Madison House appoints Bass as interim executive director
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During its first meeting of the school year, the Honor Committee proposed an amendment concept that would create a two-trial system for University students found guilty of an honor offense while participating in the Semester at Sea program.\nAs the academic sponsor of the program, the University upholds the same honor system applied on Grounds during Semester at Sea voyages.\nAfter each voyage ends, the Committee takes a moment to look at any Honor-related events that may have occurred on the ship to see if there are any "tweaks" that can be made to its honor system, Honor Chair David Truetzel said.\n"We sort of look through everything when the most recent voyage ends" each summer, Truetzel said.\nDuring last night's meeting, Committee members noted that after honor orientation this summer, one area of concern was whether University students found guilty of an honor offense while at sea should be kicked out of both Semester at Sea and the University.\nWithin the current system, all students participating in the Semester at Sea program are considered "part of the Community of Trust" and "are subject to the University of Virginia's Honor Code," according to Section 3 of the Voyager's Handbook. Therefore, each student is informed about the honor system before he participates in the program, Truetzel said.\nWhile at sea, if a student is found guilty of an honor offense by a three-fourths majority of his Hearing Panel, they are expelled from the program immediately. If they are a University student, they are also withdrawn from the University.\nEven though all students in the program are by definition part of the Community of Trust, however, the handbook later states that because of the "unique nature of the Semester at Sea program ... the By-laws and Constitution of the University of Virginia's Honor Committee shall not apply," and instead a different system has been created for the program. Truetzel said that on the "700 person ship" a vast majority of participants are not University students, creating a community different from the University's.\nTo reconcile these two communities, Truetzel proposed a system that would include two trials for guilty University students. Truetzel said the basic notion of the amendment is, "If you are a U.Va. student who is found guilty on the ship, that guilty verdict would essentially become a report to the Honor Committee" in Charlottesville to be reinvestigated. Although the Committee may choose to use materials and information from the original trial at sea during its later investigation, the student would essentially be put through another honor trial to determine whether he should be removed from the Community of Trust in Charlottesville as well as the Semester at Sea program.\nLaw representative Thomas Worthy, however, is concerned that creating a two-trial system would create a "double standard" between the community on the ship and the other community in Charlottesville.\n"Semester at Sea is an extended arm of Charlottesville," Worthy said. "I don't think the system needs to be watered down because they're in the middle of the ocean."\nInstead of creating a separate honor system for the students in the program, Worthy said he thinks that the Committee instead "can achieve fairness by ensuring that the investigation, I-panel and trial [at the Semester at Sea Program] are equivalent to what we have here."\nWithout an honor system that is standard for both the University and Semester at Sea program, Worthy said he thinks there is no way to ensure that all students are on an equal playing field.\nAs of now, the Committee will continue to discuss and consider the Semester at Sea amendment concept, meeting next Sunday to further examine the issue.
After a semester filled with open trials, amendment proposals and a good deal of discussion, Honor Committee members reflected on the past year and discussed goals for next. To help fund new initiatives, the Committee has been granted a maximum approved amount of $84,000 from the Alumni Endowment fund, Committee Chair David Truetzel said. He said while the commonwealth provides the Committee with money for operating costs such as office supplies, the endowment fund of alumni donations allows the Committee to explore ”special or additional initiatives.”One such initiative is the creation of an online case processing system, which will improve the efficiency and expediency of case processing, Truetzel said. Vice Chair for Investigations Mary Siegel added that she hopes to “work closely with the technology ad-hoc committee to develop ideas as to how Honor should best outline the investigation process once it gets online.” Siegel noted though that the module may not make it online this year. In addition to the possible online case processing system, a large amount of the funds from the Alumni Endowment fund will be directed toward education and outreach efforts. The amount of funds has been “beefed up” from previous years in hopes of pursuing more events and projects on education, Truetzel said. Truetzel said he hopes to build on the previous Committee’s education successes such as the “revamping” of the educator pool. Before the change, educators worked in a few large groups and could not oversee many outreach projects at one time. The change in the educator system created about 17 smaller groups of educators to carry out several outreach projects at once.“This made [the educator pool] a much more effective group,” Truetzel said. In addition to the revamped educator pool, Vice Chair for Education Rob Atkinson said he believes one of the Committees’s most successful endeavors this past term was an education campaign informing the University community about conscientious retractions. “Before the campaign only two conscientious retractions were filed, [after] we had something like 18 filed,” Atkinson said. Siegel hopes to continue this effort on conscientious retraction education. She said she hopes to collect professors’ overall opinions about conscientious retractions as well as discuss the positive and negative aspects of a conscientious retraction with them.In connection with education, outreach will also continue to be a major goal for the Committee. In the coming year, Committee educators hope to target international students in particular. As more and more international students come to the University, it has become an important goal for the Committee to educate them and ensure they do not commit offenses. With $7,000 to spend toward diversity initiatives, Truetzel said he also hopes to reach out to other minority groups. He said he recognizes that while the Committee can form relationships with minority group leaders next semester, they will have a limited time to work with these groups before the Committee members graduate in the spring. He said he hopes, though, that the committee can form lasting relationships that will carry on as leaders and members change. “We want to get to know these different communities better and on a more personal level” Atkinson said, adding that he believes reaching out through co-sponsorships and dialogue will help promote personal connections between the Committee and these groups.Vice Chair for Trials Alex Carroll added that reaching out to these groups will hopefully increase diversity in the committee as well. “One thing we work on every year is diversity,” Carroll said, citing diversity improvement within the committee and officer pools. JJ Litchford, vice chair for community relations said while he plans to continue dialogue with minority communities, he also hopes to reach out to other groups, such as alumni and businesses on the Corner. “So many of the restaurants have a Virginia Honor sticker,” he said, “[They should know what] their role is in the community of trust so that the sticker is meaningful.” In terms of trials, Carroll said past Vice Chair for Trials Sophie Staples made “great strides towards improving our system procedurally” before the end of her term.Carroll cited, for instance, the bylaw amendment enacted this semester that created the 10-day “Trial Request Period,” and required accused students to choose a trial date from a list of possible dates provided by Honor. The amendment is meant to improve trial processing efficiency and expediency, Carroll said. The Committee also discussed another amendment this past semester that would no longer require two students from an accused student’s school on their jury panel. These initiatives “are great steps in right direction” Carroll said. After two open trials this semester, there has been a good deal of discussion regarding the Committee’s transparency.“Transparency is going to be a big issue for us [over the next term],” Honor Chair David Truetzel said. Truetzel said he plans on inviting members of the University community who work with the Family Education Rights and Prvacy Protection Act, a program that restricts the Committee from releasing certain information about students, to speak to the Committee. He expressed hope that this opportunity will give Committee members a foundational knowledge of the law so that they can then begin discussing the relationship between protecting students’ rights and making the Committee more transparent. For the summer, Truetzel said there will be a time set aside for the Committee to learn all the details and nuances of their positions without the added stress of schoolwork that is present during the year. “We’re setting all of this up now so that when we do want to start we’ve already got the wheels in motion,” Atkinson said.
Looking back on the 2008-09 academic year, University Judiciary Committee members expressed optimism about both this year’s developments within the organization and potential future efforts.Members of the current Executive Committee said they were satisfied with UJC’s recently instituted online system. In particular, they cited the position of Senior Data Manager, which was created this past semester to help ensure that UJC’s online system and Web site remain well-maintained, as a positive addition.The position, which is now jointly filled by College Graduate Rep. Gavin Reddick and Engineering Rep. Yiding Li, is responsible for formally updating and maintaining UJCs Web site and online case processing, providing technical support to UJC, gathering statistical data for the Executive Committee and archiving electronic trial records and recordings. The amendment to create the position was drafted by Vice Chair for First Years Will Bane, who said he believes that the position will aid UJC in several ways as the organization heads into next year.“We want to be up to date with our online system,” and ensure that it remains streamlined and free of errors, UJC Chair Michael Chapman said. The online system and the information it provides helps UJC to be “as transparent as we can be without breaking confidentiality,” which, Chapman added, helps to educate the University community about UJC.The Senior Data Managers are required to collect data about the number of cases UJC judges throughout the semester, how many times each Standard of Conduct was violated and demographic data for both UJC as well as students who go through the system, including complainants and accused students. The data is released every semester, a process started at the beginning of this past year.Data released this semester showed that certain minority students, such as black students, students participating in the Greek system and males were reported at a higher rate than other members of the University.Chapman said improving diversity outreach and UJC representation have been major goals for the organization this past year and remain efforts that UJC will pursue in the future.Throughout the semester, UJC “did a lot of discussion with different groups,” such as a joint meeting with the Minority Rights Coalition, Chapman said. Chapman added that he hopes to start forming relationships between UJC representatives and student leaders from different contracted independent organizations across Grounds. With these liaisons, UJC will be able to better communicate with different student groups and CIOs will be able to more readily bring their concerns about the body’s performance to UJC, Chapman said.Chapman also said that he hopes to promote diversity within the actual committee so that UJC is representative of the entire student body.“The student body is always changing their views, and opinions are always changing ... we need to be representative of that” Chapman said.Vice Chair for Trials Marnie Coons also expressed her hopes to diversify UJC as well. Coons said UJC members attended the Office of African American Affairs’ activities fair, which helped UJC to “reach out in other communities that haven’t been represented that well.” In addition, Coons said she plans to continue to work with MRC through discussions and symposiums to help these efforts.Though a great deal of effort will be placed on reaching out to minority groups in the coming year, education and outreach efforts apply to all members of the University community, UJC members said.“I think one of UJC’s biggest goals is absolutely going to be outreach and education into the greater University community” Coons said. “Our least favorite question to hear is ‘What’s the difference between UJC and Honor?’”UJC will target first-year students in particular, especially during orientation and their first few weeks as students. “I’ll be giving orientation speeches to first years in the summer, so that they feel they have a sense of ownership over UJC,” Bane said.Moving forward, more specific bylaw changes also could be an area of emphasis for the organization. Though UJC made some changes to its bylaws, such as the creation of Senior Data Manager, members voted against adding a referendum to the spring ballot that could have increased the number of College representatives from three to five. “We will continue to look critically at our constitution and bylaws to make sure they are the best possible vehicles to serve the University community,” Bane said.Overall, UJC also hopes that students will uphold the Standards of Conduct during the summer months while they are away from Grounds.“Safety and respect are things that don’t end over the summer ... they’re year-round,” Chapman said. “We as UJC wish to maintain and promote this sense of safety and respect.”
