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Honor to have biweekly working groups

Committee seeks to improve member participation, Behrle says

After a few minutes of discussion Sunday night, the Honor Committee voted unanimously to change its meeting schedule to better engage Committee members in discussion about key projects. The vote reflects an internal Committee change, rather than a bylaw reform.

Starting next week, the Committee will meet as a whole every other week and meet in working groups during intervening weeks. The decision to propose the change came out of Honor Executive Committee discussions at the end of last semester.

“[The working groups] could be fluid,” said Committee Chair Evan Behrle, a fourth-year College student. “Mostly just have it be small discussions, just as a way to kind of make it more interactive.”

Behrle said the Committee got the idea for working groups from reforms Student Council put in place last February to increase member participation. In a Cavalier Daily article in October, Vice President for Organizations Neil Branch, a fourth-year Batten student, said Student Council’s changes made meetings more engaging.

“You get greater discussion when it’s a closer group of five or six individuals versus a large room of 20 or 25, which makes [the meeting] more like a lecture,” Branch said.

Committee representative Madison Busch, a second-year Batten student, wanted to make sure community members still felt welcome at meetings, and Vice-Chair for Investigations Andi Chernau, a fourth-year Education student, said she wanted to engage Committee support officers in certain working group conversations.

Behrle said working group sessions would still be open to the public, and other Committee members thought working groups could allow the Committee to engage members of the public more directly and intimately.

The Committee will determine the agenda of its working groups at its full Committee meeting next week, Behrle said.

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