The Honor Committee held its annual retreat this weekend, during which the newly elected Committee worked to plan its year-long term and name its new chair and vice chairs.
Third-year Commerce School student David Truetzel was named the Committee’s new chair, replacing current Honor Chair Jess Huang.
“Trusting me to serve as their representative to the wider University community is obviously a huge honor,” Truetzel said.
Truetzel, who has been involved with honor since his first year, said “everyone was really excited” at the retreat for the new administration. The retiring Honor Committee takes time at the retreat to discuss the past year’s activities, as well as to prepare the new Committee for the upcoming year, Huang said.
Truetzel said one of his main goals as chair is to “work with a lot of different, relevant groups at a wide level,” like faculty, students, administrators and the Charlottesville area as a whole.
“What came up a lot amongst all of the candidates is this idea of the aspiration side of honor at the University,” and of having that side pervade the whole University community, he said.
Third-year College student Rob Atkinson, who will replace Ryann Burke as the new Vice Chair for Education, also said he hopes to extend the Committee’s outreach efforts.
“A direction I’d like to take is to get a lot of different perspectives outside of honor,” Atkinson said, adding that he would like to try to reach groups that typically are not connected with the Committee. He said he hopes to do this by meeting with organizations before the end of the school year so that the Committee can “start on the right foot in the fall when we get back.”
During the coming year, the new Committee hopes to “incorporate [these organizations’] views and their opinions in formulating the education initiative,” Atkinson said.
He said he also intends to build on the projects and goals Burke worked toward during the past year, including distinguishing between “the perceptions and the realties” of the honor education system.
Atkinson said the Committee’s education pool is “not always seen in the best light,” but noted that he hopes to improve upon Burke’s efforts and make the whole University community aware of these “realities.”
Third-year College student Alex Carroll, who will replace Sophie Staples as the new Vice Chair for Trials, also said education has become an increasingly pertinent issue for the Committee.
“It is something we all want to focus on in one way or another,” Carroll said.
Carroll said in addition to these “big picture ideas that every committee comes in with,” like educational efforts, she also wants to work on more institutionally-based, albeit smaller and more specific, initiatives.
Some of these initiatives include improving jury panel diversity and composition as well as increasing trial processing efficiency.
Overall, current and future Committee members said they were pleased with the retreat and the new Committee’s elections.
“We were all pleasantly surprised at how well we interacted,” Carroll said. “[We are] already generating ideas, already connecting with each other, and our ideas were overlapping.”
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