The 2008-09 Honor Committee released statistics last week about the demographics of cases reviewed during its term. Although the data dealt specifically with cases reported, accused and brought to trial, the information also lends itself to several discussions about some students’ concerns pertaining to the University’s honor system and diversity.
Reporting
One of the most obvious areas of interest within the statistics were the numbers that dealt specifically with reporting. According to the statistics, a total of 64 cases were brought before the past Committee. Of these cases, 27 reports were brought against white students, 21 against black students, 11 against Asian and/or Asian-American students, four against Latinos and four against students of unknown race.
“When I saw [the statistics], I was a little bit surprised at the disproportionate number of minority students reported compared to [white] students,” said Vice Chair for Investigations Mary Siegel, a third-year College student.
“Looking at these numbers, there are almost as many [black] students reported as [white] students, which is not at all proportional [to the actual number of students enrolled at the University],” Siegel said.
These concerns with respect to reporting extend beyond just Committee members, however.
“In terms of data collection, I can’t help but be startled by the discrepancy,” African-American Affairs Dean Maurice Apprey said.
Another alleged discrepancy is the ratio of cases brought against males to those brought against females. The statistics show that 48 males were reported of committing an honor offense, whereas only 18 females were reported.
Some members of the University attribute such statistical discrepancies to spotlighting, which is when certain minorities — such as blacks, athletes and Asians — are reported at a much higher rate than white students for reasons like standing out in the room more, as well as some reporters’ inherent biases.
“From a psychology point of view, sometimes you are going to look at what’s different in the room,” said Black Student Alliance President-elect Lauren Boswell, a third-year Architecture student.
Siegel said she hopes to help explore the reasons behind allegedly biased reporting by speaking to reporters more frequently than the current system allows.
“I think the first place we have to start is reporters and ask them why they suspected this person of an the Committee offense,” Siegel said. “If there seems to be a pattern, then the Committee can try and correct that pattern.”
Currently reporters of an alleged honor offense are involved in the first interview during the investigations process and then during a rebuttal, but are removed from the investigations process, Siegel said. Removing the reporter from the process ensures that his or her bias does not play a part in investigations, Siegel added, but does not ensure that there are not any biased motivations behind the initial report.
Accusations and Trials
After students are reported of having committed an alleged honor offense, the case is taken up by the Investigative Panel, which is comprised of three rotating Committee members, and examined to see if an honor offense occurred. If the panel believes an offense occurred, the student is formally accused and is brought to trial.
According to the statistics excluding last weekend’s trials, 35 students were formally accused of committing an honor offense by the I-Panel, 13 of whom were black. Twelve white students were accused and 10 Asian and/or Asian-American students also were brought to trial. A total of 29 trials, including last weekend’s trials, occurred during the past Committee’s term. Of the 11 white students brought to trial, six were found not guilty, whereas 14 of the 19 black students brought to trial were found not guilty. A total of 32 males, meanwhile, were brought to trial, nine of whom were found guilty. Comparatively, four of the 11 female students brought to trial were found guilty.
After looking at the statistics, several Committee members said they believe that any bias present in the beginning of the honor trial process is lost during the process.
“Once a case comes into the system ... these students are being found guilty at the same rate” regardless of race, 2007-08 Committee Chair Jess Huang said.
Fourth-year College student Carlos Oronce, co-chair of the Minority Rights Coalition, disagreed, however.
“I challenge the notion that students of different color are on par with white students” after trials, Oronce said, noting that though Committee members have told him a “balance” eventually exists, his own data analysis yields different conclusions. He explained that his conclusions are based on a study done six years ago; the Committee has yet to do a similar study since.
“You’ll see that there’s something like a 6 percent difference in guilt rate between [white] students and black students,” Oronce said. “Six percent comes off to me as a huge difference.”
Oronce added that he believes that a more formal study needs to be done to accurately see and analyze the alleged disparities. Siegel also said she believes the Committee “needs to look at ways to correct these imbalances” regardless of whether the imbalances come into play during the actual investigation and trial process.
Representation, Recruitment and Retention
Several members of the University community also have expressed concern about representation within the actual Committee itself in regards to diversity.
“I think if you look at the Committee and support officer pools, they are admittedly not very diverse,” said Committee Chair David Truetzel, a third-year Commerce student. La Alianza Chair Carolina Ferrerosa, a fourth-year College student, agreed, noting that one of her organization’s major concerns is increasing diversity within the Committee.
