It is a letter that alternately incites groans and quickens the pulses of University students. A long envelope, with an Honor Committee seal, opens to reveal script beckoning the recipient to jury duty.
"Last spring, they picked me for jury duty, and I was like 'Oh, man,'" second-year College student Patrick Cole said. "I thought it might be interesting, but I'd rather sleep on a Saturday morning."
Despite the early wake up call, Committee members said serving as a panelist in an Honor trial can demystify a process many students know little about.
Becoming a Juror
Jurors, who sit in distinguished leather armchairs and question witnesses, who will ultimately decide whether a student will receive a diploma bearing the University's name, begin as names on a random sampling of students provided by the registrar's office.
The registrar tracks students by race and sometimes by school. The list of potential jurors provided to the Committee is a representative sample of these populations within the University.
"We want the jury panels to reflect the makeup and diversity of the University community," Honor Chair Carey Mignerey said.
In each group of jury duty mailings, around 200 students receive an invitation requesting they attend a juror information session.
At this meeting, students fill out a questionnaire that Committee members said is intended to remove from the process people unable to serve as impartial jurors.
Questions include a list of possible biases, such as gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and age, and ask whether each factor would affect the student's judgment.
Cole said he thought this portion of the questionnaire gives jurors a potential means to intentionally avoid serving as a panelist. When he was called for jury duty a second time and did not want to participate, he answered "yes" to each question.
"It said are you sexist, and I said, 'Yeah, I hate girls,'" Cole said.
He was not selected as a juror.
Former Honor Chair Christopher Smith said the Committee tries to weed out potentially biased jurors through these questions.
"It's important [jurors] be able to look at a case objectively and render an objective verdict for a student," Smith said.
Another section of the questionnaire aims to discover whether a potential juror would be willing to implement the single sanction of automatic expulsion for a student found guilty of act, intent and seriousness in an Honor violation.
"The logic behind this is the students have said repeatedly that the single sanction is what they want, so regardless of personal opinion, we would like for the individual students to defer to the student community," Mignerey said.
The questionnaire also displays a list of people, mostly consisting of random students or invented names, but also including the accused student and the initiator. Students who know one of the parties involved in the case are removed from consideration.
For each trial, a list is compiled of 12 or 13 students with satisfactory questionnaire answers who say they are available to serve on the trial date. Once again, these students receive letters from the Committee, this time requesting they attend the trial.
Students who fail to report to the trial room on their appointed day can be tried under Judiciary Committee rules that prohibit interference with the confidentiality or operations of the Honor Committee.
"If a student fundamentally does not want to be an Honor juror, it's not something they're forced to do," Smith said. "The only time it becomes an issue for us is when a student signs up to be a juror on a particular weekend and then maliciously does not show up for trial on that day."
Committee members declined to comment on whether students have been tried in the past for missing jury duty.
The Juror Experience
The day of an Honor trial, nicely dressed jurors show up in the trial room early on a Saturday or Sunday morning. As long as eight jurors are present, the trial can proceed. Otherwise, the Committee will begin calling jurors at their homes, Mignerey said.
Trials can last anywhere from two and a half to 12 hours, with an average trial running about six hours, according to Smith. The Committee provides meals and breaks when necessary.
Jurors sit behind the long table at the front of the room, where they will face the trial participants and witnesses as each person testifies. They eat bagels and fruit and listen to a brief orientation before receiving all the written information for the trial.
Information deemed admissible at a pre-trial hearing conducted by Committee members is compiled into a packet for jurors. This packet includes the account of events worked out by the investigators of the case, as well as any written evidence submitted by the initiator or the accused student. Psychological evidence, which is pre-judged by professionals, and facts seen as prejudicial, such as a student being convicted in legal proceedings, are omitted.
"The jury doesn't necessarily get the full picture, but that's for a reason ? the fairness of the student" on trial, Mignerey said.
Some students who acted as jurors said they felt unprepared when the trial began.
"They gave us a 100-page folder and 20 minutes to look at all the evidence," second-year College student Ashley McCusker said.
Others said they were happy with the orientation.
"They prepare you pretty well," second-year College student David Rogge said. "They don't tell you what to do, they just tell you the theoretical process."
During the trial, jurors are encouraged to ask questions of witnesses and fully understand the case.
