Faculty approves judicial board changes

Author: Aviva Shen

At the December 10 faculty meeting, the faculty voted unanimously to approve changes to the judicial system to give students more responsibility in the process for their own behavior. The recommendations called for limited rehearings of an appeal, the prohibition of accused students withdrawing temporarily from the College with a judicial case pending, and the option of meeting with the Judicial Affairs Officer before a hearing.

The issue came to the faculty after a long series of discussion and debate within the Community Council. Dean of the College Tim Spears drafted the recommendations and brought them to the Council last year.

According to a memo Spears sent to the faculty, the first two recommendations were born in response to particular cases over the past few years.

"The changes are being made so that the board can make decisions using a procedure that maximizes its potential to help students as well as maintains the integrity of the process," Maddie Terry '08, co-chair of the Community Judicial Board, wrote in an e-mail.

The first recommendation helps make the appeals process more flexible and efficient.

"There have been occasions when cases that started at four in the afternoon don't end until two in the morning," Spears said. "[The first recommendation] allows the group rehearing the case to just reconsider the outcome based on corrected evidence."

Besides making the hearing more efficient, the new reform helps the case take into account newly discovered factual or procedural errors, while not affecting the portrayal of events.

"The case can take on a different complexion the second time around," explained Spears. "If you were one of the accused, you might now understand that you might be better off presenting your case a different way, plus you're presenting to a different group of people."

The second recommendation prohibits students from withdrawing temporarily from the College with a judicial case pending. As stated in Spears' memo, such a delay of a hearing makes it difficult to reconvene witnesses and solicit accurate testimony.

"We want to avoid a situation in which, for example, one student charges another with inappropriate behavior, and the accused withdraws, waits for the issue to die down or the accuser to graduate, and then applies for readmission, thus hoping to avoid responsibility for his or her actions," Judicial Affairs Officer Gus Jordan wrote in an e-mail.

The third recommendation was intended to provide flexibility to accused students by giving them the option of meeting with the Judicial Affairs Officer and receiving discipline, foregoing a hearing altogether.

"I think there are times when a student makes a mistake, and knows it, and regrets it, and would rather work with a dean directly," Jordan wrote in an email. "In the past, all of the most serious incidents on campus would go to a judicial board. Now, if a student recognizes that he or she was in the wrong, the student can work with me directly on an appropriate remedy or response."

The recomendations are an effort by the College to allow students to become more involved in their judicial process.

"The changes seem to hold Middlebury students explicitly responsible for their actions and for engaging in the process as soon as a case is prepared for hearing," Terry said.

In the same line of thinking, Spears and other administrators considered giving students more responsibility in a complete overhaul of the judicial system.

However, the undertaking of such a renovation would be very complicated, requiring a great deal of student initiative.

"If you're going to move in that direction, it would probably make sense to have students push that initiative," said Spears. "I think some students have been interested in making wholesale big changes like that but no one is stepping forward."

There has, however, been positive feedback to the idea.

"Students should recognize a social responsibility," Terry said. "When I talk to new freshman each fall about the academic honor code, students have as many questions about drinking infractions and sexual harassment as they do about plagiarism. I support the idea in theory and would be a strong advocate of its realization."

Informing students of judicial matters is also high on the administration's agenda. In the next week, Spears and others will be setting up a Web Site where each incident is recorded for students to help them understand the system.

"We'd like to explain to students as transparently as we can how the process works," Spears said.