As the face of the Honor Committee changes, new chairpersons will endeavor to change subcommittee direction to benefit the community of trust.
In a meeting Sunday night, the Committee named Education Rep. Tara Cook chairwoman of the Faculty Advisory Committee and Commerce Rep. Saket Narula chair of the Diversity Advisory Board.
The FAC includes faculty members from all University schools who advise the Committee on faculty opinion and involvement. The DAB consists of both faculty members and student leaders from many University groups, and attempts to include consideration of all minority groups in committee decisions.
Cook and Narula will work together to foster involvement encompassing all parts of the community, focusing especially on areas identified as problematic.
"I know there are problems such as mistrust, low minority representation in the system and spotlighting," Narula said. "Because of these, many community groups at U.Va. feel alienated by the honor system."
Cook also sees problems in faculty relations and said he hopes the FAC will help the Committee address such concerns.
"The most important thing is getting faculty on board supporting the Honor system," Narula said. "Without them it just won't work and we want it to be more open to them."
Last year FAC members aided former FAC Chairman Brian Winterhalter in drafting the proposal for the informed retraction. Students voted down the proposal in February.
A 1999 survey showed that a majority of faculty members support an alternative to the single sanction, and Cook wants to continue dialogue that will "improve the relationship between honor and faculty," she said.
"The major thing is education," Cook said. "We take for granted that all faculty members know the honor system."
Spanish Prof. David T. Gies, a member of last year's FAC who may return to the new committee, agreed with Cook.
"It's always a matter of education," Gies said. "We have a completely new group of students here every four years which has serious education implications. These are also true for new faculty."
Both Cook and Gies agreed the events surrounding Physics Prof. Louis Bloomfield's 158 honor offense charges have shown the positive side of honor-faculty involvement.
"Though Bloomfield put a lot of stress on the system, ideally there would be more professors like him with faith in the system," Cook said.
"I have a sense it was a very good thing," Gies said regarding the Bloomfield cases. "A faculty member saw a clear violation and stepped up."
Narula also emphasized faculty involvement in the evolving DAB.
Narula hopes DAB will include representation from the Office of African-American Affairs, the Office of International Affairs and the Office of International Studies.
"Being an international student it is an honor for me to serve on the Committee," said Narula, who is from India. "For the past three years at school I've been amazed to see the increasing participation and efforts of minority students, however, I believe they have not received the full harvest of their efforts."
Narula will begin recruiting efforts to get student leaders involved with the DAB soon.
In combination with administrators, he said he hopes they will bring even more cultural understanding to the committee.
"Only with open and candid dialogues will we be able to identify these problems, accept that they exist and find solutions to them," Narula said.
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