The Honor Committee heard the first-ever report from Public Policy School representatives during its weekly meeting last night. Fourth-year Batten students Jeff Bashaw and Tom Olszewski are the first Public Policy representatives on the Committee, and both students aimed to address concerns and goals meant specifically for the University’s newest school.“This is the first year we have representatives throughout the school,” Olszewkski said, “and we really want to make sure it’s given representation because it is new and not very well known.”Bashaw was not present during the meeting, so Olszewski presented goals and concerns on behalf of the Public Policy School before the Committee. One major area of concern Olszewski noted was the school’s small number of students in comparison to other schools on Grounds.The Public Policy School “has different issues, especially because of its numbers,” which can affect issues of confidentiality, Olszewski said. Currently, the Committee requires that at least three members from an accused student’s school must be present on his or her jury panel during a trial. But in a school as small as the Public Policy School, which has only 60 students, Olszewski said it would be difficult to find students unaware of the facts of the trial.“We want to make sure confidentiality is always present,” Olszewski said.To help ease this concern, Honor Chair David Truetzel said the Committee will consider a constitutional amendment in the fall semester that would no longer mandate that three students from an accused student’s school be on a student’s randomly selected jury. Olszewski said he would support such a proposal.In addition, Olszewski said it is important to educate the Public Policy School and its constituents about the Committee and “how it functions in a graduate setting.”“It is important that we enforce what [the Committee] stands for at the graduate level and to remind people that we still uphold the honor system,” Olszewski said.Olszewski said because Public Policy courses involve a great deal of research, it is critical that students are aware of types of plagiarism and proper citation. Other overall issues of lying, cheating and stealing will be discussed with the Public Policy School community, including faculty members.In addition, Olszewki said he hopes to meet with Harry Harding, who will become the first dean of the Public Policy School July 1. Truetzel also expressed an interest in meeting with Harding.“[Harding will] obviously be very influential with setting that tone for everything, but [the Committee] especially,” Truetzel said. “It is important for the committee to make sure that [the Committee] is sort of a part of the foundational culture [as the school grows].”
The 2008-09 Honor Committee released statistics last week about the demographics of cases reviewed during its term. Although the data dealt specifically with cases reported, accused and brought to trial, the information also lends itself to several discussions about some students’ concerns pertaining to the University’s honor system and diversity.ReportingOne of the most obvious areas of interest within the statistics were the numbers that dealt specifically with reporting. According to the statistics, a total of 64 cases were brought before the past Committee. Of these cases, 27 reports were brought against white students, 21 against black students, 11 against Asian and/or Asian-American students, four against Latinos and four against students of unknown race.“When I saw [the statistics], I was a little bit surprised at the disproportionate number of minority students reported compared to [white] students,” said Vice Chair for Investigations Mary Siegel, a third-year College student. “Looking at these numbers, there are almost as many [black] students reported as [white] students, which is not at all proportional [to the actual number of students enrolled at the University],” Siegel said.These concerns with respect to reporting extend beyond just Committee members, however.“In terms of data collection, I can’t help but be startled by the discrepancy,” African-American Affairs Dean Maurice Apprey said. Another alleged discrepancy is the ratio of cases brought against males to those brought against females. The statistics show that 48 males were reported of committing an honor offense, whereas only 18 females were reported.Some members of the University attribute such statistical discrepancies to spotlighting, which is when certain minorities — such as blacks, athletes and Asians — are reported at a much higher rate than white students for reasons like standing out in the room more, as well as some reporters’ inherent biases.“From a psychology point of view, sometimes you are going to look at what’s different in the room,” said Black Student Alliance President-elect Lauren Boswell, a third-year Architecture student.Siegel said she hopes to help explore the reasons behind allegedly biased reporting by speaking to reporters more frequently than the current system allows.“I think the first place we have to start is reporters and ask them why they suspected this person of an the Committee offense,” Siegel said. “If there seems to be a pattern, then the Committee can try and correct that pattern.” Currently reporters of an alleged honor offense are involved in the first interview during the investigations process and then during a rebuttal, but are removed from the investigations process, Siegel said. Removing the reporter from the process ensures that his or her bias does not play a part in investigations, Siegel added, but does not ensure that there are not any biased motivations behind the initial report. Accusations and TrialsAfter students are reported of having committed an alleged honor offense, the case is taken up by the Investigative Panel, which is comprised of three rotating Committee members, and examined to see if an honor offense occurred. If the panel believes an offense occurred, the student is formally accused and is brought to trial.According to the statistics excluding last weekend’s trials, 35 students were formally accused of committing an honor offense by the I-Panel, 13 of whom were black. Twelve white students were accused and 10 Asian and/or Asian-American students also were brought to trial. A total of 29 trials, including last weekend’s trials, occurred during the past Committee’s term. Of the 11 white students brought to trial, six were found not guilty, whereas 14 of the 19 black students brought to trial were found not guilty. A total of 32 males, meanwhile, were brought to trial, nine of whom were found guilty. Comparatively, four of the 11 female students brought to trial were found guilty.After looking at the statistics, several Committee members said they believe that any bias present in the beginning of the honor trial process is lost during the process.“Once a case comes into the system ... these students are being found guilty at the same rate” regardless of race, 2007-08 Committee Chair Jess Huang said.Fourth-year College student Carlos Oronce, co-chair of the Minority Rights Coalition, disagreed, however.“I challenge the notion that students of different color are on par with white students” after trials, Oronce said, noting that though Committee members have told him a “balance” eventually exists, his own data analysis yields different conclusions. He explained that his conclusions are based on a study done six years ago; the Committee has yet to do a similar study since.“You’ll see that there’s something like a 6 percent difference in guilt rate between [white] students and black students,” Oronce said. “Six percent comes off to me as a huge difference.”Oronce added that he believes that a more formal study needs to be done to accurately see and analyze the alleged disparities. Siegel also said she believes the Committee “needs to look at ways to correct these imbalances” regardless of whether the imbalances come into play during the actual investigation and trial process.Representation, Recruitment and RetentionSeveral members of the University community also have expressed concern about representation within the actual Committee itself in regards to diversity.“I think if you look at the Committee and support officer pools, they are admittedly not very diverse,” said Committee Chair David Truetzel, a third-year Commerce student. La Alianza Chair Carolina Ferrerosa, a fourth-year College student, agreed, noting that one of her organization’s major concerns is increasing diversity within the Committee.“We would like to see more of a push” to get more minority representatives on the Committee, and make sure that “the Committee is realistic when it looks in the mirror,” Ferrerosa said.Members and non-members alike hope that by increasing minority representation within the Committee, other diversity issues can be addressed, like increasing outreach and personal relationships between minority contracted independent organizations and the Committee. Vice Chair for Education Rob Atkinson, a third-year College student, said he already has had several meetings aimed at improving education efforts with some of these groups. He added that he feels it is important to create a personal relationship between these groups and the Committee before more formal relationships can be developed.“We want to take into account the concerns or views of the different communities when we reach out to those communities,” Atkinson said. Reaching out to these groups, Truetzel added, will help ensure that all students feel like the system belongs to them, no matter their race or gender.