ACCOUNTABILITY. It’s all the rage. Congressional committees call zillionaire bankers into hearing rooms so they can impress upon the bankers the importance of accountability. Politicians of all stripes talk about the need for accountability in all sorts of areas, activities and programs.
In an editorial listing its New Year’s resolutions, The Cavalier Daily Managing Board declared its devotion to accountability. The Board announced its collective desire for “greater accountability for The Cavalier Daily and for the organizations we cover.”
And that’s a good thing.
One of the main reasons for having a newspaper is to hold those in power accountable for what they do or neglect to do with that power. In our form of government – in theory, at least – power comes from the people. And the people need some way to police those they’ve empowered to act on their behalf. That’s what the “free press” part of the First Amendment is all about.
The same principle applies at the University. Students elect other students to handle the day-to-day business of exercising power so the larger group can go on with their lives. But that larger group still needs to keep an eye on the people they elected.
Just as the larger body doesn’t always directly exercise its power, it doesn’t always directly exercise its oversight responsibility. At the University, The Cavalier Daily does the heavy lifting, covering meetings and asking questions and then reporting what it’s found so the community can decide if student leaders are doing what they should be doing.
That all sounds very civilized, but sometimes getting at what’s going on requires asking a lot of questions, some of which could be construed as rude and impertinent.
A few questions came to my mind after reading the Feb. 2 article about Ronald Johnson’s open honor trial.
Johnson was found not guilty of cheating after he apparently guessed the right answers to three or four (accounts differ) multiple choice questions.
By the end of the trial, everyone involved – except, perhaps, Johnson’s accuser – seemed satisfied that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. Some questioned whether there was even enough evidence to bring him to trial.
According to the article, Committee Vice Chair for Trials Sophie Staples said the problem could be that the investigative panel – which decided there was reason for a trial – and the jury – which decided Johnson wasn’t guilty – had different definitions of what constitutes an honor offense. I wanted to know how that could happen.
Honor is serious business. “Who steals my purse steals trash,” Shakespeare wrote. “... but he that filches from me my good name ... makes me poor indeed.”
How can the honor system operate if its operators don’t agree on what is an honor violation?
“The honor system has always been controversial,” the Board wrote in a recent editorial, “and critics and supporters need to first know exactly how the system works.”
Indeed.
It appears that the professor who accused Johnson had one notion of what constitutes a violation of the code, the investigating panel perhaps had a similar one and the jury had a very different idea – and the vice chair for trials seemed unconcerned about that.
The Cavalier Daily’s account of the trial quoted Lauren McGlory, who serves as a University Judiciary Committee counselor, saying, “I believe in the system and everything, but I felt like the system kind of lost its integrity putting the student through this.”
I don’t necessarily agree that this event cost the system its integrity, but it does open up a lot of questions about the system and the people who run it. It would have been better if some of those questions had been answered in that trial story.
Cameron Feller, who wrote the story, tells me she was focused on making sure any opinions she formed during the trial didn’t leak into the story. So – I’m supposing here – that desire for objectivity may have kept her from asking some pointed questions. That brings up questions about the possibility and the usefulness of objective reporting, but that’s too big a topic for this column.
The good news is that The Cavalier Daily comes out five days a week, so there will other opportunities to ask those unasked questions.
The better news is that The Cavalier Daily staff has already discussed this.
Feller emailed that her editors have discussed her writing a series of articles focusing on the Committee and its workings.
That’s a very good idea. The honor system is a hot topic now, and has been for some time. It might be a good idea for the people discussing it, those in charge of operating it, and the community on whose behalf it operates, to understand exactly what they’re talking about.
Tim Thorton is The Cavalier Daily Ombudsman. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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