The Honor Committee yesterday evening heard Batten School Representative Michael Karlik's proposal for an "informed retraction" which would allow students to avoid formal honor trials, even after their offenses had been recognized, by accepting the punishment advocated by the affected party.
Karlik's proposal differs from the informed retraction the Committee discussed last semester because the Committee itself would not sanction the guilty party, leaving it to the victim of the honor offense. Furthermore, Karlik's proposal would change the Committee's bylaws rather than its constitution, eliminating the need for approval by a student body referendum.
Currently, the conscientious retraction allows students who have committed an honor offense to report themselves "before a student has reason to believe that the relevant act has come under suspicion by anyone." Karlik's proposal, however, would allow students to report themselves to the Committee after being confronted by another party.
The faculty member or individual affected by the honor violation would then be able to impose a sanction upon the offending student, avoiding a formal honor trial.
Honor Committee Chair Ann Marie McKenzie said she believes the proposal was written in "a good-faith effort to bridge the gap between the legislation we looked at last semester and the problems the Committee found with it."
McKenzie said it would mitigate some of the problems found with the length and complexity of the previously proposed informed retraction legislation.
"[The previous informed legislation proposal] was pretty thick, very procedural. And this is not," McKenzie said. "It's not a complete new arm of the Honor Committee being created. It's just being worked in."
Vice Chair for Investigations Liz Rosenburg, however, expressed concern that this proposal should be decided by the student body, not internally by the Committee.
Karlik said he believed the new informed retraction measure would make it more likely that those who witness honor violations would report them and not be dissuaded by the single sanction and the complexity of the trial process.
"For the people out there who we know would not speak up, this might encourage them to come forward and speak," Karlik said. "I think this has the potential to decrease the amount of offenses that occur with the witnesses not doing anything about it."
The Committee plans to discuss Karlik's proposal Sunday at its next meeting.
"Even though it's a simple language change, fundamentally it's a huge change to our system," Vice Chair for Education Carter Haughton said.
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