“When you lack diversity ... you don’t have diversity of thought, diversity of ideas,” Truetzel said.Apprey, meanwhile, agreed that increasing minority representation on the Committee could lead to “healthy conversation, healthy debates” and could help promote “further cultural competence” and understanding.To help increase representation, the Committee has taken steps to improve recruitment and students attracted to joining the Committee. BSA President-elect Boswell noted that the Committee has made an effort to help promote recruitment among the black student community, holding two honor education classes during both the fall and spring semesters this academic year that encouraged members of the black community to join the Committee.Boswell said that first-year students in the black community often are approached by a lot of different programs focused on black students their first semester to create “a sense of family and place here” at the University. It is therefore sometimes difficult, however, to attract first-year students that are minorities within the Committee and other organizations during their first semesters, Boswell said.By holding an education class during the spring, Boswell said, the Committee “got outstanding turnout for minorities.”The Committee and BSA also held a study hall that discussed both the Committee and UJC. Although Boswell said she thought it was a success, she hopes in the future that it will become more “casual” so that students will feel comfortable enough to have personal conversations.Despite these efforts, there are still many things the Committee can do to encourage minorities to participate in the honor system, Boswell said. Even though the Committee attends The Source, the black community’s activities fair, Boswell said she does not know if it is “the most effective way” to help recruitment.Oronce said consistent outreach efforts to these different communities, rather than just right before elections or the beginning of the year, could prove helpful for recruitment or maintaining relationships.In addition to issues of recruitment and representation, Oronce said that many minority students end up quitting the Committee because they feel uncomfortable and marginalized. Boswell added that officer pool meetings can be isolating as students generally sit with their friends. Though she said this might be found in any organization, she also noted that it is imperative that the Committee makes sure every minority student feels comfortable and included if they wish to maintain diversity.“This past year, there has been a move towards getting a group that is more representative,” Huang said.Oronce also said he believes that “this year is definitely a lot better than last year” in terms of representation within both the Committee and the support officer pool, but that there is still room for improvement.“Once we fix our problems internally, we will be in a better place to discuss” some of these other issues of diversity and the Committee, Siegel added. FAC and DABThe Committee’s educational outreach efforts are not limited to students. Within the Committee, the Faculty Advisory Committee and the Diversity Advisory Board were created to help address issues with faculty members and diversity organizations. The FAC chair meets with faculty members once a month to discuss faculty concerns and teach aspects of honor, while the DAB works with Honor to increase Honor relevancy and understanding with diverse groups.A majority of the Committee offense reports currently come from faculty members instead of students, Siegel said. As a result, faculty outreach and education have become increasingly important.“Something that we’re going to have to work really hard [on] is getting faculty to realize there is an inherent problem of spotlighting,” Siegel said. “If we get them to realize this is an issue, then that’s a great place to start.”Apprey, who is a psychiatric medicine professor as well, said he believes certain steps can be taken by professors and faculty members to help reduce honor offenses. “Given that the overwhelming proportion of cases are about plagiarism, I think that faculty in the first couple of years should find a way to teach at least three methods of citations,” Apprey said. In addition, Apprey suggested that professors emphasize multiple citations.While the FAC can help reach out and educate faculty members to help address some of these issues, DAB has the potential to reach out to minority CIOs and hear input from organization members.“I think DAB has some really great people who are willing to change and are working towards change,” Boswell said, adding that although she believes there are some negative diversity stereotypes associated with the Committee, these concerns should not consequently be transferred onto DAB.Oronce, however, said DAB and other minority-related initiatives implemented by the Committee can often times become “compartmentalized.”“They don’t make it so it’s an issue everyone worries about,” Oronce said. A Committee member is assigned to these groups and acts as a liason between the Committee and the group, reporting back to the Committee after group meetings. Oronce said, however, that the system forces participation and there is no longer a “genuine interest to participate in these groups.” He added that the MRC leaders were not contacted for their input about various initiatives from the DAB.Although Oronce said he was disappointed in DAB’s performance last year, he believes that as someone who has sat on DAB for the past two years, there remains a chance for improvement and reform.Other ConcernsWhile the above concerns constitute many of the most significant and widely discussed concerns about diversity and the Committee, other concerns exist.Some University community members said the single-sanction system holds greater consequences for minority students than for the rest of the University community.“Given that it’s a single-sanction system, all of these questions have to be interrogated more fully,” Apprey said, because it makes the consequences of biased reporting, investigations and possible trials that much more significant.Single sanction also severely affects international students, Ferrerosa said, noting that deportation as a result of the Committee offenses is a primary concern.Ferrerosa said suspension would be a better option, as the student could then “serve their time” and come back to the University at a later point in time.Currently, there is “not a general conversation” within the Committee as to whether suspension and a multi-sanction system would be better, Ferrerosa said, but said she believes that there should be.“People in those communities don’t support the single sanction,” Oronce said in regards to committees within the MRC. This anti-single sanction sentiment then has a negative effect on jury selection, which Oronce said he believes is biased as well. If a student is chosen for jury duty and is against single sanction, it is more unlikely that he or she will be asked to participate in helping adjudicate a case, Oronce said. This means that the jury evaluating a minority student’s case is less likely composed of representative or similar students as the defendant, Oronce said, a fact which may compromise a student’s right to a fair trial.Oronce also added that because many of these communities are so small and close-knit, it is difficult to find members that do not have conflicts of interest to participate on these juries. He hopes that the results of compiling data on jury panels, which the Committee has said it will begin, will explore whether juries are truly biased or not.Beyond The CommitteeMany Committee members also are concerned that some of prejudices that manifest themselves within the Committee are simply part of the outside world, and thus much more difficult to solve by the Committee.“While there are definitely concerns with regards to certain minority groups ... a lot of the problems we see, we also see in regards to the entire student body,” Atkinson said.Apprey pointed out that for many students, college may be the first time some students engage with peoples of different races. Consequently, students must think outside of their comfort zones and “cross-class, cross-ethic, cross-gender” to “correct, overturn or retain” the system, Apprey said.Though the need to address these issues may exist outside the Committee’s constitutional responsibilities, Atkinson said that “even if it something isn’t within the structural bounds of the Committee, they concern the Community of Trust” and thus the Committee as well.A lot of these issues are brought up because of the Committee, Huang said, but they would exist regardless of whether the Committee existed.“We can’t just sit around and say these are so abstract we shouldn’t deal with them,” Huang added. “They are absolutely worth pursuing and working with.”Plans for the Future“I really think that the Honor system exists for the [University] community, but our statistics have shown ... that minority communities feel like they are not a part of that community,” Huang said.As such, several University community members believe something must be done to right the current situation.There must be full participation by all students in the system, Apprey said. “If you don’t like the system, then you must participate in it,” he said, adding that he believes all students have an “ethic of responsibility” to participate in the system, especially if they feel that improvements are needed.Boswell also noted that though there are concerns about diversity and the Committee among black students, BSA and the Committee have a good relationship with one another, which she hopes to continue and support. Ferrerosa also said it is important for the Committee to continue educating the University community about the honor system, what it can do for students and to target groups that have felt misrepresented or underrepresented in the past.“A lot of these communities feel like the Committee will talk at us but not engage in these difficult issues,” Ferrerosa said, adding that she hopes education and outreach can help address this problem.Oronce said he thinks it is imperative to create long-term goals with short-term benchmarks to solve the issues, rather than attempting to resolve these issues with each new Committee.“The Committee is only thinking one year,” Oronce said. “They’re not thinking three years or five years.”These current issues and initiatives are understood by the Committee to be ongoing developments, however, Huang said. “Yes, it can be discouraging at times to see that there isn’t immediate progress, but I think that the Committee and the minority community and the overall community shouldn’t be discouraged,” Huang said.Truetzel, meanwhile, said he hopes the current Committee will continue to meet with minority and diversity groups on Grounds and engage in constructive dialogue and cooperation, so that at least some of the most talked about concerns can be resolved with time.
