A CONTROVERSIAL Honor proposal made news on Monday. Offered last semester by a support officer, it would have created a separate panel of three Honor Committee members to vote on seriousness after a jury had convicted a student on act and intent. Since then, the proposal has died; David Hobbs, chair of the Committee, said in a phone interview that he does not expect the proposal to come up again at least for the rest of the semester.
This would seem to put the issue to rest. However, the underlying concern that prompted the proposal likely still exists. According to the proposal's text, taking the decision on seriousness out of the jury's hands is meant to avoid "disparate interpretations" of the seriousness clause by different student juries.
There isn't anything objectionable about trying to standardize the seriousness clause. If the recent open honor trial this year taught us nothing else, it's that the seriousness of an offense often means the difference between expulsion and acquittal for those accused. But the standard of seriousness is vague, the only criterion being that the offense be serious enough that tolerating it would destroy the community of trust. That's a weighty standard to apply, especially for student juries that don't have much hands-on experience with honor. The root problem is the single sanction; if the honor system employed multiple punishments, we wouldn't need to nail down a single standard of what is serious and what isn't.
In this year's open honor case, many speculated that the two students weren't convicted on seriousness because the assignments in question constituted a very small portion of the final grade in the course. While that may or may not have been the reason the two were acquitted, such reasoning isn't a good way to determine seriousness. Using a standard based on the benefit a student stands to receive from cheating almost invites students to bend the rules on small assignments, while the purpose of the honor system is to discourage all offenses of any size.
It's also a mistake to take the call on seriousness from the sizable honor jury and give it to a smaller one, like the panel proposed. It would certainly be easy for the committee to decide among its members on some uniform definition, but such a shortcut would concentrate too much power in too few hands. If anything, the decision on seriousness should be made by a larger jury, given that seriousness is a more difficult decision than act or intent.
The committee members would also be exposed to certain pieces of evidence in the pre-trial which jury members would not have seen. Hobbs explained that in pre-trial, evidence often appears that is eventually deemed too prejudicial and therefore is not used. While this evidence shouldn't be able to factor in the seriousness decision, the fact that the panel members would have seen it would stack the deck against the accused student, something the system strives to avoid.
Most importantly, however, such a change would interfere with the student self-governance that is the heart of Honor, as well as of the rest of the University. It's true that the members of the Honor Committee are elected by the students, and it would be incorrect to state that the element of student input would be completely eliminated. However, a facet of University life as fundamental as Honor needs to have a heightened sense of commitment to student self-governance, and this is accomplished through the use of randomly selected juries. The student body needs to continue to own the process in this way rather than delegate it to a handful of people.
There are a number of ways to clear up the confusion on the subject of seriousness. One way would be to try and set a clearer standard under the current single sanction system. But creating a precise standard against which we could hold all cases accountable would be a tall order, and it would no doubt be lengthy and awkward.
The best way to deal with this problem is to replace the single sanction with a series of sanctions that can better cover the full spectrum of possible offenses and levels of seriousness. This solution would prevent minor infractions from slipping through the cracks, and because all offenses wouldn't be tested against one confusing boilerplate standard, there would be no need to alter the practice of student juries.
Give Honor credit for attempting to address the weakest link in its process, and one that was exposed this year because of the open proceedings. But the problem of seriousness lies in its "one size fits all" mentality. The system can't expect to be able to correct this flaw until it makes itself more flexible.
Matt Waring's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at mwaring@cavalierdaily.com.
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