“We would like to see more of a push” to get more minority representatives on the Committee, and make sure that “the Committee is realistic when it looks in the mirror,” Ferrerosa said.
Members and non-members alike hope that by increasing minority representation within the Committee, other diversity issues can be addressed, like increasing outreach and personal relationships between minority contracted independent organizations and the Committee.
Vice Chair for Education Rob Atkinson, a third-year College student, said he already has had several meetings aimed at improving education efforts with some of these groups. He added that he feels it is important to create a personal relationship between these groups and the Committee before more formal relationships can be developed.
“We want to take into account the concerns or views of the different communities when we reach out to those communities,” Atkinson said. Reaching out to these groups, Truetzel added, will help ensure that all students feel like the system belongs to them, no matter their race or gender.
“When you lack diversity ... you don’t have diversity of thought, diversity of ideas,” Truetzel said.
Apprey, meanwhile, agreed that increasing minority representation on the Committee could lead to “healthy conversation, healthy debates” and could help promote “further cultural competence” and understanding.
To help increase representation, the Committee has taken steps to improve recruitment and students attracted to joining the Committee. BSA President-elect Boswell noted that the Committee has made an effort to help promote recruitment among the black student community, holding two honor education classes during both the fall and spring semesters this academic year that encouraged members of the black community to join the Committee.
Boswell said that first-year students in the black community often are approached by a lot of different programs focused on black students their first semester to create “a sense of family and place here” at the University. It is therefore sometimes difficult, however, to attract first-year students that are minorities within the Committee and other organizations during their first semesters, Boswell said.
By holding an education class during the spring, Boswell said, the Committee “got outstanding turnout for minorities.”
The Committee and BSA also held a study hall that discussed both the Committee and UJC. Although Boswell said she thought it was a success, she hopes in the future that it will become more “casual” so that students will feel comfortable enough to have personal conversations.
Despite these efforts, there are still many things the Committee can do to encourage minorities to participate in the honor system, Boswell said. Even though the Committee attends The Source, the black community’s activities fair, Boswell said she does not know if it is “the most effective way” to help recruitment.
Oronce said consistent outreach efforts to these different communities, rather than just right before elections or the beginning of the year, could prove helpful for recruitment or maintaining relationships.
In addition to issues of recruitment and representation, Oronce said that many minority students end up quitting the Committee because they feel uncomfortable and marginalized. Boswell added that officer pool meetings can be isolating as students generally sit with their friends. Though she said this might be found in any organization, she also noted that it is imperative that the Committee makes sure every minority student feels comfortable and included if they wish to maintain diversity.
“This past year, there has been a move towards getting a group that is more representative,” Huang said.
Oronce also said he believes that “this year is definitely a lot better than last year” in terms of representation within both the Committee and the support officer pool, but that there is still room for improvement.
“Once we fix our problems internally, we will be in a better place to discuss” some of these other issues of diversity and the Committee, Siegel added.
FAC and DAB
The Committee’s educational outreach efforts are not limited to students. Within the Committee, the Faculty Advisory Committee and the Diversity Advisory Board were created to help address issues with faculty members and diversity organizations. The FAC chair meets with faculty members once a month to discuss faculty concerns and teach aspects of honor, while the DAB works with Honor to increase Honor relevancy and understanding with diverse groups.
A majority of the Committee offense reports currently come from faculty members instead of students, Siegel said. As a result, faculty outreach and education have become increasingly important.
“Something that we’re going to have to work really hard [on] is getting faculty to realize there is an inherent problem of spotlighting,” Siegel said. “If we get them to realize this is an issue, then that’s a great place to start.”
Apprey, who is a psychiatric medicine professor as well, said he believes certain steps can be taken by professors and faculty members to help reduce honor offenses.
“Given that the overwhelming proportion of cases are about plagiarism, I think that faculty in the first couple of years should find a way to teach at least three methods of citations,” Apprey said. In addition, Apprey suggested that professors emphasize multiple citations.
While the FAC can help reach out and educate faculty members to help address some of these issues, DAB has the potential to reach out to minority CIOs and hear input from organization members.
“I think DAB has some really great people who are willing to change and are working towards change,” Boswell said, adding that although she believes there are some negative diversity stereotypes associated with the Committee, these concerns should not consequently be transferred onto DAB.
Oronce, however, said DAB and other minority-related initiatives implemented by the Committee can often times become “compartmentalized.”