Last week, the Honor Committee encouraged University students to participate in its annual Honor Awareness Week with the hope of engaging and educating the University community about what the honor system entails.After hosting a series of forums and distributing flyers, the Committee concluded last week’s activities by hosting an “Honor benefits benefit” Thursday night. According to the Committee’s Web site, the benefit was intended to give faculty, students and other members of the University’s community of trust the “opportunity ... to interact with those who are most knowledgeable of the honor process and to ask questions and voice concerns.”Students in attendance Thursday were handed orange flyers on which were printed the words, “I BENEFIT from the Community of Trust.” Below these words was a list of five different ways honor benefits students, including how the Office of the Dean of Students grants students interest-free loans and how a student has the right to file a conscientious retraction if the student believes he or she has committed an honor offense.Beyond these brief explanations, though, various members of the University community say the honor system benefits — or fails to benefit — the community of trust in more complex and debatable ways.“I BENEFIT from the Community of Trust”When asked, “What are the benefits of honor?” University students and faculty gave a variety of different answers.Some members of the University community said tangible rewards are the most important benefits of honor. For example, second-year Architecture student Lauren Ulmer, who attended the honor benefits benefit, said she believes “it’s really nice that you can leave stuff out at places” and not have it stolen. Other students at the event said some of the more concrete benefits of honor include being able to tell a professor about an absence without providing a note, and also being able to pay a taxi fare at a later point in time by charging the ride to the Office of the Dean of Students.“What students want in the end is to point to one small story of how honor has affected them,” said JJ Litchford, the Committee’s vice chair for community relations.These actual benefits are manifestations of the philosophical concepts that the Committee is based on, outgoing Committee Chair Jess Huang said.It is the “smaller and more tangible benefits that go to represent honor as a whole,” and the two concepts are ultimately interconnected, Litchford said.Several structural elements of the Committee also help to promote honor as an ideal, incoming Chair David Truetzel said.One such procedural element was the elimination of the “non-toleration” clause from the Committee’s constitution, Truetzel said. According to this clause, it was not only an honor offense to commit an act of lying, cheating or stealing oneself, but it was also an honor offense to see such an act occur without reporting it.While Truetzel acknowledged that many people — especially “old-time guys” — preferred the inclusion of this clause, the removal of the clause made reporting cases less about following the rules and more about enhancing the community of trust. Now, the motivation for reporting cases should be more “about doing it because it is the right thing to do,” Truetzel said. More than just studentsThe benefits not only affect students, but also the relationships they have with faculty and other members of the University community.Astronomy Prof. Charles Tolbert said many of the benefits students experience in the classroom stem from the fact that professors believe in and follow the honor system as well.“I find that on the whole, relationships are friendlier between students and faculty [because professors] don’t feel like they have to be a policeman,” Tolbert said.In addition, honor extends beyond a student’s time at the University. Some believe students do not learn to fully appreciate the benefits of honor until they leave the community of trust.“I found that the alumni community at the University has an even stronger affinity for the sense of honor than the University inculcates in its students,” third-year Law student Carey Mignerey said.Mignerey, who served as the 2003-04 Committe chair, said students take for granted that they can trust one another, which makes “the fondness for the honor system [grow] stronger once [they] leave.”Commerce Lecturer Lucien Bass, who is also a University alumnus and previous member of the Committee, reiterated this idea.“If you ask alumni about their experience at the University, the vast majority bring up honor,” Bass said. “Once you get away ... it may have more meaning to you.”The notion that the honor system will continue to benefit a student long after he or she leaves Grounds is, however, a concept that is difficult for Committee members to convey to students, Truetzel said.“It’s hard to describe, but it’s very real,” Mignerey said.Outside the benefitsIt would, furthermore, be difficult to argue that honor at some point in a University student’s career does not affect him, Huang said.“No one can say there are no benefits,” Huang said.Despite the belief that honor offers benefits to everyone in one form or another, however, many groups — especially minority groups — on Grounds feel that the benefits of honor are not what they could be, and that the Committee has yet to actualize the honor system’s potential. As part of Honor Awareness Week, the Committee, its Diversity Advisory Board and various minority contracted independent organizations on Grounds held an honor diversity forum to generate conversation about how honor fails to benefit minorities in certain ways.Several University minority groups on Grounds came together to discuss issues such as Committee recruitment and the alleged “spotlighting” of minority students and “dimming” of white students.Many minority students feel that they suffer from a double standard in the reporting of honor offenses. Even if minority students are treated equally during the actual honor trial process, they are much more likely to be accused of honor offenses than white students, Tolbert said at the forum, citing trial statistics.Students often claim that spotlighting, or the idea that minority students are reported for honor offenses at a much higher rate than white students, is an issue that needs to be resolved within the system, Tolbert said. Meanwhile, students said there simultaneously exists a process of dimming, through which some University community members tend to look the other way when white students commit offenses.These racial and ethnic issues can affect how students perceive the University’s honor system and can mask the potential benefits the system offers. Addressing these issues and reemphasizing the benefits of honor, though, is a complicated problem.Fourth-year College student Sterling Elmore added that it is difficult to encourage students that do not resemble the Committee’s members to become and remain involved with the Committee. Because the Committee itself is not very diverse and struggles to maintain diversity, fixing perceived problems within the system can be difficult.“The Committee to a certain extent is not entirely representative of the University as a whole,” Elmore said. “Honor tends to be an insular community.”Some students believe, however, that it will take more than just making the Committee physically look like the rest of the University to ensure that all groups on Grounds equally feel the benefits of honor.“Just because something looks like you doesn’t mean they are working for you,” said Khalifa Sultan Lee, vice chair of the Minority Rights Coalition.Because the Committee is elected by the student body, it should be representative of the student body — but in more ways than just physical appearance, Lee said.Elmore — who helped run the diversity forum — hopes that events such as the forum will create incentives for the Committee to acknowledge these issues, reach out to minority groups and create solutions for the future.“This [forum] gave different groups an opportunity to hold Honor accountable to these improvements,” Elmore said.Other criticismsMinority groups, though, are not the only University community members who have criticized the honor system and the Committee. Students and professors both voiced concerns about honor and made suggestions to help increase both the actual and perceived benefits of honor.Both Tolbert and Bass, for example, said in the past if a student saw another student lying, cheating or stealing, he or she would almost immediately report that student to the Committee. Each believes, however, that this is no longer the case. Today, reporting and upholding the honor system has been left up to faculty members rather than students.“The student body as a whole is more tolerant of cheating,” Tolbert said, noting that this lack of student involvement may be perceived as damaging the community of trust and limiting the perception of benefits that extend from it.Sam Leven, president of Hoos Against Single Sanction, agreed that students have chosen to participate less in the honor system.“I would not say that students are less trustworthy, but rather they are less trusting,” he said.Leven said he believes that the University’s single-sanction policy has diminished student reporting, which “has made cheating and stealing a little more commonplace,” Leven said, adding that he believes a multiple-sanction system could help to increase reporting rates. A change in sanctioning, however, is not enough to make the benefits of honor more readily available to students, he said. The Committee must also reach out to the student body and encourage students to report cases, he said.Mignerey also noted that while he respects the honor system, it has some fundamental flaws that must be addressed if University students are to continue perceiving honor as beneficial in their daily lives.When he first chose to join the Committee, Mignerey noticed the fact that the system “was not understood as widely as it should be ... I thought it was too procedural, and to a large extent I think that’s still true,” he said. This emphasis on procedure makes it more difficult for students to access honor and see the system’s benefits.Third-year Law student Robert Baldwin also said he believes one reason the Committee has failed to fully realize honor’s benefits on Grounds is the fact that the honor system is so entrenched in history.“In some ways, U.Va. has an unhealthy reliance on tradition which prevents you from questioning things,” Baldwin said. If members of the University community do not question the honor system’s current practices, little potential is left for improvement and an increase in benefits, Baldwin said.“In the ideal, the system makes a lot of sense,” Baldwin said, but the reality is that there is a “difference between the institutional bubble of being at school and the real world” that complicates issues, raises difficulties and ultimately can diminish benefits.Plans for the futureThough every member of the community of trust wants to believe that the honor system benefits them to the best of its potential, the reality is that it is a person-run system and is “imperfect,” Huang said.These debates and raised issues leave room for improvement by the Committee, she added.“No one can say it’s the same as from 1842 when it was a gentleman’s code,” Huang said, adding that, “Much of my time ... has been spent in educating everyone on not just what these procedures are but rather what are these values and why do these values exist.”Changing the way students view the honor system could have an impact on how or whether students perceive the benefits of honor.“Students are often unhappy or have misconceptions because the tendency is to understand honor as a punitive system rather than taking the time to reflect on the philosophical background [of honor as an ideal],” Huang said.Moving forward, with Truetzel as its new chair, the Committee is looking to reemphasize and help University community members pursue these philosophical ideals.“Part of my job is to get a feel for what the general consensus [of the student body is],” Truetzel said. By recognizing student and faculty needs — including minority groups’ concerns — Truetzel said the Committee can work to educate and include these students within the Committee. In time, the benefits of honor may become more real for these University community members, who currently are unhappy with the way parts of the system work.“With continuous education,” in conjunction with “community relations and outreach to groups that have concerns,” the Committee can help alleviate problems and increase benefits, Truetzel said.Improving relations with those associated with the University and groups dissatisfied with the Committee takes more than just e-mails or “a letter once a year,” Litchford said. He said he hopes that he can make personal contact with these groups to help promote the Committee and the honor system’s benefits.The effort must be shared, though, not just by the Committee, but by students themselves, Leven said.“Instead of the Honor Committee focusing on the benefits of honor, the student body should stop relying on the honor system to provide these benefits” and realize these benefits for itself, Leven said.Huang also said students must work with the Committee to recognize the advantages honor offers, in addition to the ways in which the system could be improved.“Part of it’s going to be a change in the attitude of the student body” to fully engage in and recognize these benefits, she said.
