The conviction and expulsion of two Summer 2008 Semester at Sea student participants on honor charges of plagiarism caused several parties to question Semester at Sea honor procedures and the fairness of the expulsions, even though Honor Committee Chair Jessica Huang has said the procedures were fully in accordance with all rules and regulations.
Ohio University student Allison Routman and California Baptist University student Mark Gruntz both told The Cavalier Daily they would have properly cited Wikipedia in their papers had they known then what they know now. Both Routman and Gruntz, however, also raised concerns about honor hearing procedures, saying aspects of the Semester at Sea honor system did not seem to fit their prior understanding of the University’s honor system.
The dismissed students, found guilty of plagiarizing from Wikipedia by a honor hearing panel composed of three University faculty members, both said they understood the Semester at Sea honor system did not follow all of the procedures that compose the University’s on-Grounds honor system. Nevertheless, the pair said they were frustrated by the lack of “rights” given to them, as neither student’s case was heard by a student jury nor investigated by a student Honor Committee member. Additionally, neither student was provided with trained counsel.
These discrepancies between the on-Grounds honor system and the Semester at Sea equivalent, however, are not cause for concern, according to Huang. The Honor Constitution bylaws clearly state that the Semester at Sea Voyager’s Handbook will be the authoritative document regarding all Semester at Sea honor cases, Huang said. And, though University students are guaranteed certain rights during honor proceedings on Grounds, Semester at Sea students signed a “statement regarding the University of Virginia Honor System” as a condition of enrollment in the program, Huang added. This statement, portions of which appear above, states that “University of Virginia students hereby waive the “Rights of the Accused” set forth in Article V of the Constitution of the Honor Committee and acknowledge that the form and manner of Honor proceedings for purposes of Semester at Sea will be entirely as set forth in the Voyager’s Handbook.”
Initially, Routman’s father, Brent Routman, said such a policy — having participating students waive their honor constitutional rights and having an additional document apart from the honor constitution that governs honor cases — might suggest violations of the Committee’s constitution, especially because all Semester at Sea student participants are considered University students for the duration of the voyage.
Huang, though, said there is no truth behind such allegations. Because students signed the statement, she said, the Committee did not violate its constitution by instituting the policies outlined in the revised summer 2008 Voyager’s Handbook, effective June 15. The handbook is given governing authority in the Committee’s constitutional bylaw for special programs, Huang said, which states that “special procedures governing the reporting, investigation and trial of cases relating to Semester at Sea participants are set forth in the Voyager’s Handbook for the Semester at Sea Program.”
Huang also noted, moreover, that because the Voyager’s Handbook is not a bylaw, but rather an independent document given power by the Committee’s constitutional bylaws, the clause “Honor Committee bylaws shall be consistent with this constitution” found under Article VI of the Honor constitution, does not apply. When putting together the changes to the Semester at Sea honor hearing rules, the Committee was very careful to avoid discrepancies among the documents and worked with legal counsel to avoid the possibility of any threatening legal situation, she said.
Huang additionally noted that the Honor Committee made several changes to the previous Semester at Sea honor hearing procedures to promote fairness and timeliness. A copy of the June 2006 Semester at Sea Voyager’s Handbook, the first used after the University became the program’s academic sponsor, states that the Honor Committee’s constitution and relevant bylaws shall apply to the investigation and adjudication of honor offenses. Because of the “unique, decentralized nature” of Semester at Sea, though, some bylaws have been modified, the June 2006 document states.
Reported honor offenses under the 2006 guide would have been investigated by the ship’s academic dean, as opposed to the registrar, and accused students would have seen their trials take place in Charlottesville.
At a trial, the 2006 edition states, an accused student’s case would have been heard by a jury composed of University students, as in a typical on-Grounds proceeding.
Huang said these Semester at Sea procedures were changed to make proceedings fairer for all parties involved.
“One thing we are always concerned about is fundamental fairness and timeliness,” she said, noting that the procedural changes reflected in the revised summer 2008 version of the Voyager’s Handbook, effective June 15, make sure that all witnesses are able to attend case proceedings, that evidence is readily available, and that the accused do not have to wait a long time to see the outcome of trials.
