A teaching assistant sees an obvious case of cheating, but wonders if it is serious enough to bring before the Honor Committee. A student jury is reluctant to find a student guilty because they do not want to be responsible for someone's expulsion.
Members of the single sanction ad hoc committee said they have seen too many such concerns diminishing the University's "community of trust," and presented a series of recommendations Sunday night that would modify the single sanction in hopes of increasing student and faculty faith in the honor system.
"We don't think [the honor system] is as strong as it could be -- a lot of people don't think it exists at all," said Architecture graduate student Andy Painter, a member of the ad-hoc committee. "We don't disagree with the single sanction -- this is just sort of a formal recognition that something needs to be done."
Ad-hoc committee members cited a concern that students are averse to expelling other students, leading to limited reporting of violations and inconsistency on random student juries. Another major issue they noted was faculty involvement -- many faculty members become disillusioned with the system when they bring students before the committee only to see them excused on grounds of seriousness, the ad hoc committee said.
The ad hoc committee said they envisioned some combination of three proposals eventually leading to a referendum on the spring ballot.
One proposal would maintain the current system of evaluating for act and intent and then seriousness, but would add a lesser sanction for cases found not to violate the seriousness clause. Currently, if a student is found guilty of lying, cheating or stealing, but the jury decides the act was not serious enough to violate the community of trust, the student faces no penalty.
"It creates a culture where minor violations are acceptable," Painter said.
The committee did not specify what the other sanction might be -- suggestions ranged from the loss of a semester's coursework to a four-semester suspension.
The second proposal would establish a board composed of Committee members to decide on seriousness in each trial and deliver the sanction -- removing from the jury the burden of directly expelling a student, ad-hoc committee members said. The proposal mirrors the criminal system, where juries determine whether an act occurred and a judge decides the sentence.
The third proposal suggested mandating a mixed jury of students and Committee members, and eliminating the option of an entirely random student panel. Ad-hoc committee members argued that committee members' experience would counteract bias and bring consistency to the verdicts.
The existence of the single sanction has been a persistent issue for the Committee.
Last year, a referendum proposing "informed retraction," by which students could take a leave of absence from the University after being charged with an honor offense, appeared on the fall ballot. The measure was rejected by a 60 percent majority. A referendum to eliminate random student juries was defeated in spring 2001.
"It's difficult to interpret why students voted for or against past referenda," Honor Chair Carey Mignerey said. "What we can say is there hasn't been a large enough vote against single sanction or an alternative, bottom line."
Ad hoc committee members said the votes do not show support for the single sanction; rather, students were voting against particular proposals. They pointed to a 2002 survey by the committee in which only 21 percent of respondents fully supported the single sanction, with 16 percent opposed and 55 percent supporting it with reservations.
"A lot of the referenda, they're proposing something that's not attractive to students," said third-year Engineering student Nick Staubach, a member of the ad-hoc committee. "They're voting against the proposal, not for single sanction."
The committee will debate the proposals Sunday. If a referendum eventually is passed by the committee, 60 percent of voters in the spring 2004 election must approve it in order to amend the committee's constitution.
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