommendation, and that was huge with respect to both the subcommittee and the committee is making sure our community knows what efforts we have. … We really feel like the things that are happening now really do further the commitment to those with disabilities,” said Valerie Simons, CU system vice president of compliance and equity system Title IX coordinator.

One of those efforts is that each campus has created separate offices and maintained staff to ensure compliance with the ADA and civil rights laws, including campus Disability Services and ADA Coordinators.

“One of the things that we did, in the discussions, was talk about how using comprehensive ways to support our disabled community so that if we chose to rescind 10M it didn’t look like we were lessening our support for that community,” CU System Vice President and Senior Diversity Officer Judi Díaz Bonacquisti said. “And I think the community and the committee Valerie put together worked really hard to develop these policies and find operational ways to ensure commitment on the campuses.”

Other replacement efforts the recommendation to rescind cites is Regent Policy 10A on “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” a nondiscrimination policy and a digital accessibility policy that includes people with disabilities. It also mentions new employee training on digital accessibility, new emphasis and communication of university diversity reports, campus and workplace culture surveys and a new emphasis on including diversity metrics and goals in next system strategic plan.Regent Lesley Smith said the topic needs more discussion.

“The regent laws and policies are at the very top and all the other policies for campuses trickle down from our policies,” she said. “So I think even though it’s in law and everybody’s complying and we’re working hard to work with people with disabilities, I really feel like it does need to be at that top level.”

The matter will be discussed further at the next governance committee meeting in January.

Members of the public can provide feedback on policies under review at cu.edu/regents/rlpreview. To view the original policy and written recommendation to rescind, visit cu.diligent.community/Portal/MeetingInformation.aspx?Org=Cal&Id=521.