Huang said changes to the composition and procedure of the jury came as a natural consequence of the Committee’s desire for all investigation and adjudication proceedings to occur while students were still on board the MV Explorer. She also emphasized, however, that having students participate as members of the hearing panel was always an option, per the revised summer 2008 Voyager’s Handbook, effective June 15.
“It was that in order to have a fair system on board the ship, we need to have [a hearing panel decide cases] on board the ship,” Huang said. She added that it would prove infeasible and unfair to have a student jury, composed of program participants, judge a Semester at Sea student’s honor case, especially if that student’s case centered around an assignment for a required class in which all students had to participate.
“Here at the University, we call random students to serve on the juries; we have a juror questionnaire; and we seek to put together the most unbiased jury possible,” Huang said. “The ship is a closed environment.”
This environment is most noticeable in a class like Global Studies, Huang explained. Since all of the students registered for the Semester at Sea program are required to take the class, all of them have the potential to know one another, and “it would be very hard to have a jury that would be considered completely unbiased,” she added.
Brent Routman, however, disagreed with such comments.
“Who would better know the facts of the cases than the students on board the ship?,” he said. “And, I gotta tell you, if the registrar picked faculty members with conflicts of interest, how is that better for Allison?”
Brent Routman was referring to his allegation that University Politics Prof. Allen Lynch, University Slavic Languages Chair Julian Connolly — a member of both Routman’s and Gruntz’s hearing panels — and Semester at Sea Academic Dean Karen Ryan potentially shared a conflict of interest while respectively initiating, adjudicating and making the appellate decision in his daughter’s case. Lynch, the complainant in Routman’s case, is the director of the University’s Center for Russian and East European Studies. Connolly is a faculty member of the center managed by Lynch. Ryan, meanwhile, who heard both Routman’s and Gruntz’ appeals and found against them, is a faculty member of Connolly’s Slavic languages department and also serves as a faculty member at the Center for Russian and East European Studies.
In response to Brent Routman’s allegations of impropriety at his daughter’s honor trial, Huang said one would be mistaken to assume that any faculty member chosen by the registrar to adjudicate a Semester at Sea honor case might have been biased while casting his or her vote.
“These faculty members are unbiased,” she said. “They don’t know the student. If you look in the procedures, it says they must be fair and unbiased.”
Gruntz, meanwhile, said he was more concerned about the fact that two of his hearing panel members also served as hearing panel members at Routman’s trial. He said he wondered whether the verdict in Routman’s case could have played into his.
Huang, however, said faculty members, in general, can serve on multiple hearing panels, just as students on Grounds can serve on multiple juries. Previous panel experience is neither a requirement nor a deterrent in regard to the possibility of future selection by the registrar, she said.
Even if he were to accept Huang’s explanations, though, Routman said he would nevertheless remain concerned about a procedural change made to this year’s Semester at Sea honor system. The original Voyager’s Handbook for the Semester at Sea Summer 2008 voyage, as obtained by The Cavalier Daily, states that the hearing chair shall serve as a non-voting supervisor of trial proceedings. Three additional people selected by the registrar would cast votes and determine the outcome of the trial, the original guide stated.
The “statement regarding the University of Virginia Honor System,” moreover, signed by all students as a condition of enrollment in the program, outlined the same procedure found in the original Voyager’s Handbook.
The accounts of Routman and Gruntz and the revised summer 2008 Voyager’s Handbook, effective June 15, however, describe a different procedure wherein the hearing panel chair is among the three persons with voting power.
Such a change, Routman said, could be considered a procedural irregularity great enough to call into the question the verdict and the appellate decision, if the change was not agreed to by the student body or brought to that body’s attention in a timely fashion.
According to Allison Routman’s account, the first time she became aware of the change was when Casteen presented her with a copy of the revised summer 2008 handbook, after Routman was formally accused. Routman said she does not recall signing any document reflecting the procedural change. Brent Routman, moreover, said Semester at Sea officials told him the only document they have on file with his daughter’s signature is the original statement signed before the voyage began. Semester at Sea officials declined to comment about specific cases when contacted by The Cavalier Daily.