"The jurors in the trial play a really active part," Mignerey said. "They have the first and last opportunity to question witnesses."
Smith said jurors need to remain engaged and ask thoughtful questions.
"Most times their questions are insightful and contribute in a very meaningful way to the trial," Smith said. "It's important that students, if they do serve as jurors, ask questions. At the end of the trial, it's not the Honor Committee that determines the guilt of a student, it's that panel of students."
Two Committee members act as the trial chair and the official observer at each trial. The trial chair conducts the day's events, calling witnesses and guiding deliberations. The official observer ensures the jurors are awake and attentive throughout the trial.
After the panel has questioned all witnesses to its satisfaction, the two Committee members and the jury remain in the trial room until the jury comes to a verdict. The jurors are asked to thoroughly discuss the case.
"It would be very rare for no deliberation to take place," Mignerey said. "In fact, it is discouraged."
The trial chair occasionally asks jurors whether they feel comfortable making a decision. When everyone is ready, the trial chair calls for a vote.
The jury votes by secret ballot, first deciding whether act and intent were present in the case and, if affirmed by four fifths of the jury, then voting on seriousness -- whether open toleration of the act would undermine the community of trust. If a majority of the jury agrees that the act was sufficiently serious, the student is found guilty and asked to leave the University.
Deliberations often are shrouded in mystery because students are not allowed to reveal the reason for a case being dropped.
Mignerey said the Committee does not want to set precedents for what is considered a serious act and what is not, because standards of conduct change over time. He offered the example of students in the past being expelled for insulting a woman, an act viewed as an Honor offense many years ago.
"It's logical for the jury to reflect the current community's opinion," he said.
McCusker said it was difficult to deliver a guilty verdict, even though she was confident in her ruling."It was really hard to make a decision like that because it totally changes someone's life," McCusker said. "I feel bad because someone worked here for four years ?- but then you have to think, did they really work here the whole time?"
Hearing the verdict read to the student also was a trying experience, she said, especially with family members present.
"The dad was there, and he got this insane look on his face," McCusker said.
Weighing in on student juries
Students had mixed opinions about their experiences with jury duty.
"I was really upset for a couple days," McCusker said. "We took someone's diploma away, that was hard for me to deal with."
Rogge said his perception was more positive.
"I got to see the Honor system in action, sort of see the human side of it," he said.
Second-year College student Sergio Glait agreed.
"It's cool how everything works -- it teaches you a lot," he said. "What kills you is the amount of time that it takes, it's an entire day. It destroyed my Sunday."
Judging from responses to juror surveys distributed after every trial, students generally enjoy serving as jurors, Smith said.
"Almost always, the experience of the jurors has been positive, and they come out of the system with more respect for the Honor process," he said.
Many people praised the idea and the reality of student juries.
"I think it's one of the most important aspects of our system," Smith said. "It is student self governance in its most pure form, in action."
Physics Prof. Louis Bloomfield, who observed more than 100 trials in the last two years, concurred.
"Unlike criminal trials in the wide world, there's none of this selection game to get the most malleable jurors," he said. "You get college students."
A student charged with an Honor offense can choose to be tried before a jury of random students, a jury of Committee members or a mixed panel. It is rare for a student to select anything besides the random panel, Smith said.
Mignerey said many students think a panel of Committee members would be harsher judges, but that is not necessarily true.
"There's a perception that a student jury will be more lenient, which is not always going to be the case," he said.
Bloomfield also spoke to the capabilities of student juries.
"There's some amount of mythology that students are soft touches," he said. "Actually, I think that's a myth. When convinced there's an Honor violation, they rarely hesitate to say so."
Third-year College student Seth Wood, who acted as counsel for the accused in last fall's open Honor trial, offered a dissenting voice on the merits of all-student juries.
"We're using legal standards and it's basically just a bunch of ignorant students trying to apply them, and I include myself in that," Wood said. "I would tend to trust someone with a little more experience in life with something this important."
Nevertheless, the Committee has no plans to change its system of student juries, and University students will continue to open their mailboxes to invitations from the Committee.
Glait voiced a frequent student sentiment toward jury duty at the University.
"It's definitely something that you don't really want to do, but it's your duty as part of the community," he said.
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