No Background Checks Slated Despite Arrests

University police arrested two CDS employees on felony charges in the past two weeks.

Aramark Corp., a service management company and the food service provider for UNC-Chapel Hill, hires all CDS employees without running background checks, said UNC and Aramark officials.

But several other schools with Aramark contracts, including East Carolina University and Duke University, have required the company by contract to run background checks on all employees it hires to work at the university.

Ira Simon, CDS administrator, said UNC-CH has never requested that Aramark do background checks because of its confidence in Aramark's standard hiring procedure.

"Aramark is a very reputable company," he said. "Part of the reason we selected them was that they had success at their other universities."

Simon said that because UNC-CH did not specifically ask Aramark to conduct background checks when the 10-year contract was signed in May, the corporation is under no obligation to do so.

And Simon said he still trusts the quality of Aramark's human resource department despite the arrests. "I thought they handled it as efficiently and effectively as they could have," he said. "I honestly think Aramark is very conscientious about their hiring practices."

But officials at other schools with Aramark contracts are more adamant about the necessity of background checks.

"All applicants have to survive a background check in order to work in any department on our campus," said Jim Wulforst, the director of dining services at Duke. "You have to protect the living environment of the faculty and students. It's always been a regular practice and something we're very picky about."

Jim Mullen, director of employment services at ECU, said his school instituted a policy last December that also requires background checks for all ECU employees, including dining service employees hired by Aramark.

Mullen said ECU used to run background checks only for certain "sensitive" positions that had direct contact with students, a hiring policy similar to the one UNC-CH currently uses. "We didn't want to single out any group, so we expanded the checks to everyone, and it has worked out well," Mullen said.

All UNC-CH Aramark officials declined to comment on the matter.

But Aramark officials at UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Wilmington both said, like UNC-CH, their schools do not require them to run background checks.

"We work with universities very closely, and they did not stipulate a need for background checks," said J.P. Fesperman, who serves as the assistant food director at UNC-W.

Sam Zamrick, Food Services director for UNC-G, said background checks are not needed at UNC-G because Aramark has been the food service provider at the school for 38 years and mostly has long-term employees.

But he added that for a school such as UNC-CH, which hired Aramark last spring, it might be important to do background checks until the company is established. "Depending on your situation and location, criminal checks could be appropriate for a school," Zamrick said. "You're going to have a lot of staff turnover in the beginning."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.