The outgoing Honor Committee met for the final time last night and released statistics about cases during its 2008-09 term, excluding yesterday’s closed trial. According to the data, the Committee reviewed a total of 64 cases during its term. Of these cases, 27 were brought against white students, 21 were brought against black students, 11 were brought against Asian and Asian-American students, four were brought against Latino students, and the remaining four were brought against students of unknown race.The statistics “don’t represent the University community,” former Vice Chair for Investigations Blaire Hawkins said, explaining that the percentage of minority students brought up on honor charges is disproportionate to the percentage of minority students enrolled at the University. “I think it’s clear that there’s something to be concerned about here.” Hawkins added that the Committee needs to determine the cause of this disparity.The numbers are “especially skewed when it comes to reports,” Hawkins said, noting that she believes reporting rates are a central concern that need to be addressed in the future. Black students also were formally accused of honor offenses at investigative panel on a more frequent basis than students of any other race or ethnicity. Thirteen of the 35 cases in which a student was formally accused involved a black student.“Some of the statistics in terms of ethnicities reflect our concerns that we have discussed in the Diversity Advisory Board,” former Committee Chair Jess Huang said.Hawkins said she believes the problem of reporting is a “two-sided issue” between the community reporting these cases and the Committee’s need to improve its education and outreach efforts. “The Committee has to start taking responsibility to that, and start paying attention to all sorts of different people,” Hawkins said.Once brought to trial though, only three black students were found guilty, whereas five white students were found guilty.The result of students found “guilty versus not guilty does sort of balance” out in the end, Hawkins said. Hawkins said the results shows that juries are mostly “even-handed.”Though there may be balance in the final phase of the trial process, however, Hawkins added that these statistics do not make up for the bias found earlier in case reporting and formal accusations from the I-panel.Hawkins also expressed non-diversity-related concerns about the number of students found guilty at trials. A total of 35 students were formally accused of committing an honor offense at investigative panel, but only 11 students were found guilty at trial. There were 29 trials in total. “I’m not saying that more people need to be found guilty,” Hawkins said, but the Committee “shouldn’t have a one to three ratio at trials.” Hawkins said the Committee needs to ensure that it is as thorough as it can be in its investigative panels and investigations process to help remedy these concerns.Compared to last year’s statistics, Huang noted that the number of varsity athletes reported and accused decreased significantly. Huang attributed this improvement to presentations given by the Committee to all athletic teams.The presentations included a series of case studies presented before the teams that involved the members actively participating in different scenarios involving honor issues, rather than the Honor Committee telling the athletes what honor is and how to report an offense, Huang said. She also added that this was the first year the Committee used such a project, and that this is a program she would encourage the future Committee to participate in during its term.Both Hawkins and Huang also noted the large increase in the number of cases handled this year compared to the previous term.“The Committee handled an incredibly larger number of cases than” last year’s Committee, Hawkins said. According to last year’s statistics, a total of 35 cases were reported, and only 26 students were formally accused of an honor offense by the I-panel. Hawkins said this is not necessarily indicative of any certain qualities of the past Committee, but shows the variations of the honor system from year to year in regards to reporting.The statistics for the past term will soon be available on the Committee’s Web site, Hawkins said. Students currently can view past year’s statistics on the site.
After deliberating for more than four hours at an open honor trial, a random student jury found fourth-year College student Jason Smith guilty of lying yesterday.The charges were brought forth by third-year College student Mary Siegel, incoming vice chair for investigations, and second-year College student Michelle Fox. Both Siegel and Fox acted as facilitators in Smith’s LASE 151 class, “Honor and Ethics Everyday Life,” in the past fall semester. The class was a pass/fail one-credit course that met once a week in small sections. According to testimony given by Siegel, the primary witness during the trial, LASE 151 was a class of about 40 students divided into three small sections, which were led by student facilitators. Fox and Siegel, who were two of the six students chosen to facilitate the small sections, led the section of 10 students of which Smith was a part. During the semester, the class was assigned to turn in an informal one- to two-page reflection paper Oct. 1 that discussed “what you were feeling about the class” Siegel said during the trial. Smith did not turn in the assignment and then was absent the next class meeting Oct. 8, she said. Smith e-mailed Siegel Oct. 9, explaining that his absence was a result of a family emergency. According to statements made by the counsel for the accused, Smith’s aunt was incarcerated during that time and Smith went home to help his family. Jeff Smith, brother of the accused and the fourth witness at the trial, said there was “a lot of fallout that needed to be attended to.”Smith again did not attend the class Oct. 15, however, and still had not turned in his reflection paper, Siegel said in her testimony. According to the facts of the trial presented by the counsel for the accused, Smith did not e-mail the facilitators about this second absence and “accepted that it was unexcused.” The entire LASE 151 class met in the Honor Committee’s trial room on the fourth floor Newcomb Oct. 22 for a guest speaker and Siegel and Fox decided to pull Smith aside to discuss his absences and reflection paper. During this time, Smith told Siegel and Fox that one of his absences was because his wallet had been stolen and that he had to go to the Bank of America to replace his credit cards and that the other absence was because he had a paper due in another class the next week and chose to miss LASE 151 to work on that assignment, Siegel said. While Smith provided explanations for his absences, he did not discuss why he had not turned his reflection paper in yet. Additionally, he did not mention the family emergency that he had discussed previously in an e-mail. When asked why he did not mention this excuse, he said he “didn’t want to reveal the extent of the nature of the family emergency.” According to the class’ syllabus, one-third of the student’s grades in the class came from participation and attendance and each student was allowed one unexcused absence and all other absences had to be discussed with Siegel or Fox. Though it was never clarified with Smith whether his absences were excused or not, Smith still expressed interest in passing the class, Siegel said during the trial.“Jason kept telling us he wanted to put forth effort” so that he could pass the class, Siegel said. As a result, Siegel and Fox assigned Smith an alternative assignment that consisted of two papers that were each to be three to four pages in length. Of the two papers, one of them was supposed to discuss the importance of the class, the purpose of coming to class and Smith’s reasons for missing the class twice. Siegel and Fox assigned the papers to be due Oct. 29. On that particular day, Siegel and Fox chose to cancel class to give their students the opportunity to work on their group projects for the class and Smith was given the option of submitting his papers either via e-mail or to Siegel’s mailbox in Newcomb.By Nov. 3, half a week after Smith’s modified due date, Siegel said she was sitting on the Lawn that day when Smith walked by her. Siegel told Smith that she still had not received his two papers. According to Siegel’s testimony, Smith told her he had already written the papers, they were on his flash drive and he would e-mail them to Siegel as soon as he got out of class. During the trial, Smith said he did not “particularly remember” telling Siegel his papers were on a flash drive. Both of the papers were turned in size-14 font and not in Times New Roman font, Siegel claimed. Though there were no references on the class’ syllabus about paper formatting, Siegel said she decided to “standardize” them into size 12 Times New Roman font. Once Siegel changed the size of the font, neither of the papers met the length requirements assigned to Smith by Siegel and Fox. When Fox asked why Smith had used the font that he did, Smith responded that his “computer does that.”Fox said Smith’s papers had “little to no effort put into them,” and that it was obvious he was “just doing the bare minimum.”Siegel and Fox asked Smith when he actually wrote the two papers and he said he had written each of them before their original due date of Oct. 29. Siegel said she then checked the date created function on the papers and saw that each of the papers were typed Nov. 3, the day Smith turned them in. In his paper, Smith attributed his absences to being sick and working to finish another assignment; he did not mention the family emergency or his allegedly lost wallet. Fox then held a meeting with Smith Nov. 11 to confront him about this discrepancy. Fox told Smith that she and Siegel felt he was being dishonest with them.Smith said he had completed the papers Oct. 27 or 28, before his Oct. 29 deadline, but that he had written the papers by hand because of a “nasty virus” on his computer. It was not until Nov. 3 around 7 p.m., after he had run into Siegel on the Lawn, that he typed the papers on a computer in the library. Smith said Siegel’s e-mail only asked him to clarify when he wrote the papers and not when he typed the papers and admitted that he could see how his comments “could be perceived as deceiving.”According to Fox’s testimony, Smith seemed to treat the situation very casually and said, “Hey, I’m a nice guy,” when she met with him. In addition to speaking with Smith, Fox asked him to bring his laptop to the meeting so she could check and see when the papers were typed on the laptop. Neither of the papers were on Smith’s laptop.Both Siegel and Fox said they decided Smith would not receive credit for the course, but were unsure as to whether they should bring him up on honor charges. Siegel decided to print out all of the e-mails and create a timeline of the actions in question.“After really looking at that on Nov. 15, we decided we would go forward with honor charges,” Siegel said.Siegel said she believed something like this “would change the way students interact with students” if left unchallenged, as Siegel and Fox were acting in the role of teachers for the class. “A degree from the University of Virginia has a certain significance,” Fox said during the trial, and “leaving this to go unnoticed” would diminish that.Smith said the comments he made to Siegel may have been “misleading, but I didn’t mislead her intentionally.”During his testimony, Smith said he had not yet enrolled in LASE 151 before its first class session and had thus not received the syllabus when it was passed out to the large group during the first day of class. He did, however, receive a copy of the syllabus during the first small section class and said he “glanced over it.” Siegel said the first couple of weeks of the class “were dedicated just to honor,” and despite the fact that the honor code was not discussed in the LASE 151 syllabus and that Smith missed the first day of class, honor was “discussed during the first couple of weeks of class” and Smith was aware of it, Siegel said.In the end, the evidence brought forth against Smith was enough for jury members to convict. Third-year Law student Robert Baldwin, who attended the trial, however, expressed some concern about Siegel’s role within the Honor Committee and about how that role could have influenced jury members to find Smith guilty. “When that first community witness was testifying, she [Siegel] very clearly knew the language of the procedure ... and in my mind I thought she must be a counselor or be on the committee,” Baldwin said. Current Committee Chair Jess Huang, however, said she does not believe Siegel’s role in honor had any impact on the trial.“I think this is just a great example of a student who really wanted to enforce the standards of the community of trust and brought it up for another student panel to decide,” Huang said in an interview later Sunday night.To be found guilty of an honor offense, four-fifths of a jury has to find a student guilty of act and intent and a simple majority has to find him guilty of non-triviality. Smith chose a random student jury that consisted of 11 undergraduate students and one graduate student; the jury yesterday included five first-year students, three second-year students, three third-year students and one Darden student. After the first break, one jury member was asked to leave after she was caught reading a book under her desk during the trial. According to the Committee’s bylaws, if he so chooses, Smith can appeal the jury’s decision either on the grounds of new evidence or good cause.
