New Sanctions Alter Disciplinary Process

This fall, the College implemented changes to the disciplinary actions outlined in the student handbook, including a new process for disciplinary action taken against students that adds a sanction which puts students on probation without having this status added to their personal record.

The new sanction, called “probationary status,” replaces the old sanction of disciplinary probation. In the past, when students were put on disciplinary probation, it was indicated on their permanent record.

With probationary status, students are warned that if their behavior does not change, they risk getting something on their permanent record or risk being suspended. The new sanction allows students the opportunity to reform their behavior before further disciplinary action takes place.

Disciplinary probation is now split into probationary status and official college discipline, at which point a student will have something written on their permanent record.

The new process for disciplinary sanctions runs as follows: first, a warning, which is unofficial college discipline and usually involves a letter to the student; second, a reprimand, where a letter is sent, in addition to the student, to the student’s parents; third, probationary status; fourth, official college discipline, which merits the student receiving something on their permanent record; and finally suspension and potentially expulsion.

Associate Dean for Judicial Affairs and Student Life Karen Guttentag explained that the changes were made in order to address a large disciplinary gap that continuously came to surface with the past sanctions.

“The category of disciplinary probation was encompassing a very broad range of circumstances,” said Guttentag. “It wasn’t allowing us to be precise in how we were responding to particular cases.”

Guttentag explained the difference between students who repeatedly offended college policy with low-level incidents, and used to end up on disciplinary probation, versus students who committed serious offenses and ended up with the same sanction.

“What we found is that we would have people who got on disciplinary probation under those [repeatedly low-level] circumstances, and we were really questioning whether or not we were going to suspend them for something so minor,” said Guttentag.

“We were undermining the purpose of that status, as well as the message. Because at the same time it was also encompassing people who really were at the edge of being suspended, and where we really did need to send a message about being in jeopardy of being able to stay here anymore.”

Dean of the College Shirley Collado said that she hopes students will take advantage of the new opportunity to fix past mistakes.

“[The new sanction] is not totally black and white, but I hope that it gives further clarification to students about fairness and about opportunity,” said Collado. “I hope it also gives a built-in system in our handbook that says that part of being here is figuring it out, and that when you make a mistake in this community, there’s opportunity for restorative justice, and your life goes on.”

Michael Hilgendorf ’13, a member of the Community Judicial Board, described the changes as “overwhelmingly positive.”

“In the past, there was a large gap between a reprimand, which one can receive from multiple citations, and the more serious ‘disciplinary probation’ that would go on a student’s record,” wrote Hilgendorf in an email. “The inclusion of ‘probationary status’ as an option rectifies this problem and will provide students a firmer warning while still keeping the infraction off of their permanent record.”

Both Collado and Guttentag also hope that the new process will give students the opportunity to use the College’s resources in order to address their behavioral issues.

“We’ve got an incredible [residential life] staff, we have commons deans who have very close connections with students and have the ability to be able to look at a lot of their choices in the context of their particular trajectory and the context of the impact on the community,” said Guttentag. “We want to be able to [respond] to particular incidents with as much precision as we can, without completely sacrificing the concept of consistency.”

In addition to the sanction changes, the Student Life staff, which includes the Parton Health Center staff, Public Safety, the commons deans, the Career Services Office staff, the athletics staff and the chaplains, made changes to the College’s Community Standards.

The Community Standards were introduced to the College in the fall of 2011. Initially the work of the College deans, the Community Standards outlined standards and living principles to guide the actions of students, staff and faculty to create the College’s ideal community.

Collado said that idea for a set of Community Standards came from conversations initiated by various groups surrounding a social honor code.

“Although we never went through with adopting a clear social honor code, what was clear was that there were some community standards and guidelines that everyone was repeatedly citing.”

Guttentag said that one of the overall goals of the standards was to give a deeper meaning and reasoning for the College’s disciplinary policies.

“For many years, student life had been having conversations around the need to pull together some common language between our mission statement and our handbook policies,” said Guttentag.

Collado agreed with this statement.

“I really wanted to have a guide post for what was driving the rules,” she said.

In the past year, the deans saw how the Community Standards fit into the aspirations for the type of community they wanted to foster at the College. Over the summer, the deans presented the standards to the rest of the Student Life staff, who were then given the opportunity to make some changes.

In the end, very few changes were made. The overall structure and ideas of the Community Standards remained the same. Guttentag said some of the language was edited to remove redundancies and make the standards more precise.

This was the second year that the College gave first-years resource guides upon their arrival on campus. The resource guides contain the Community Standards, which Collado believes is essential knowledge that all students should have.

In order to bridge the gap between the first-years and sophomores who received these standards upon arrival and upperclassmen who may have never seen them before, the College also made sure that all varsity athletes, new and old, received guides with the Community Standards.

“One of the major recommendations of the Alcohol Task Force was that they really thought that the Community Standards were something that needed to be more widely shared,” said Collado. “I feel that it’s been a really important shift for us.”