The Honor Committee is organizing a pair of events to foster discussion about the informed retraction and single sanction, hosting upcoming discussions with Sustained Dialogue, Mainland Student Network and the Chinese Students Scholar Society.
The discussions aim to address concerns about the potential financial burdens on international students who elect to take an informed retraction, as well as a broader lack of understanding about the single sanction among these students.
A student accused of an honor offense can elect to take an informed retraction, allowing him or her to avoid a trial and possible conviction upon agreeing to take two semesters away from the University. Community members and members of the Committee have expressed concern that the financial burden associated with an international student taking a year off is greater than for domestic students.
Vice Chair for Education Joe Martin, a fourth-year Commerce student, said the Committee will conduct a dinner and meet and greet next Thursday with MSN and CSSS to discuss these issues. Dean of Students Allen Groves will also participate in the meeting, he said.
This meeting is the first event Honor has conducted with these groups since it held a dinner with the Mainland Student Network last January.
"[These meetings are] good because we see so many international Chinese students reported to Honor,” Martin said. “We’re trying to work more closely with them … and we’re inviting Dean Groves to come talk to them and talk about the importance of Honor.”
Martin said the genesis of the event was a student who recently expressed interest in presenting his interactions with the Honor system and his history with the informed retraction.
“This event started, basically, because we have a student who just came back from the IR who’s an international Chinese student,” Martin said. “He reached out to us and said he wanted to share his story.”
Committee Chair Nicholas Hine, a fourth-year College student, said this presents an exciting opportunity.
“I’m particularly excited about [this event],” Hine said. “It’s very rare that we find a student to speak publicly about his or her experience with Honor, particularly if they’ve taken an IR or been expelled.”
In addition to furthering the understanding of the honor system among international students, Committee members said they are also looking to determine the particular impacts of the informed retraction on this particular demographic.
Fourth-year Architecture Representative Tyler Pitt said he is part of a group currently investigating the impact of the informed retraction on international students, particularly looking at whether there are any ways in which the Honor Committee might lessen existing burdens.
“We have a lot of concerns about how the IR affects international students,” Pitt said. “We’re looking into that, seeing what are the financial burdens associated with visas and coming back after an IR and [how] the Honor Committee can help.”
Pitt said a report on the issue should be ready in the coming weeks.
The Committee is also working to understand student perspectives on the single sanction, and determine why some groups generate more honor code violation reports than others. Martin said the Committee is co-hosting a single sanction discussion with Sustained Dialogue later this week, an event he hopes will shed light on student perspective.
“This is really the first discussion we’ve had about [the single sanction] since the informed retraction, so it should be good to hear what the perspective is now compared to two years ago,” Martin said.
An investigation with Education School students is also underway, aimed at uncovering the reasons behind the patterns the Committee sees in student reporting. Hine said the study will be survey-based, and will be done with the help of Education School doctorate candidates.
“This is going to be a survey looking at reporting tendencies among students and people’s feelings about reporting since the IR,” Hine said. “It’s something that we don’t know a whole lot about, and we’re hoping that it will give us an idea of people’s sentiment towards reporting post-IR. We’re hoping it may give us a little more insight into why some students are reported more than others.”
“The survey is basically ready to go out,” Hine said. “We’ll have a presentation before December, so we’re excited about that.”
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