The University Judiciary Committee elected the voting members of its new Executive Committee Thursday. Fourth-year Curry student Michael Chapman was elected UJC chair.According to UJC’s bylaws, the Executive Committee is elected by a majority vote among the members of the incoming committee in an election overseen by the outgoing committee chair. The four voting members of the Executive Committee include the chair, vice chair for first-years, vice chair for trials and the vice chair for sanctions, and are voted upon in that order.Chapman, who will replace fourth-year College student Merriam Mikhail, served as vice chair for first-years during the past year.Chapman said one of the incoming Executive Committee’s goals is to better educate students about UJC.“We are ready to not just engage the fellow members of UJC but also the community as a whole,” he said.Chapman said his role as UJC chair is to not only oversee UJC’s day-to-day operations but to also be “the face of UJC.”Second-year College student Will Bane, who was elected to replace Chapman as vice chair for first-years, also emphasized the importance of education and communication during the new committee’s term.“We’re trying to make sure every U.Va. student and member of the community has an idea of what UJC does [and that they] have a sense of ownership over UJC,” Bane said. Bane, who served as a UJC counselor and chair of the Issues Subcommittee during the past year, said there are three major components to his role as vice chair for first-years: orienting new students to UJC’s system, “spearheading the recruitment process” and selecting and overseeing the First Year Judiciary Committee. “The student body has a low level of [knowledge about] UJC because they didn’t have a thorough and interesting training or orientation,” Bane said. He also said he hopes to work on improving summer and fall orientation sessions so that students gain an understanding about UJC even before they step on Grounds. Third-year Architecture student Marnie Coons, meanwhile, was elected as the vice chair for trials and said she looks forward to addressing different areas of concern. Coons, who will replace fourth-year College student Grayson Lambert and previously served as an Architecture representative, said one of her personal goals is to increase cohesiveness among UJC judges. She also said she hopes to get judges more involved in the organization’s various subcommittees, noting that if judges become more involved, they will better understand their role in “the larger picture of UJC.” Lastly, third-year Engineering student Eric Schneiter will continue to serve as the vice chair for sanctions. Though Schneiter served in this position last year, he said there are still several changes that he wishes to make during the next year. “What’s happened in the last couple of years is we’ve seen a decrease in the number of sanctions organizations,” and it is now important to find other avenues for students to complete the possible community service requirements they can receive if sanctioned, he said. He also plans to streamline the sanctioning process, making it easier to understand.The streamlining will make “sanctioning a lot easier for myself, the students involved, and the sanction contacts,” Schneiter said.In addition to outlining its goals for the next year, one of the Executive Committee’s first tasks was to fill the rest of the Executive Committee’s non-voting positions. Alison Deich and John Zettler were appointed as Senior Counselors, Meghan Iorianni was appointed as Senior Investigator and Portia Henry was appointed as Senior Educator. Additionally, Gavin Reddick and Yiding Li were jointly appointed to fulfill the new position of Senior Data Manager. Chapman, Bane, Coons and Schneiter all noted that because they each are from a different school and have all had different experiences within UJC, their diversity will benefit both the student body and the entire UJC throughout their terms.“We are here to promote the safety, respect, and freedom” of students here at the University, Chapman said.According to UJC’s bylaws, the new Executive Committee will take charge after April 1.Halley Epstein, chair of the First Year Judiciary Committee and Madison Rabb, vice-chair of the First Year Judiciary Committee, also serve as non-voting members of the Executive Committee. Their terms started in October and last one year.
In advance of the Honor Committee’s transition of power in early April, current members approved an amendment Sunday meant to improve trial processing efficiency and also unveiled a new Web site meant to better communicate with students.The amendment, which had been discussed for several weeks, alters sections IV.C.8. and IV.E.5 of the Committee’s bylaws so that students accused of an honor offense must now select a trial date from a list of choices within a set amount of time or forfeit the right to a trial. The amendment states that the Committee will provide a student accused of an honor offense with at least five proposed trial dates through both e-mail and certified mail.According to the amendment, the student will be given a 10-day period — called the “Trial Request Period” — to respond following the “delivery of notice of accusation by the Investigation Panel.” During the 10-day period, the student must inform the Vice Chair of Trials, in writing, of his chosen trial date, counsel, composition of the trial’s jury panel and whether the trial will be open or closed.If a student does not choose a trial date or provide “good cause” for not doing so — as determined by the Vice Chair for Trials or Committee Chair — then he will be “deemed to have waived the right to an Honor trial and to have admitted guilt (or ‘LAGGED’).”Several members of the Committee expressed hope that the new amendment will help address some of the concerns the Committee has had in the past about trial expediency and efficiency. Third-year College student Alex Carroll, who is also the incoming vice chair for trials, said she believes the amendment is a positive step toward addressing the issue.The amendment guarantees that resources are not allocated to a trial that will not occur, Carroll said. It also will centralize the process and allow the Committee to work with students more directly.In addition to voting on the amendment Sunday night, Chair of the Technology ad-hoc Committee Thaddeus Darden, a fourth-year Engineering student, presented the new Honor Web site to the Committee.“The Web site is something that we have been working on throughout the term behind the scenes,” Honor Chair Jess Huang said.Darden said the Committee had to overcome “lots of hurdles” to get the Web site up and running, like making sure the site graphically fits in with the rest of the University’s site standards, is aesthetically appealing and is easy to use.The old site was text heavy, Darden said, also noting that it was difficult to navigate. The new site has a “very specific hierarchy” of organization so that information can easily be found, Darden said.Other important elements of the new site include easily accessible platforms to advertise and comment about honor-themed events, a more frequently used honor blog and a news section.In addition, both Darden and Huang discussed future plans to hopefully add an anonymous two-way feedback system.Currently, the Committee’s Web site provides an area for students to comment about issues anonymously, but there is no way for the Committee to “respond to [the comment] directly, only publicly,” Darden said. Huang said she hopes the Committee can create a system through which a committee member can directly respond to these anonymous statements without ever knowing the student’s name or e-mail.“This is something that the new committee discussed during the retreat,” Darden said.Although she “wouldn’t necessarily call them our last two projects” of the outgoing committee, Huang said the Committee has worked on the projects for some time.The new Web site is currently unavailable to students but will become live during the upcoming week, Darden said.
In an effort to expand undergraduate arts research opportunities and establish a set of grant awards especially for creative subjects, officials recently created the University Undergraduate Award for Arts Projects. The awards will range from $1,000 to $5,000 each.“[The program] is intended to expand students’ opportunities for creative expression and showcase significant accomplishments in the arts,” said Lucy Russell, director of the University’s Center for Undergraduate Excellence.Russell, Vice Provost for Academic Programs Milton Adams, Vice Provost for the Arts Beth Turner and other University faculty members helped create the program. “The University’s students are very creative and accomplished, and this is a terrific way to recognize that and provide students with new opportunities to take on significant projects in the arts,” Russell said.In addition to developing student interest in the arts, the grants will better qualify students interested in pursuing creative arts at the graduate school level, Turner said.Even though there currently are other similar undergraduate grant programs — like the Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards program — that could be used for the study of creative arts, very few students put forward proposals to produce art, Adams said, noting that students generally focus on the critique and research of existing art instead. The program will be based on the existing Harrison program, Adams said. According to the Center for Undergraduate Excellence’s Web site, students interested in receiving a grant are encouraged to meet with a faculty adviser to discuss a potential proposal, much like the system for Harrison awards. The adviser will then write a letter affirming his or her support of the project and will write an assessment of the project once completed.Students interested in the grants are expected to produce a final project, like a short film or music composition, according to the Web site. The projects will be carried out during the summer and upcoming academic year. Grants are available to first-, second- and third-year undergraduate students in any major either individually or in collaborative groups, and the program’s first year of applications are due April 15. Adams said the program currently has $20,000 to give to undergraduate research, but noted that he hopes this amount will grow in the future through gifts and donations.