“They don’t make it so it’s an issue everyone worries about,” Oronce said. A Committee member is assigned to these groups and acts as a liason between the Committee and the group, reporting back to the Committee after group meetings. Oronce said, however, that the system forces participation and there is no longer a “genuine interest to participate in these groups.” He added that the MRC leaders were not contacted for their input about various initiatives from the DAB.
Although Oronce said he was disappointed in DAB’s performance last year, he believes that as someone who has sat on DAB for the past two years, there remains a chance for improvement and reform.
Other Concerns
While the above concerns constitute many of the most significant and widely discussed concerns about diversity and the Committee, other concerns exist.
Some University community members said the single-sanction system holds greater consequences for minority students than for the rest of the University community.
“Given that it’s a single-sanction system, all of these questions have to be interrogated more fully,” Apprey said, because it makes the consequences of biased reporting, investigations and possible trials that much more significant.
Single sanction also severely affects international students, Ferrerosa said, noting that deportation as a result of the Committee offenses is a primary concern.
Ferrerosa said suspension would be a better option, as the student could then “serve their time” and come back to the University at a later point in time.
Currently, there is “not a general conversation” within the Committee as to whether suspension and a multi-sanction system would be better, Ferrerosa said, but said she believes that there should be.
“People in those communities don’t support the single sanction,” Oronce said in regards to committees within the MRC. This anti-single sanction sentiment then has a negative effect on jury selection, which Oronce said he believes is biased as well. If a student is chosen for jury duty and is against single sanction, it is more unlikely that he or she will be asked to participate in helping adjudicate a case, Oronce said. This means that the jury evaluating a minority student’s case is less likely composed of representative or similar students as the defendant, Oronce said, a fact which may compromise a student’s right to a fair trial.
Oronce also added that because many of these communities are so small and close-knit, it is difficult to find members that do not have conflicts of interest to participate on these juries. He hopes that the results of compiling data on jury panels, which the Committee has said it will begin, will explore whether juries are truly biased or not.
Beyond The Committee
Many Committee members also are concerned that some of prejudices that manifest themselves within the Committee are simply part of the outside world, and thus much more difficult to solve by the Committee.
“While there are definitely concerns with regards to certain minority groups ... a lot of the problems we see, we also see in regards to the entire student body,” Atkinson said.
Apprey pointed out that for many students, college may be the first time some students engage with peoples of different races. Consequently, students must think outside of their comfort zones and “cross-class, cross-ethic, cross-gender” to “correct, overturn or retain” the system, Apprey said.
Though the need to address these issues may exist outside the Committee’s constitutional responsibilities, Atkinson said that “even if it something isn’t within the structural bounds of the Committee, they concern the Community of Trust” and thus the Committee as well.
A lot of these issues are brought up because of the Committee, Huang said, but they would exist regardless of whether the Committee existed.
“We can’t just sit around and say these are so abstract we shouldn’t deal with them,” Huang added. “They are absolutely worth pursuing and working with.”
Plans for the Future
“I really think that the Honor system exists for the [University] community, but our statistics have shown ... that minority communities feel like they are not a part of that community,” Huang said.
As such, several University community members believe something must be done to right the current situation.
There must be full participation by all students in the system, Apprey said. “If you don’t like the system, then you must participate in it,” he said, adding that he believes all students have an “ethic of responsibility” to participate in the system, especially if they feel that improvements are needed.
Boswell also noted that though there are concerns about diversity and the Committee among black students, BSA and the Committee have a good relationship with one another, which she hopes to continue and support.
Ferrerosa also said it is important for the Committee to continue educating the University community about the honor system, what it can do for students and to target groups that have felt misrepresented or underrepresented in the past.
“A lot of these communities feel like the Committee will talk at us but not engage in these difficult issues,” Ferrerosa said, adding that she hopes education and outreach can help address this problem.
Oronce said he thinks it is imperative to create long-term goals with short-term benchmarks to solve the issues, rather than attempting to resolve these issues with each new Committee.
“The Committee is only thinking one year,” Oronce said. “They’re not thinking three years or five years.”
These current issues and initiatives are understood by the Committee to be ongoing developments, however, Huang said.
“Yes, it can be discouraging at times to see that there isn’t immediate progress, but I think that the Committee and the minority community and the overall community shouldn’t be discouraged,” Huang said.
Truetzel, meanwhile, said he hopes the current Committee will continue to meet with minority and diversity groups on Grounds and engage in constructive dialogue and cooperation, so that at least some of the most talked about concerns can be resolved with time.
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