Honor Chair David Truetzel presented a proposal at last night's Honor Committee meeting that would give expelled Semester at Sea students the right to request a new trial if found guilty of an academic honor offense during the program. The proposal also would give students found guilty aboard the program's ship the chance either to be readmitted to the University or, in the case of non-University students, the option to apply to the University at a later date.
Currently, once a student is found guilty of an academic honor offense during Semester at Sea, they are removed from the program and permanently dismissed from the University, Truetzel said, barring them from any University academic program in the future.
The proposal, if passed, would allow a student found guilty of an academic honor offense 10 days to request new proceedings that would determine whether he would be permanently banned from the University in addition to the Semester at Sea program. The request would "act like a new report," and a new investigation, I-Panel and trial would occur "as if the alleged offense was a regular report," according to the written proposal.
The change is meant to address the concern that the program and the University are different communities and would allow members of each community to decide "whether you leave or stay in" that specific community, Truetzel said.
The investigation process and hearing panel, which are conducted by the University Registrar and students aboard the ship, are much less formal than proceedings at the University, Truetzel said. A new trial would give students the opportunity to proceed with an honor trial that is the same as any other Honor trial at the University.
"People doing the initial trial [aboard the ship] are not trained like we are," Vice Chair for Trials Alex Carroll said. This second trial would provide expelled students with a route to have a trial with trained honor advisers, Vice Chair for Investigations Mary Siegel said.
The proposal was not sparked by "anything specific," Truetzel said, but is something he believes University students in particular could support. Truetzel also listed some concerns at the bottom of the proposal though, which included the implicit assumption that "the level of due process administered on the ship" is only appropriate for expulsion from the program and not the University, an issue some members on the Committee agreed with.
That assumption, though, may also be at odds with some representatives' views.
"It puts out a bad image," Nursing School Representative Honour Alston said. Holding a separate trial could give the impression that the Committee does not "trust the people on the ship to understand" what the honor community at the University really stands for, Alston added. She also noted that some students might claim they were expelled "by people who didn't know what they were doing."
The second trial may also fall short of addressing perceived problems, Truetzel said, as the "logistics of an investigation and trial in Charlottesville could be difficult given limited access to relevant witnesses and evidence after voyage ends." Some important witnesses and other members of the original case may be from other colleges and universities and might not be available for another trial.
In such a situation, though, "we would do the best we can," Carroll said, which may include phone calls to people who cannot be present, a practice the Committee currently employs.
Vice Chair for Community Relations JJ Litchford said that overall, while he likes the detail with which people are analyzing the proposal, the Committee should focus on its "basic concept" right now.
"[The Committee is] trying to give students as many rights as possible," he said.
Truetzel said the Committee now must draft an actual bylaw amendment of the proposal, see about potential changes to it and then vote on the change, a process which will occur during the next several weeks.
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