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.”
The University Judiciary Committee officially created the position of senior data manager last night by voting to change Articles IV and V of its bylaws. The change formalized a position within UJC meant to help the organization manage online case statistics and aid in technical support efforts.Second-year College student Will Bane, chair of the issues subcommittee, drafted the language of the amendment, and said the idea behind formalizing the position grew out of a discussion about the importance of data management in the UJC system.Currently, the position informally exists as a chair of a subcommittee, said Graduate Arts & Sciences student Gavin Reddick, data management subcommittee co-chair. All the amendment accomplishes is formalizing the position, Reddick said.The amendment states that the responsibilities of the senior data manager include updating and maintaining UJC’s Web site and online case system, providing technical support to UJC, gathering statistical data for the Executive Committee and archiving electronic trial records and recordings.Reddick said making the position a formal member of the UJC Executive Committee instead of a subcommittee chair “makes more sense since we’ve moved to the online system,” which was put into place last spring. Because the senior data manager will have access to all trial information, adding this position into the bylaws will help “limit the flow of confidential information,” Bane said, noting that this is important for both student privacy and practical reasons.Similar to other senior UJC positions, the senior data manager will be appointed “with the advice of the outgoing Executive Committee, the consent of the three incoming Vice Chairpersons, and a majority of the incoming Committee,” and will be a non-voting member of the Executive Committee, according to the newly altered bylaws.Unlike other senior support offices in UJC, however, the role of Senior Data Manager can be filled not only by someone within the committee, but also possibly by someone from UJC’s pool of support officers.The position is left open to more potential candidates because of the technological knowledge required of the position, said UJC Chair Merriam Mikhail, a fourth-year College student.“We have to acknowledge that that person may not come from the UJC,” Mikhail said, noting that it would be impossible for UJC to provide the education necessary for the position.Mikhail said she hopes that even if the person appointed does not know much about UJC before taking the position, he or she will learn with time.“We need to the appoint the most qualified person,” Bane said, “and that’s why we left it open.”An appointment will occur soon, Mikhail said.“[The new position] is a pretty immediate change and will likely be filled within the next week,” Mikhail said.
Even though the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was enacted into law only a few weeks ago, the plan has already begun affecting both the University and the Charlottesville area.The stimulus bill, which President Obama signed into law Feb. 17, is intended to help alleviate some of the tension felt by a large portion of the country’s population during the current economic crisis.“Specifically, the stimulus was designed to get money flowing into the economy in ways that it will be used immediately and fill some urgent needs,” said Jessica Barba, press secretary for U.S. Representative Tom Perriello, D-Charlottesville.The University also has been affected by the act, especially in terms of funding for research, assistant vice president for research Jeff Blank said. “The University is hoping to get its share in research dollars,” Blank said.For example, more than half of University-sponsored research funding comes from the National Institute of Health, Blank noted. The plan gave the National Institute of Health $10.4 billion to be spent during the next two years, “which aligns nicely with our research efforts,” Blank said.The grants will be very competitive, Blank said, and “there’s no guarantee on the funds.” Blank added, however, that students and faculty should take advantage of these “different pockets” of money, as well as education money not yet designated solely for research.In terms of funding for the University as a whole, the act orders that each state spend some of the money on both K-12 education and higher education, said Colette Sheehy, vice president of management and budget.It remains unclear, though, as to how the funds the University receives will be used. Some issues that may be taken into account include addressing new costs, offsetting budget reductions and possibly limiting tuition increases, Sheehy said.“We make recommendations as staff,” Sheehy said, “but the Board [of Visitors] approves the budget ultimately.”As for Charlottesville area benefits, the act will help “essential services” such as education, public safety and housing, Barba said.So far, about $1.6 billion from the stimulus has been implemented locally to help fund services that were experiencing budget shortfalls, Barba said.“The schools and the sheriff offices were facing some deep budget cuts and layoffs,” Barba said. But now, most of that has been avoided because of help from the stimulus.In addition, “we have a long laundry of projects that we have identified as big candidates for stimulus funding,” Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris said, adding that he hopes to receive a significant amount of money for energy efficiency initiatives, like helping local homeowners and business owners make energy improvements.“Charlottesville is very well placed to take advantage of any funding that comes down the pipes for clean energy initiatives,” Norris said.Besides these current projects, more funds have been set aside for projects that will help various Virginia entities move forward, Barba said.“For example, this week we announced that Charlottesville is going to receive $144,000 in Community Development Block Grants as well as $797,000 for modernization of public housing,” Barba added.Despite the help the plan has provided thus far, “we are still in the very early stages of actually lining up funding for projects,” Norris said, and there is still much work to be done before the bill is fully utilized.Norris added that he would have liked to have seen more money placed into other initiatives like infrastructure and energy efficiency initiatives nationwide, but said he recognizes that the plan is a “product of compromise.”Moreover, the amount of money is limited, Sheehy said.“This is only two-year money, temporary money,” Sheehy said, noting that it is important to ensure that ongoing costs are not created once the stimulus goes away.Barba, meanwhile, said the bill is a step forward in terms of increasing funding for a variety of both local and national projects.“Our country is facing an economic crisis, and before you start healing you have to stop the bleeding,” Barba said. “This is an effort to stop the bleeding.”
The Honor Committee last night discussed two legislative changes respectively intended to incentivize the expediency of accused students’ trial date requests and ease the selection of jury members for some high-profile trials.The first proposal affects how a student chooses his or her trial date. Under the current bylaws, when a student is accused of an honor offense, a notice of accusation by the Investigative Panel is provided by e-mail and certified mail. In that notice, a student is provided with about six possible trial dates, Vice Chair for Trials Sophie Staples said.A student is then expected to choose a trial date from these dates and alert the Vice Chair of Trials of his or her preferences for date, counsel and jury panel, and whether he or she wants a closed or open trial. If a student requests a trial but does not specify the details, then the Vice Chair for Trials decides the details, Staples said.Under the new proposal, the Committee would continue to provide a list of at least five proposed trial dates. The proposal creates a 10-day period after the notice has been delivered, called the “trial request period.” If a student does not choose one of the dates provided by the Committee, or does not provide an excuse deemed legitimate by the Vice Chair of Trials or Committee Chair during the trial request period for a delay, then he or she would be expected to leave admitting guilt, or “LAG,” to the offense.“It’s important to keep in mind that this is not trying to LAG students with legitimate excuses,” Staples said. Instead, it is an attempt to prevent unnecessary trial delays by students and create an increased incentive to designate a trial date as soon as possible, Staples said.“The point is that we’ve discussed throughout committee of this overriding problem to want to have your trial sooner rather than later,” Staples said, adding that this amendment should help address the issue.Committee Chair Jess Huang said the bylaw change would also prevent unnecessary drains on Committee resources because it eliminates the need to prepare for trials that will not happen. In this way, the amendment should help “streamline the process,” Huang added. Though Staples believes the change will help relieve trial delays, other problems still remain and must be addressed, she said.“I think that in order to have any real substantial effect on that we would need to address credit accrual,” Staples said, noting that a discussion needs to take place about whether students should lose academic credit for the semester during their accusation. “This committee did not show much interest” in the issue, Staples said, adding that she hopes pressure will be put on the future committee by the public to deal with these other issues.The proposal will be voted on at the Committee’s next meeting, Huang said.The second amendment the Committee discussed last night deals with jury panels and would alter the Committee’s constitution.Under the current system, an honor trial jury panel must include “at least two panel members from the school of the accused.” The change would modify the honor jury panel to include the two members “whenever possible.”Huang said in a situation in which a case is from a very small school and is very public, it is very difficult “to guarantee two students from that school” to be on the panel who have no knowledge of the case.So far, no such instances have occurred, Huang said, but this new amendment would “protect us legally if there ever were such a case.”The change would still require the Vice Chair of Trials “to do everything in his or her power” — such as calling the entire school — to find two members for the panel, Huang said.Because this change is a constitutional one, it must be voted upon by the entire student body. The incoming Committee will undertake this task, Huang said.“We’re going to have the language ready and set to go” for the new committee, she noted.The current Committee will hold its last meeting April 5, and the new Committee will take charge the following day,
Two unidentified suspects assaulted and robbed a male University student Saturday around 10 p.m., University Police Lieut. Melissa Fielding said. She said the robbery took place near the Amphitheater, in the breezeway between Bryan Hall and New Cabell Hall.“The suspects demanded money and his iPod,” and one of the suspects “struck the victim in the face” by hand, Fielding said. Both suspects then fled on foot.Fielding said the victim was treated at the University Hospital for minor injuries but was later released. The case remains an open investigation, Fielding said.“We do not have any similar reported incidents on Grounds, [so it is] too difficult to determine if this is linked to any other case,” she said. Similar cases tend to occur in off-Grounds areas heavily populated by students because of the “better visibility on Grounds” and the number of people present, Fielding noted. She added, however, that students should still take cautionary measures to help prevent on-Grounds crime from occurring.Becky Campbell, the crime prevention community relations officer for University Police, said the most important thing students can do is “be aware of what’s going on” around them at all times.Fielding said students should avoid cell phone conversations or listening to music while walking, as both can be distracting.“Students can have their cell phones ready but not be talking on it,” Campbell said.Walking in groups or using Safe Ride and the bus system — especially after dark — also can help keep students safe, Campbell added.“The most important thing is not to be distracted, even in the daytime,” Campbell said.Additionally, both Fielding and Campbell said it remains critical for students to report any suspicious activity immediately. If a situation makes a student feel uncomfortable in any way, then he or she should immediately call 911 before speaking to anyone else, Campbell said. Fielding also noted that there are more than 200 blue light phones scattered across Grounds that can connect students directly to the University Police.
