LAST WEEK, the University Judiciary Committee tried pro-Tibet activist Rich Felker for two violations of the Standards of Conduct that stemmed from his April 5, 2004 protest of Chinese Ambassador Yang Jiechi, who was visiting the University. In Felker's UJC trial, the University saw well-managed procedures that indicate a balanced, working justice system.
Many spectators attended the UJC's first-ever open trial, and most agreed that the panel of five elected judges ran the proceedings with a satisfactory level of professionalism. But the spectacle itself underscores a basic problem for student self-governance: that this type of scrutiny should be the norm at the University, not a novelty. The UJC, which has punitive powers and purports to be working on behalf of the University community, cannot legitimately operate outside that community's review. For the sake of student self-governance and the system's legitimacy, UJC must be held up to the standards of transparency and accountability that apply to other public bodies.
The UJC investigates and tries alleged breaches of the University's Standards of Conduct. Panels of five judges determine both the guilt and the appropriate sanction for the accused student, which can range from oral admonition to expulsion from the University. The UJC operates on the notion that disciplinary action should be in the hands of the students. In practice, however, the Committee operates in secret and provides the University community no mechanism to determine whether it is doing its job.
Felker's trial was the first open one in the UJC's history. The news coverage that the trial generated stands as the only public documentation of the UJC at work, which is no basis to determine how well the Committee is functioning.
As a point of policy, the UJC does not release documentation from its trials. On face, it does this to protect the privacy of the accused (who have a right to request an open trial). Indeed, according to federal law, the accused have the right to privacy; the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (passed by Congress in 1974) establishes students' privacy in the judicial proceedings of an educational community. FERPA, however, does not prohibit all UJC documentation from being released -- it only means that the UJC has to withhold the name, identity and personal information of the accused and could release edited documents from its trials, as the Honor Committee this week decided to do.
This doctrine of secrecy applies even to open trials. Requests to release documents relating to Felker's trial were declined, according to UJC Chair Angela Carrico. Felker, in turn, confirmed in an e-mail that he never asked for any trial documents to remain under wraps. To refuse the release of documents relating to an open trial that many members of the media attended clearly does not constitute protecting the accused. After all, Felker opted for an open trial explicitly to expose his cause, and his name has been broadcast from here to Tibet in connection with the incident on trial.
The University community needs open information so that voters can review the records of its elected judges. All 21 UJC judges gain their posts by election. As elected officials, they need to be held accountable by open and transparent documentation -- a benefit University students cannot enjoy under the UJC's current policies.
UJC judges are elected on the premise that the Committee works for the students. But because UJC documents are uniformly sealed, students have no method of ensuring this happens. When UJC judges run for re-election, the electorate has no information at all on their performance in the past term. It is simply absurd to ask voters to elect officials while giving them no information on these officials' actions in office.
In an e-mail, Carrico explained that judges' voting records are kept sealed "to ensure that the panelists feel comfortable making their decisions and do not endure any form of scrutiny post-trial." While a system without any form of scrutiny sounds comfortable for judges, it sounds corrupt to students. Certainly, the independence of the judiciary is important, but as long as UJC judges are elected, they need to abide by traditional democratic rules of transparency and public scrutiny. If the UJC would function better with highly independent judges, the University community must find a new way to choose them.
Ultimately, students have little reason to respect the UJC if they have no way to ensure that the system works well and its judges have made good decisions in office. Indeed, the UJC's secrecy endangers the legitimacy of that institution and the status of student self-governance in this community. Student self-governance means more than panels of students making important decisions behind closed doors. It means University students controlling their own institutions and setting their own course. Sadly, the UJC's policies of secrecy have hindered these goals. And until the Committee commits itself to openness, transparency and scrutiny, there will be little legitimacy or self-governance in the student judiciary.
Michael Slaven's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at mslaven@cavalierdaily.com.
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