YOU WOULD think that people supposedly dedicated to honor and integrity would be more allergic to chronic deception. Unfortunately, that is all we seem to get these days from many members of the pro-single sanction camp on this year's Honor Committee.
This year's Honor Committee has constantly ignored the will of the student body that elected them this year. While 49.5 percent of students last year voted in favor of the most extreme alternative to the single sanction ever voted on, more than enough "no" voters to have swung the majority have since said they would have voted "yes" on a less extreme alternative. Yet this year's Committee decided to ignore the majority of the student body on account of that slim majority and other flimsy excuses by refusing to renew the single sanction ad hoc committee.
In the debate over the ad hoc, Vice-Chair for Community Services Josh Hess likened the renewal to "re-inventing the wheel" in the wake of the dismal failures of the last two ad hocs. The failure of the last two ad hocs, however, is thanks largely to the Committee itself and the obstacles it put up to success. The ad hoc two years ago was not even given the authority to make a proposal at all, and last year's ad hoc was so poorly advertised it was made up primarily of white, male Committee members and support officers and their friends, who were all overwhelmingly pro-single sanction.
With dynamic leadership, and strong publicity, the ad hoc has every bit of potential to be successful and representative of the student body. Engineering School representative and single sanction supporter Vanessa Trahan offered to chair the committee. Despite being a single sanction supporter, she would provide just the kind of leadership the ad hoc would need to be successful, but instead she has not been given the chance.
More disturbing was the argument from Commerce School representative Eric Flow that his "no" vote was a mere reflection of him representing his constituents. The Honor Committee Minutes state that Flow claimed the Commerce School voted "no" on last year's referendum. This would be reasonable, if it were true. In reality, the University Board of Elections does not track votes on referendums by school, making it impossible for Flow to actually know how the Commerce School voted last year. Judging by the intensity of the debate there, it may very well have voted "yes." Because voting by school is not tracked, any claim of "representing my constituents" is disingenuous at best.
Then, just a couple weeks ago, Senior Counsel Eric Jensen repeated one of the most common and most flawed arguments against renewing the ad hoc. Jensen claimed a majority of students had never voted against the single sanction, and that having the ad hoc just takes away necessary time and resources from other Committee work. Beyond Jensen's factual inaccuracy (going back to 1973, a majority of students have voted to change the single sanction over six different times), the reality is, some of the most important and positive changes ever to come to the honor system have coincided with intense single sanction debates. The last year that a binding sanction reform proposal appeared on the ballot, the Honor Committee also managed to successfully process over 160 cases in the largest mass-reporting in the honor system's history. Then, last year, in the midst of the most intense single sanction debate and discussion in years, transformation -- the complete overhaul of the investigation process that this year's Committee loves to laud -- still managed to come to pass. If I mentioned all the examples, it would take up two columns.
But what about this Committee? At this time last year, during an intense single sanction debate, the Honor Committee had re-worked the entire by-laws to make them more readable, had held a dome room open meeting with high attendance and was in the middle of writing transformation. Yet what has this year's Committee, without the "burden" of the single sanction debate accomplished? This year's Committee hasn't even put online and made available to the student body the version of the by-laws approved last April.
It is time for the Honor Committee to listen to the students who elected them. The Committee should stop making excuses and renew the single sanction ad hoc. The Committee should appoint Vanessa Trahan as the ad hoc's chair, and give the ad hoc the leeway and publicity it needs to achieve real diversity and take a dynamic and positive approach to suggesting real, moderate single sanction alternatives -- the type supported by the majority of this University's student body.
Sam Leven is a first-year Law student and a 2007 graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences. He is the founder of Hoos Against Single Sanction.
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