Representatives for the University’s two sanctioning bodies were named last night, as a week of both contested and uncontested elections came to a close.Third-year students Mary Siegel, JJ Litchford, Robert Atkinson, Alex Carroll and Jennifer Newsome were elected as the Honor Committee’s College representatives last night, while third-year students Pev Ahdout and Greg Corkran and second-year student William Bane were chosen as College University Judiciary Committee representatives.While one of the most common goals the new representatives share is maintaining transparency and communication between the two committees and students, many of the newly elected members also have specific goals of their own.“My goal since the very beginning has been to make UJC respond more to students’ needs and make students feel like they have ownership over the committee,” Ahdout said. Ahdout said she would like to fulfil this goal through “town hall-style meetings” as well as “UJC office hours in a non-intimidating place.” She added she also has been working on a great deal of diversity initiatives throughout the year and hopes that her new position will allow her to accomplish more in this regard.Third-year students Amy Sikes and Honour Alston were elected as Nursing representatives to the Honor Committee. Alston will serve her second term as Nursing representative to the Honor Committee. Sikes also conveyed interest in establishing office hours and other steps to spread information about the honor system. “A lot of the girls I’ve talked to aren’t really familiar with the honor system,” Sikes said, noting that office hours would allow students to discuss honor procedures with their respective representatives. Sikes added that past Nursing representatives were successful in establishing relationships with Nursing faculty — something she hopes to continue during her term.Several of the representatives also expressed interest in maintaining a close relationship with their individual schools and the committee they have been elected to.“In the past, the Engineering school hasn’t been as involved in Honor, and I want to try to take advantage of my connections on Student Council to help change this,” said newly-elected Honor second-year Engineering representative Yi Cai, who previously served as Director of the Engineering Student Council. Cai, who was elected along with third-year student John Griffin, also said he hopes to use his position as an international student to bring a different perspective to the Honor Committee.“That’s what’s so cool about it — we all bring different perspectives to it since we all are from different schools and have different perspectives on life,” said newly-elected UJC second-year Nursing representative Emily Flavin about the new members on the committees. Second-year student Katelyn Overstreet also was elected to UJC from the Nursing School.Outgoing UJC Chair Merriam Mikhail added that with the newly released statistics on demographics within the UJC system, diversity among the committee will hopefully continue to increase. Though Mikhail will soon have to turn over her committee to the new members, she expressed a similar excitement to those coming into the system.“There is just this great momentum, and I am excited to see them carry it on,” Mikhail said.New Honor representatives also include third-year student Brandon Cuffy and second-year student Danielle MacGregor from the Architecture School, third-year students David Truetzel and Andrew Bean from the Commerce School, Johnathan Damron from the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, Alexander Cohen for Graduate Arts & Sciences, Leif Glynn from the Darden School, Charles Harris and Thomas Worthy from the Law School, and Tracy Rushing and Regan Royer from the Medical School. The remaining new UJC representatives include third-year student Marnie Coons from the Architecture school, Yiding Li and Eric Schneiter from the Engineering School, Alexandra Garcia for Graduate Arts & Sciences, and Alex Blanchard and Stephen Crenshaw from the Law School. — Rodger Nayak contributed to this article
The Honor Committee is considering changing the language of one of its bylaws so that students will lose their academic credits during the semester they are accused of an honor offense instead of the semester they are found guilty.The topic was first brought up during the Committee’s faculty advisory committee meeting on Feb. 19. The FAC meeting occurs once a month and includes professors from each of the schools in the University, said Christina Polenta, Commerce representative and FAC chair. During the most recent meeting, several professors expressed concern that students can be found guilty the semester after they have been accused of an honor offense, Polenta said, and thus only lose credits for that semester. Professors found this to be a “philosophical problem” that a student does not lose the credit earned in the class for which the offense was reported if they are tried after the semester ends.Under the current system, found in Section IV of the Honor Committee’s bylaws, “the date of dismissal shall be the date on which the guilty verdict is rendered.” For example, if a student is accused of an honor offense during the fall semester but is not brought to trial and found guilty until the spring, then he or she only loses credits for the spring semester.If the current language is altered, there are still other potential options for the date of dismissal, said Justin Watkins, special assistant to the Committee. These possibilities include the day the case was reported, the day of the investigative panel accusation and the day the offense was committed, Watkins said. This possible change is also in response to concerns raised at last week’s Committee meeting in regards to students postponing their trial dates. The change, discussed by Vice Chair for Trials Sophie Staples at last week’s meeting, would give the executive committee the power by a unanimous vote to appeal to the registrar to have the student’s credit for a given semester taken away if a student had significantly contributed to the delay of the trial and he or she were found guilty. Currently, the registrar, rather than the Committee, is in charge of credit alterations, Watkins said. Therefore, the registrar will likely be included in discussion about the possible change with the Committee, although Watkins said he does not foresee any complications given the current system. If the bylaw is changed, students will lose credit for the entire semester in which they are accused and not just the class in which the offense was committed, Watkins said.“The way it works now is you lose credit for the entire semester,” Watkins said. Third-year College student Derek Cooper expressed concern with the possible change.“It seems a little excessive in their use of power to deny people their credits,” Cooper said, noting that he would be especially concerned if a student’s reasons for delaying a trial date are valid.As of right now, though, a specific change in the bylaw has not yet been formally proposed. If an amendment to the bylaw were to be written, it would have to be voted on by a majority vote of the Committee, according to the Committee’s Constitution.
The University Judiciary Committee released its Fall 2008 Statistics Report earlier this month in a continued effort to enhance the organization’s transparency. The report includes the total number of cases throughout the semester, the type of cases that were filed and demographic data about accused students.The report “gives us a good idea of who is involved in the UJC from filing cases to [why] students are coming before the committee,” UJC Chair Merriam Mikhail said.One of the report’s most beneficial statistics in this regard is the demographics information, said Gavin Reddick, a representative from the Graduate Schools of Arts and Sciences. The report tracks “in terms of demographics who are the complainants, who are the accused, and who are the committee,” Reddick said, adding that there is not a separate report that tracks trial outcomes.According to the report, blacks are the largest minority reported, comprising nine percent of accused students. Students involved in the Greek system are also reported at a higher rate than other University student groups like athletes and international students; 12 percent of accused students were involved with the Greek system. Eight percent of accused students, meanwhile, are student athletes and six percent are international students. Seventy-eight percent of accused students are male. This only is the second semester UJC has collected statistics, Mikhail said, noting that UJC’s reporting system only went online last year.Compared to the Spring 2008 Statistical Report, the case processing time has decreased. The adjusted mean case processing time last spring was 35 days. This fall, the adjusted mean case processing time was 31 days, an improvement UJC worked to accomplish, Mikhail said.“Internally, we are more diligent in ensuring cases go off when scheduled, and scheduling them for the soonest possible trial date,” Mikhail said, adding that a lot of time was saved by using the online system. Mikhail, though, also said there is still room for improvement. “Our goal is to see cases adjudicated 14 days after the case is filed with our committee,” Mikhail said. The total number of cases between the 2008 spring and fall semesters also decreased, with 104 cases last spring and only 79 cases this fall.Both semesters, however, showed some consistency, with the greatest number of offenses during each semester being alcohol related cases. In addition, Standard 6 of UJC’s Standards of Conduct was the most violated of the 12 standards. Standard 6 deals with “violation of University policies or regulations referenced in the Record,” according to UJC’s Web site.Currently, UJC is the only special status organization on Grounds that collects these sorts of statistics on a regular basis, though other organizations have expressed interest in gathering similar information, Mikhail said. Students can find the report on UJC’s Web site under “Statistics.” A final report will be issued in a few weeks that will also include the fall semester’s unresolved cases, Reddick said.