After a two week debate, the Honor Committee voted unanimously Sunday to change the way it statistically reports cases that appear before the Committee.
The Committee's old system involved reporting cases concerning students in the different schools separately. Reports released to the public formerly contained the school from which a student was expelled.
But beginning in April 2004, reports will be categorized into five sections. Honor violations committed by students in the Darden School, the Medical school and the Law School will appear in one section, but will not specify which of the three schools a student was expelled from, making it more difficult for others to identify the expelled student.
Due to their large size, the College and the School for Continuing and Professional Studies will remain their own categories.
A fourth category will be titled Other Undergraduates, and will encompass students from all undergraduate schools besides the College.
All graduate students besides Law, Darden and the Medical school will fall under the category Other Graduate Students.
Committee Chair Carey Mignery said the change was an effort to protect students' privacy.
"It was in the interest of the confidentiality of students, especially those in the smaller schools," Mignery said.
He also said the Committee was spurred to action because of recent cases where the identities of students could easily be figured out.
The same sentiments were echoed by Laura Healy, Honor representative for the Graduate School of Nursing, who said the changes were important to protect the identity of students.
The alteration in policy was proposed by Jim Wininger, Honor representative for the Darden School of Business.
"In my view, reporting statistics involves trying to strike a balance between transparency and the need to protect confidentiality," Wininger said.
He added that the problem was brought to his attention by a few of the Darden faculty who had experiences with the Committee and thought privacy policies were too lax.
Wininger also emphasized that there was a need for balance between informing the community about what is going on in the Committee and protecting the confidentiality of individuals involved.
The Committee also made changes to its Grievance by-laws in response to pressure from some members of the student body requesting that the process be more streamlined.
Grievance is the last avenue open to any student convicted of an Honor offense.
The new changes state clearly the role of the Grievance committee, made up of three members selected by the Vice chair for trials. The committee's main task is to read grievance letters and make recommendations to the Executive committee.
All changes in the by-laws are posted on the Committee's Web site.
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