THE INITIAL "reforms" proposed by the Honor System Review Commission in November stagger belief. They sound as if plagiarized from Solzhenitsyn's indictment of Soviet legal procedure in The Gulag Archipelago. They constitute a power grab by a small pressure group that seeks reduced accountability and legal liability.
Fortunately, the Honor Committee that spawned the Commission benched much of the latter's work. To its credit, the Committee appears to have some individuals disturbed by colleagues' proposals, and withdrew the more egregious "reforms" gutting the fifth article of the Honor Committee Constitution and inserting determination of seriousness by in-house adjudicators at the pre-trial stage. Unwitting Stalinism, nipped in the bud?
Mark what happened. An unrepresentative body of politicos sought to scrap what due process rights students have left, then thought better of it. Why? Aside from precious few moral objections, many Committee members, according to their own minutes, estimated they wouldn't succeed procedurally - at this time - to ram all these changes through. Is there any clearer indication that the honor system itself is a living, breathing, collective danger?
What power is at stake? From the Commission's report to Committee Chairman Thomas Hall's distressed letter, the sponsors decry "gamesmanship" and "John Grisham-style theatrics" on the part of allegedly too-powerful counsels who, presumably, thwart guilty verdicts to the Committee's frustration. Never mind that guilty people often go unpunished under any system, because some rights, such as effective counsel, are not worth demolishing on the way to conviction.
The response? Cut down counsel to a limited, "assistance" role, and shift the tenor of the trial process to "administrative proceedings." Does the Committee honestly expect us not to wonder who will be empowered by default, at the expense of the only people charged with helping accused students? Stripping counsel of power or stacking juries in favor of domineering Committee "experts" will not solve but worsen the fundamental flaw of the system: the concentration of legislative, judicial and executive power in the hands of unresponsive and unrepresentative officials. The honor system may seem mostly a petty political fiefdom for its members, but it has the power to wreck lives.
The proposals reflect fear of litigation and frustration with a complicated system that fails to produce more convictions. But in judicial systems premised on the rule of law, the state is not permitted to dispense with due process just because it feels inconvenienced or frustrated, let alone by its own laws. Yet the Committee wants you to vote in their dirty work for them, against your direct interests.
Limiting the Committee's liability makes a dubious objective. No matter how much they whitewash matters, trying to recast the system as a non-criminal, administrative process, they cannot escape the fact that the system administers punishment. Trials produce financial damage, irreparable social harm and sometimes even psychological trauma. This is fundamentally a judicial system, a proxy for the state. If the convicted student is innocent, or had her rights violated, the Committee unequivocally should be liable for mistakes. Liability represents one of the last strings of accountability, an incentive for responsible behavior and certainly an avenue of appeal against a Committee seeking the last word.
Ask yourself another unsettling question: Why are certain abuses in the system perpetuated, regardless of the change in members who compose the institution? Similar issues - persistent racial discrimination, due process deficiencies, Committee members ignoring their own rules - were grave problems when I was an undergrad here (1987-1991). The crowning spectacle, among others, was a Committee chairman who blatantly plagiarized his former history professor and, after a weak apology, never went to trial for it. We hardly invented the system's dark side. It was already entrenched.
Institutions, once born, tend to persist. They represent material interests (money, power, connections, improved resumes, prerequisites such as Lawn rooms) easily employed by members to co-opt new beneficiaries. Dissolving them usually requires extraordinary collective action - ultimately, by voters.
These abuses will not disappear under this system. Not one of the thousands of reforms since the inception of the honor system has found a workable solution to separate power and install accountability, to limit the honor system's ability to inflict tragedy. Now the Committee proposes to amass further power, not leash it. This is reform?
Forget the meaningless discourse propagandizing our "hallowed tradition." The mere existence of a tradition is no argument for its retention. When traditions perpetuate injustice, sullying the community they claim to represent, they ought not be assumed a benefit but recognized for the embarrassments they are, with devastating consequences. Such traditions ought to be consigned to a sobering historical lesson.
We ought to put the entire system to a referendum, to end it once and for all. But whatever you do concerning this referenda, don't give the Honor Committee the power it seeks.
(Frank Sellin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs.)
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