The Honor Committee heard from three representatives of the Lighting of the Lawn committee about their co-sponsorship during its Sunday meeting. The Committee also voted unanimously to pass an amendment to the bylaws that further elaborates on the express admission of guilt procedures — an action an accused student can take during the sanctioning process in order to receive protections from expulsion on certain occasions.
The co-sponsorship with the Committee this year will give LOTL $10,000 to contribute to their goal of raising $100,000 for the event. The co-sponsorship provides the Committee a table on South Lawn during the event where they can further promote awareness of the Committee and the importance of honor at the University.
Merritt Brazell, LOTL co-chair and fourth-year College student, explained the organizational structure of the LOTL committee, saying how it is composed of members of all four class councils and the fourth-year trustees, but operates independently from the University. Bryn Varanelli, LOTL finance co-chair and fourth-year Education student, discussed specifically the financial side of LOTL, which must be fully fundraised each year by the LOTL finance co-chairs. Varnelli noted, however, that they have had more difficulty this year in receiving funding due to administrative changes at the University, which have closed previous avenues for funding.
“This year, with it being our 25th [anniversary] and some of the administrative roles changing within the University, it's been a little bit trickier to gather the funding that we need for this year [because] a lot of our traditional funding paths have changed,” Varanelli said.
To conclude the LOTL discussion, Thomas Ackleson, Committee chair and fourth-year Engineering student, asked the LOTL committee chairs about ways the Committee could spread word about the event and contribute to its marketing.
The Committee then moved to vote on an amendment to the Committee bylaws that further specifies the language regarding the express admission of guilt policy, which will now be implemented into the Committee’s procedures moving forward.
The amendment changes the timeline for the express admission of guilt procedure and now requires students to do so before the Pre-Hearing Conference — a meeting that clarifies the charges, evidence and hearing procedures. Before this change, accused students could admit guilt any time before the hearing.
According to Seamus Oliver, chair of the policies and procedures subcommittee and fourth-year College representative, the change was made in an effort to align the express admission of guilt procedure more with the timeline of other major actions students can take under current bylaws — such as requesting the case be dismissed on bad faith, requesting joint cases between multiple students heard separately or requesting multiple accusations against a single student be heard independently.
“The goal here is when a student expressly admits guilt, we have [procedures] in place to check … that the thing they're admitting to is the thing they were reported for,” Oliver said. “This clarifies some timelines around when the student can submit the express admission of guilt, which is anytime before the Pre-Hearing Conference, which is when the rest of the major motions are due,” Oliver said.
Caelin Rowell, vice chair for operations and fourth-year Commerce student, then shared with the Committee three more co-sponsorship opportunities that the Committee recently agreed to sponsor — a middle school debate tournament run by the Charlottesville Debate League, an event with the Black Graduate and Professional Student Organization and the Achoostics a capella group fall concert.
Looking forward, the Committee went over events they plan on hosting at the different schools across the University as finals season approaches. George Langhammer, Batten representative and graduate student, discussed setting up an event with a Chick-fil-A breakfast for Batten students.
“Chick-fil-A breakfast has been very popular in the past, and to get breakfast, you have to fill out a survey about your opinions on honor and what honor means to you,” Langhammer said.
Beyond Batten, Ryan Dallas, Data Science representative and graduate student, mentioned an event that Kayla Kim, Data Science representative and third-year Data Science student, have been working on organizing. The event is titled Snacks and Snuggles, where they hope to bring a therapy dog into the School of Data Science in early December for students to interact with.
Lastly, Penelope Molitz, School of Education and Human Development representative and fourth-year Education student, mentioned doing a “Coffee Crawl” for upperclassman Education students, with hopes of better engaging in dialogue about the Committee during the event. The Committee would promote this dialogue by tabling at each coffee shop in the crawl to spark conversation about honor and its importance.
Because upperclassmen in Education generally participate in student-teacher programs in the Charlottesville community, they are not as often in the classroom as underclassmen. The “Coffee Crawl” would therefore target these upperclassmen so that they could learn more about the Committee outside of the classroom setting.
“Something that we trialed last year … was a coffee crawl where we had tabs set up around coffee shops," Molitz said. “This year, we would really love to table at every single stop of the coffee crawl and just speak to our upperclassmen, who we really don't see in the classroom [as much as underclassmen].”
The Honor Committee will be having its next meeting on Sunday at 7 p.m. Meetings can be attended both in-person in Newcomb Hall 480 or via Zoom. Previous meeting minutes, as well as the meeting Zoom links, are accessible from their website.
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