Last night at an open forum hosted by the Single Sanction Ad-hoc Committee, Sam Leven, president of Hoos Against the Single Sanction, distributed a proposal for an amendment to the Honor Committee’s constitution creating a multiple sanction system. Leven’s proposal may not be a perfect solution, but it should mark the beginning of a serious discussion between the Honor Committee and the University community. The merits of this specific proposal — and not the merits of the single sanction — should be the focus of this debate.
Students narrowly rejected a non-binding resolution supporting a multiple sanction system two years ago, by a margin of 62 out of 6,476 votes. That proposal would have given student juries a choice from among a list of penalties, including the possibility of expulsion. That proposal was met with a number of criticisms that the new proposal attempts to address.
The new proposal’s strength lies in how much of the current honor system it keeps intact. Student juries will still be asked the same three questions: Did the student commit the act? Did he do so intentionally? Does this act constitute an offense that the community of trust cannot openly tolerate? If the answer to all three of those questions is “yes,” the student is expelled under the current system. The proposed system would not change that — it would only change what happens to accused students if the answers to the first two questions are “yes,” but the answer to the third — to the question of triviality — is “no.”
This arrangement retains expulsion as the default sanction and should alleviate some fears that jurors would not choose to apply expulsion if lesser sanctions were available. In fact, that may still occur if jurors vote “no” on triviality. Some students who would be expelled under the current system might receive lesser sanctions, and some students who now receive no punishment might receive some sanction less severe than expulsion. That would be true of any multiple sanction system, however, and by changing very little about the honor system, Leven’s proposal attempts to mitigate any adverse effects.
The current proposal also addresses the problem of consistency present in the proposal of two years ago. Instead of relying on student juries to decide sanctions, the new proposal puts that choice in the hands of Honor Committee members, whose experience and training would allow them to assign sanctions more consistently than jurors who have had only one day of training. The proposal also would empower the Committee to establish guidelines for sanctions that would help in providing consistency.
There are still potential problems with the proposal, however. The application of the triviality clause would still rest with the student juries and would be as inconsistent as it is now. Since the proposal leaves expulsion as the default sanction, it may not address reporting issues. Students and faculty who find the idea of expulsion distasteful or draconian might still refuse to report a case to the Committee.
Still, most of the objections to the current proposal are, in fact, objections to a multiple sanction system. An Honor Committee survey of committee members and support officers found 82.6 percent of respondents support the single sanction, and it is understandable that they would oppose Leven’s proposal. But over 49 percent of University students voted for a multiple sanction system two years ago, and the Honor Committee needs to be responsive to the community it serves.
Objecting to this proposal’s specifics while offering no alternative multiple sanction system allows the Honor Committee to dodge the real issue for one more year. Instead, it should work with Hoos Against the Single Sanction to craft the best possible multiple sanction system — then put it on the ballot and have a real debate about the single sanction.
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