After nearly a year of talks, the Judicial Board is undergoing change: namely, it is no longer J-Board.
The changes stem from the school’s relationship with the Honor Code. “Our school is portrayed as this institution that stands solidly behind this Honor Code, and claims it to be integral,” said J-Board Chair Conor Walsh ’11. “When students begin to pick and choose which aspects of the code they abide by, the institution as a whole is diluted. If we care about our honor code and wish to ensure its future existence, the lines in which students have constructed in creating their own individual honor codes must be dissolved.”
Walsh has been working on these changes since last semester. He, along with a group of like-minded students, visited Wellesley College, Haverford College and Davidson College, all schools with similar honor codes. “We were most interested in learning how these academic institutions dealt with the question of ‘honor,’ and furthermore, what types of violations were considered matters of honor,” said Walsh. The three schools had a commonality: alcohol and drug violations were not defined as honor code violations.
Following this trip, two committees were created to evaluate the Honor Code and the current judicial structure: the Honor Code Infusion Committee, which examined how the Honor Code can be more relevant to students’ daily lives, and the Judicial Task Force, which reviewed what was termed as a violation of honor.
The groups came together with a major recommendation: create a distinction between Honor Code violations and violations of College Policy. Accordingly, the groups also suggested separating these issues into two different boards: the Honor Council and the Student Conduct Board.
The Honor Council will deal with several of the violations that were previously presented to J-Board, including academic issues, instances of driving under the influence, gambling, hazing, threats, and certain types of assault. The Student Conduct Board will manage violations regarding drugs, alcohol and social hosts.
“There are several things that are listed in the Student Rights and Responsibilities handbook that, the way things are now, are violations of the Honor Code,” said Walsh. “But if a student is drinking underage—that’s breaking a rule, but not necessarily the Honor Code. These issues have been made matters of college policy.”
The two committees also recommended increasing the size of the board, going from eight representatives to sixteen, with four students being elected from every class. The current J-Board structure holds that all nine members of the Board—the eight representatives and the Chair—participate in every hearing; the new changes propose that hearings are staffed by six members that participate on a rotating basis. The change makes it easier for student to recuse themselves, eases the time commitment and also advocates for transparency between the Board and the greater college community, allowing more students to get involved. Walsh stresses that students did not want to give up their ability to adjudicate, and wanted to maintain shared governance.
Student reaction has been cautious. “I understand why this had to happen, but if we had to completely change the way we interpret the Honor Code, what does that say about us?” said an anonymous sophomore. “I think the change will be for the best; I think students highly respect the Honor Code already, but hopefully this move will help us to respect it even more.”
Walsh remains optimistic. “Our top priority is that student respect the HC to the full extent, and though it may take time, this is a necessary first step in the right direction. With this, we expect a lot from the student body as a whole. It’s imperative that the community begins to respond to true violations of the Honor Code.” •
If a student under the age of 21 is drinking, it’s breaking the law not a policy. Now, the guilt is simply taken away from the mass of the student body and the school can now truthfully say: “We abide by our honor code.” When in fact the school/students has now changed its famed honor code to cripple the foundations for what it once stood for. This is another sad change in the direction the college appears to be heading….
Jason,
I’d like to bring up a few ideas which might complicate your idea of what’s at stake here. You might find Simon Feldman’s speech to this year’s freshman class, Honor Code Ethics 101, an interesting discussion of what exactly we mean by an Honor Code, and certainly the way I think about this issue has been influenced by both this speech and its sister address at last spring’s sort-of-wonderful open forum on the Honor Code.
Basically, I think it’s important to realize that, essentially, the Honor Code as written and signed by all students only requires us to be true to our shared values (I’m paraphrasing), so it doesn’t really have any relation to law. Certainly, laws are important, but they’re not necessarily representative of our values — that’s why they’re modifiable. Drinking underage is almost never, and really shouldn’t be, a cause for guilt, provided it’s undertaken with some semblance of responsibility to one’s surroundings and neighbors. So to distinguish our values from our laws is actually valuable, as it relieves our laws of the burden of living up to our values. It also highlights the difference — values indicate how we want ourselves to behave, laws dictate how we cannot behave. So when someone sees the Honor Council, he is there because he isn’t living up to the tenets mutual respect we all pledged to uphold, in vague and florid language, when we matriculate. Prohibition of underage drinking is not a value I share, and as both last year’s forum and this year’s task force have concluded, it’s not a value most students share. However, it’s still a law, and this, I suppose, is why it’s still prohibited — thus Student Conduct Board.
I don’t view the distinction as a “sad change.” Instead, I see it as a positive reflection of some valuable and thorough thought into what constitutes honor. Honor isn’t really about respect for rules, it’s about respect for communities and colleagues. To distinguish between the Honor Code and school rules is a tacit acknowledgement that we all live under rules which are not necessarily reflective of our personal or shared beliefs, and don’t need to be reflective of them. While it doesn’t really effect any tangible change, it does illustrate something valuable — we have the ability to change laws precisely because they are NOT shared values, and thus we are free to disagree without being “guilty.” It’s the difference between a speed limit and the First Amendment.