After a busy summer of preparations, investigations and one trial, the Honor Committee was back in full swing at its first meeting of the semester last night. The Committee passed several revisions of its bylaws and reviewed a complex proposal for a new type of post-trial appeal.
Vice Chairman for Trials Chris Scott introduced a lengthy proposal allowing students convicted of honor violations a new right to an "expedited appeals" process. The Committee intends to vote on this proposal at its meeting next week.
"We realized there are some inconsistencies once guilty verdicts come in, in terms of what students do," Scott said. For example, although the Committee requires convicted students to stop attending classes, some professors allow them to continue their studies during an appeals process, he said.
Committee Chairman Thomas Hall said that as the system stands, if a student were found guilty of an honor offence at the very end of the semester in April, he would be required to discontinue all classes, losing credit for the entire semester. Even if he filed an appeal in July, had a second trial in September and was then found not guilty, the student currently would have irretrievably lost all credit for the previous semester.
The proposed revisions address this issue by allowing a guilty student to file an expedited appeal by the first Wednesday after his trial or an expedited grievance.
During an expedited appeal, the student would be allowed to continue attending classes during the appeals process, although the registrar would place a notation on his transcript stating that his enrollment was contingent upon appeal of the honor conviction.
A student could file an expedited grievance in cases when an appeal would be inappropriate, if he had exhausted his right of appeal or if he chose to waive that right altogether.
It is unlikely that these revisions would actually affect a large number of convicted students, he said. "But I'd hate to have even one innocent student" lose a semester's credits and tuition, he added.
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