Huang, though, said the procedural change was made before the adjudication of Routman’s and Gruntz’ cases and said students were appropriately notified of the change in a daily bulletin, the Dean’s Memo. University spokesperson Carol Wood noted that Semester at Sea officials told her the Dean’s Memo was distributed to students via e-mail, with printed copies also available aboard the ship. Relevant excerpts from the June 16 Dean’s Memo appear on page A6. The change also appeared in the June 17 Dean’s Memo.
Allison Routman said she does not remember ever receiving notification of any honor-related change in a Dean’s Memo, but admitted that it was possible she could have overlooked it, given that it was distributed every day.
Routman’s father said notification of the procedural change via the “Dean’s Memo” was not satisfactory. He added that he wondered whether the Honor Committee had the power to make such a change through a “mere e-mail,” after all of the original documents — including the statement — had been signed by his daughter.
“Who gave them the authority to change it?” he said. “If they think that waiver is legally binding [in regard to participants having to waive their constitutional honor rights], where is that authority to change it?”
The statement contains no reference to the Committee’s ability, or potential ability, to change procedures, Brent Routman said, noting that any changes not requiring his daughter’s re-signature could be perceived as a breach in contract.
When informed of Routman’s concern, Huang said the change was analogous to almost any other bylaw change the Honor Committee normally makes during the academic year, even though this was a change to an independent document, rather than to a bylaw.
“When we have a bylaw change here, [students] don’t sign on to anything,” she noted, saying there was no breach in contract and the change to the summer 2008 Voyager’s Handbook would not have required a student vote. “All 20,000 don’t have to acknowledge it.”
Aside from the concerns outlined above, Brent Routman and second-year Law student Sam Leven, founder and current president of Hoos Against the Single Sanction, said the program’s requisite “waiving of rights,” as set forth in the statement signed by all participating students, could be perceived as going against the spirit of the University’s honor system even if Huang said condition of enrollment was constitutionally allowable.
“It is also potentially a breach of their duty to force people to waive their constitutional rights,” Brent Routman said. “In the Honor Committee’s constitution, it says that they ‘shall embody the interests and attitudes of the current student generation of the University of Virginia.’ I have to ask: Is getting people to waive their rights ‘embody the interests and attitudes of the current student generation’?”
Leven, who also serves as a University Honor consul, similarly said he believes there are fundamental flaws with the Semester at Sea honor system as it operated in summer 2008 and the required waiving of rights.
“It is just as baffling to me that Honor can legally set up rules and bylaws that violate its own constitution,” Leven said. “It strikes me as actually unconscionable that you would hold students to the exact same standard and honor system that you hold regular students at U.Va., without the same rights that students under the U.Va. system have.”
When informed of Huang’s defense — that students signed the paperwork of their own free will and agreed to the terms and conditions of the statement — Leven said he was “baffled.”
“To say that we can waive the constitution and make waiving your rights a condition of participating in this program... violates just about every aspect of the ethics our school is supposed to be run by,” Leven said.
Additionally, Leven expressed concern about where the Committee could draw the line regarding the waiving of students’ rights.
“What is to stop the Honor Committee from making that a requirement of admission here?” Leven questioned.
In response to Routman’s and Leven’s criticism of the Semester at Sea honor system and the statement, Huang declined comment. Earlier, though, Huang did speak to The Cavalier Daily about whether changes could be made to the Semester at Sea honor system as a result of the concerns raised by several parties. She noted that, like any other honor system policy, the rules and conditions are subject to constant revision.
“We just looked at it and tried to make it the most efficient and fair policy,” Huang said, later noting that even though all Honor procedures were properly followed during the summer 2008 Semester at Sea voyage, revising the Semester at Sea honor system procedures is always a possibility.
As of Aug. 24, several changes to honor case procedures were included in the Voyager’s Handbook for the fall 2008 voyage, which set sail Friday, Aug. 29.
Routman and Gruntz said they have no pending legal action regarding their respective expulsions.
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