Current and former Honor Committee members recently discussed accomplishments of the previous Committee and challenges facing the newly transitioned one. The Committee also announced the senior support officers for the 2006-07 term.
Karl Blunden, Ben Cooper and Tina Le will serve as senior advisors, according to Vice Chair for Investigations Andrew Siegel. Ariel Alberti and Dan Hecht will be senior counsel. Meredith Hulley, Allie Moore and Grey Fisher were named senior educators. Linda Liu, Alex Sooy and Zander Strange are the new investigations coordinators. Josh Bennet, Catherine Daley and Daniel Lautzenheiser will serve as pre-trial coordinators.
Newly elected Committee Chair Alison Tramba cited passing the triviality clause and changing some language of the bylaws as some of the "more visible" accomplishments of the Committee over the past year.
The triviality clause passed during the spring elections with 70 percent of the vote. The clause changed the word "serious" to "not trivial" in the criteria for an honor offense.
Tramba also said the committee had great recruitment for support officers in the fall, which could be attributed to former Vice Chair for Trials Stewart Ackerly and former Vice Chair for Education Lauren Ross.
"We were able to reach a lot of students," Tramba said.
Completing the faculty survey was also a huge accomplishment for the committee, according to Tramba. The survey was distributed to all faculty members and will be released in the fall.
The survey "allowed us to open up new channels of communication with the faculty," former Chair David Hobbs said.
Hobbs also applauded the continuation of the dorm liaison program in which support officers go into first-year dorms and discuss the honor system with students.
Changes in the bylaws also made significant adjustments to the system, Hobbs said.
Hobbs added that rewriting the post trial process and conflict of interest policy "was a big step in the right direction."
Prior to September 2005, the post trial process included both appeals and grievances. Appeals dealt with new evidence while grievances addressed fairness issues. The two are now encompassed in a single set of procedures, according to the bylaws.
The conflict of interest policy was amended to allow students to choose whichever counsel they see fit. The policy also asks members to avoid official involvement in cases where they have reported the case, have material information or a significant prior relationship with anyone else involved in the case.
Any accused student who is aware of conflicts on the part of support officers and proceeds with the case waives his or her right to raise conflict of interest as an issue for appeal.
Vice Chair for Services A-J Aronstein said he is currently working to revamp his position into the vice chair for community relations.
"What our Committee has recognized very clearly is that Honor needs to reach out to the community and really let people know more about the processes of honor and emphasize the other benefits of the system [and] to combat what we see as a retreat from the system," Aronstein said.
Aronstein also mentioned specific changes the Committee plans on making such as linking the Honor Web site to the University's homepage, starting an Honor blog where people can voice their opinions, having Committee members write letters to their constituents and meeting in an open forum at least once a month outside of Newcomb Hall.
"We really think this is a way we can open up the Honor Committee in a way it hasn't been open in a while," Aronstein said.
Tramba said she also sees student awareness as the biggest challenge facing the Honor Committee.
"What we'd like to do is take a look of some of the benefits that extend beyond disciplinary procedure and emphasize the fact that [honor] is a contribution to the entire environment at the University and makes it a unique place," Tramba said. "It's more all encompassing than just a very strict structure and it's not limited to students who work on Honor."
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