Board may have scripted proposed honor changes

When students head to the polls to vote on Honor Committee referenda at the end of the month, they may be voting on changes to the Committee constitution that have been predetermined by the Board of Visitors.

According to a document obtained by The Cavalier Daily, the Board's Special Committee agreed in a Jan. 29, 1999 meeting that the Board would be willing to defend the University against potential litigation "in Case #19 as long as there are some significant changes to the Honor System."

The document states that the Board "is not willing to take on the defense of this case without changes to the system. The following issues are of paramount importance to the Board: Permanent professional advice from a faculty advisor, presumably Earl Dudley; The end of random student jury panels; A complete rewrite of the System's Constitution and By-laws with special attention to language allowing for the definition of Honor to be fluid with 'each student generation.'"

The document also states: "If such a referendum fails, the Board made it clear that they will enforce the changes they see necessary by decree."

The Board is ultimately responsible for the Committee's actions and has the legal right to change its procedure and constitution.

One former Committee member, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Case #19 in the document refers to potential litigation by former University student Maurice Guillaume Goodreau III. Goodreau filed a $1.75 million lawsuit in October 1999 that named the Board, University President John T. Casteen III and three former Committee chairmen. In the suit, he claimed he was unlawfully stripped of his degree eight years after his graduation.

The document refers to the possible litigation of Case #19 as "more likely to be lost than won."

"There was a deal made to defend the Goodreau case, and the effects of that deal are going to be felt at the end of this month in the February referendum," the former Committee member said.

The document is the official summary of the Jan. 29, 1999 meeting between the Board's Special Committee and members of the 1998-99 Honor Committee. It is stored in the Honor Committee file, along with memos from meetings, case updates and other official honor documents.

Current Committee members said the views stated in the document are not accurate today.

"The Board has never said it would decree changes and I'm not worried they would do it," Committee Chairman Thomas Hall said. "The Board wants to see a good-faith effort to review the procedures and make changes. That's what we've done" through the Honor System Review Commission.

"Over the past two years, the Board has had a steadily declining involvement in making changes with the honor system," Hall said.

Board members said the document does not accurately represent the Board's plans concerning the honor system at that time.

"We were never planning on dictating the moral content of the honor system," said Board member Benjamin Warthen, who was part of the Board's Special Committee. "We saw the system needed procedural strengthening and a legal hand in it. Since then, we have tried to let the Honor Committee create its own changes and paint on as wide a canvas as possible."

The document's "directive language is a matter of procedure - we are not dictating the morals and cannons of the honor system," Warthen said. "We are never going to decree a moral code. That code comes exclusively from the students. [The document] contains procedural language explaining a simplification of lawyers speaking."

Graduate Arts & Sciences Rep. Amy Campbell, who was on the 1998-1999 Committee and was present at the January 1999 meeting, said she remembered the meeting in which such issues were discussed, but "I think the language in the document is a little harsh. I never got the impression the Board was coming down on us at those meetings. It was definitely a peer relationship."

The Cavalier Daily also obtained a list of 14 areas in the 1999 Honor constitution and bylaws that Board member Terence P. Ross believed "should be addressed during the comprehensive revision process." This document was used as the outline for discussion at the January meeting.

The elimination of random student juries in honor trials and the removal of the seriousness clause in cases of academic cheating - two changes to the Honor Constitution that students will consider at the end of this month - were included among Ross's 14 areas of concern.

Cabell Vest, the 1998-1999 Committee Chairman, who was present at the January 1999 meeting, said he did not recall the Board pushing certain changes on the Committee.

"The Board and the Honor Committee had been in discussions before that meeting about Constitutional changes, but I don't think the current legal cases [in January 1999] brought about any new issues," Vest said. "It just brought them to the forefront of our agenda."

Last year's Committee, under its Chairman Hunter Ferguson, created the Honor System Review Commission, which developed the proposals this year's Committee used in proposing its referenda.

Creating the commission and choosing the topics it looked into "were not [decisions] made in a vacuum," independent of all outside circumstances, Ferguson said.

But the commission's report "is not a package wrapped up in pretty paper with something underneath," he said. "The Board took an interest in [the commission], but our committee approved of the commission with our eyes wide open."

Board member T. Keister Greer, who was a member of the Special Committee, said that, in January 1999, the Board was concerned about the growing amount of litigation facing the Committee. Greer said he has a hazy recollection of what occurred in the January meeting. He said the Board believed at that time that the Committee and its constitution would benefit from professional legal advice.

Ross did not return phone calls.

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