At its first meeting of the 2004-2005 term Sunday night, the Honor Committee held elections for several Committee positions.
The Committee elected Sarah Outten as vice chair for education and Robyn Dietter to serve as chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee. Sara Page was selected to be the next chair of the Diversity Awareness Committee.
As vice chair for education, Outten will facilitate efforts by the Committee to inform the University about the concept of honor.
"My job is to make sure that the community understands how the community of trust is fostered and maintained," Outten said. "We want to educate people about the system and how to use the system effectively."
Outten said she would like to have a point person in each of the first-year dorms who would be able to answer any honor questions or concerns. She also said she wants to work more closely with the student-athlete mentor within each athletic team in order to give the student athletes a connection to the honor system.
As chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee, Dietter will work with a committee of faculty members from each of the schools that advise the Committee regarding faculty issues and faculty in the honor system.
"Essentially, the position serves as a liaison between the Honor Committee and the faculty," Dietter said. "It is a good way for us to keep up the relationship that is necessary between the faculty and the Committee."
Honor Chair Meghan Sullivan said the Committee will be working on several projects involving the faculty in the upcoming year.
"The faculty has taken a much stronger interest in the honor system and they have brought a lot of insight as to their view of the perennial issues that this honor system debates," Sullivan said. "We are hoping to partner with them to improve faculty support of the honor system and also hopefully to share the student's perspective."
Sullivan said one of the major projects will be an honor orientation for new faculty members and graduate students in order to make them more comfortable with educating their students about the honor system and its expectations.
"We want to introduce the honor system in a positive light and show them how they can get involved," Outten said. "Since graduate students work closely with the faculty, reaching out to them will be an avenue to getting in touch with the professors as well. We are hoping that this will all be a circle of positive cause and effect."
Page will be in charge of specific outreach efforts for minorities and non-traditional students in order to further include them in the system and recruit support officers from those groups.
"We want to address the statistics that show disproportionate number of cases brought against minority students and understand the cause of that issue," Page said. "We also want to continue to recruit a diverse pool of officers and representatives so that the Honor Committee is representative of the student body. Finally, we want to project inclusive values publicly as a core part of the institution."
Committee members also chose Elizabeth Epps to serve as Committee secretary at the full-body meeting.
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