The Honor Committee discussed several Informed Retraction reform proposals at their meeting Sunday night. Students voted to amend the Honor Committee constitution in 2013 to include the Informed Retraction, which permits students who have been reported to the Honor Committee to admit guilt for alleged offenses, make amends with affected parties and take a two-semester leave of absence from the University.
“The adoption of the proposal that the committee ultimately decides on will have a real positive impact on students who do wish to take an IR, but may have committed multiple, though related, offenses,” said Matt West, a fourth-year College student and chair of the Honor Committee. “We’re confident that the change … will make the IR more fair, more equitable for students who are reported to the Honor Committee.”
The Honor Committee is considering expanding a clause of the IR in the Committee’s bylaws which says that students may submit a single IR for all offenses resulting from a “single nexus of events.”
“What we’re looking at is expanding the definition of what can be included under one IR to give more students the opportunity to take it if they’ve been reported for multiple acts,” said Sarah Wyckoff, a fourth-year College student Sarah Wyckoff and vice chair for investigations of the Honor Committee.
Wyckoff said the Honor Committee is considering two avenues of expansion. One keeps “single nexus of events,” but adds the language “inextricably linked” to describe the facts surrounding the offenses.
“If you cheated on two assignments, but used the exact same source, the assignments would be ‘inextricably linked’ because the source was used that was the same on both of them,” Wyckoff said. “Potentially if you were to cheat on 10 lab assignments, and they were all within one class, they could be construed as inextricably linked because of the nature of the assignments building on one another.”
The second possible avenue of expansion cuts the “single nexus of events” language and adds “substantially similar benefit” to describe the student’s intent by committing multiple Honor offenses.
“With ‘substantially similar benefit,’ it’s not approaching it from the facts of the case, but rather the outcome,” Wyckoff said. “Are the acts of lying, cheating or stealing towards a substantially similar benefit or towards a singular goal?”
West said the purpose of the IR is to reward honesty and allow students to reaffirm their commitment to the University’s community of trust.
“We believe that the expansions that we’re considering would both allow the Committee to more effectively [allow students to make amends] and would allow students who have committed technically multiple Honor offenses, but in situations in which those multiple Honor offenses could be construed as a single mistake … to utilize the IR as an opportunity to make those amends,” West said.
At the meeting Sunday night, the Committee also discussed changing the IR to include a post-leave of absence check-in, where Honor would send an email to students after they return to the University. Wyckoff said the email could be used to gather feedback with an optional survey.
“The purpose of this email wouldn’t solely be the feedback,” Wyckoff said. “Also [we would] have that as a way for us to gather the information … that’s coming to Honor.”
Any changes to the bylaws would need to be approved by the Committee and none of these proposals were voted on at Sunday’s meeting.
Honor Committee elections begin Feb. 21 and end Feb. 23. The committee discussed how to ease transitions into the next term, with West suggesting each committee member submit transition documents. Wyckoff said IR reform has played a part in candidates’ campaigns.
“I would say a buzzword in many of the Honor candidate platforms is ‘IR reform,’” Wyckoff said. “This has been something that Honor has been working on for the past two semesters at this point.”
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