THIS WEEK, students who care about the community of trust can strengthen the foundations of our honor system by voting for the consensus clause. Placed on the ballot at the direction of over 2,700 students and endorsed by several past honor chairs and the Greek governing councils, this year's consensus clause represents an improved version of last year's bold initiative to protect the single sanction. As a compromise with those who would prefer a one-half requirement, this sensible new proposal would require that at least one-third of the current student body vote for change before we begin tampering with the 160-year-old expulsion policy.
As hard as it may be to believe, the current Honor Constitution would allow just 10 percent of the student body to destroy the single sanction. This number is far too small and would allow a small minority of students to push through radical, destructive change without the true support of the student body.
The consensus clause would keep this from happening by raising the minimum number of people who must vote for change from 10 percent to 33 percent. This reasonable proposal to amend the Honor Constitution would make it impossible for an unrepresentative minority of students to jettison what for many generations has served us so well.
Moreover, any campaign to change the single sanction should be waged across every school in the University, not just among lawnies and politicos on the fourth floor of Newcomb. The future doctors and lawyers who study here live under the expulsion policy, and they should have a say if it is going to be jettisoned.
Imagine how a nursing student or a business student would feel if he or she woke up one morning to learn that the single sanction had been destroyed by an organized faction of undergraduates without their knowing about it.
This nightmare is not unrealistic under the current voting scheme -- until this year, technical problems prevented the whole of the Darden School from participating in school-wide elections, without anyone even noticing.
Many graduate students chose to attend the University because of its reputation for professional integrity. They should have a say if that reputation is going to be imperiled.
As those familiar with past elections can attest, the current proposal would not put change entirely out of reach, but would ensure that any deviation from the foundations of our culture has strong support around Grounds.
In the words of Chris Smith, the 2002-2003 Honor chair, "This proposal leaves the control of the Honor System where it has always been -- in the hands of the students." Opponents of the consensus clause, however, worry that the one-third requirement is too high given lackluster turnout in past years.
With the advent of electronic voting and longer voting periods, however, turnout is increasing. Moreover, the best interpretation of the data is that more than 40 percent of the student body voted last year.
Not everyone agrees with this number -- the disagreement centers on whether long-distance learners living outside of Charlottesville should be counted as members of the student body for purposes of the Honor Constitution. Past committees, however, have always operated on the assumption that these students do not count.
Moreover, any ambiguity in the constitution can easily be addressed by codifying the traditional understanding of "student body" in the Honor Constitution bylaws.
The U.S. Constitution makes it extremely difficult to alter core rights such as the right to free speech or the right to vote because, as James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 43, the founders hoped to "guard equally against that extreme facility which would render the Constitution too mutable; and that extreme difficulty that might perpetuate its discovered faults."
The consensus clause II strikes this balance between making it too easy and too hard to change the single sanction. Those who care about intelligent student self-governance and the community of trust should vote yes to Referendum #1 on Friday.
James Head is a third-year Law student and a former student member of the Board of Visitors. Thomas Hall is a third-year Law student and was Honor chair from 2000 to 2002.
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