UA Codes and Judicial Committee

Draft Minutes

Codes and Judicial Committee

Wednesday, October 15, 2003 2:00pm 316 Day Hall

Present: R. Helms, M. Grant, A. Gonzalez, S. Malladi, B. Chabot, E. Loew, B. Burlew, T. Bishop, K. Rourke

I. Introductions

Members went around the table introducing themselves.

II. Approval of minutes

September 29, 2003

R. Helms asked for comments of the minutes. B. Chabot moved to approve the minutes. K. Rourke seconded. Minutes were approved.

III. Regular meeting time

R. Helms said that he was hoping that they could schedule the next 2 meetings. It was agreed that it would be the second Wednesday of November and December from 2:00 — 3:00.

IV. UHB vacancies

A. Employee candidate

R. Helms said that there is a UHB vacancy for an employee. There was a candidate who was interviewed last year, but they did not accept because she already served on the UHB and she did score as high as the people who were accepted. R. Helms asked that they approve her at this meeting and recommend her to the UA at their next meeting. K. Rourke moved to accept her, B. Chabot seconded. The candidate will be recommended to the UA at the next meeting.

B. Interviews

R. Helms said that there is another position open in the UHB for a grad student. T. Bishop said that there is a grad interested. R. Helms said that 2 members should interview the interested person before the next CJC meeting.

V. Code changes propose by JA

A. Remove community work limitations related to underage possession of alcohol cases.

The committee read over M. Grant’s memo from August 29 and thought they had seen it before.

B. Chabot said that it seemed reasonable and there are 2 reasons for doing this. Mostly to be consistent with the way that other sanctions are dealt with.

K. Rourke moved that they make the changes recommended. B. Chabot seconded. R. Helms asked for discussion and explained that the way that it is set up presently, if you are found in violation, it would not be a part of your disciplinary record and this would change it to where it was part.

M. Grant said that the way that the Code is currently worded says that there is a limit to 15 hours of community work for underage possession of alcohol cases. Read very literally, the only thing that they would be able to do when a student who is in violation of possession is to have him/her complete community service. They do not read it that literally, but they feel like it would be better if it was clarified to have a broader spectrum. Currently, the sanction when a student is in violation of underage possession is to send them to an alcohol education course, which costs $35, an oral warning and no disciplinary record. It feels to them like that is a much sounder approach to students who are going to make risky choices and they would like them to make healthy choices. That is what the approach has been for at least 8–12 years. The other part about this is that there was a report done in the early 90’s taking a look at the alcohol issues on campus in general, one of the things that it pointed to was that it is the only area that limits discretion of the judicial process so the hearing board or the JA doesn’t have the ability to say this sanction doesn’t make sense in this case.

B. Chabot asked if they remove those words specifying a certain sanction, other words aren’t needed to replace them?

M. Grant said no. What will replace it is the discretion. So there is a list of sanctions and remedies available in any violation. For example, for community service work, there is a limit of 80 hours for any violation. She could not think of any underage alcohol case that would merit 80 hours of community service work, but it would give that discretion.

K. Rourke said that according to how she is reading the Code, under Title 3, III Sanctions, Remedies, etc., under students she’s not finding the restriction.

M. Grant said that there is some missing bold face. 5 & 6 should be bold because they are more general.

K. Rourke said that it also specifies that finding a violation shall not become a part of the person’s academic or disciplinary record. She asked if M. Grant was leaving that in.

M. Grant said no, that was going to be her next request.

B. Remove Limitation of Disciplinary Record for Underage Possession of Alcohol Cases.

R. Helms asked why that was originally excluded.

M. Grant said that she didn’t know why, the only thing that she could surmise is that under the State Alcohol Beverage Control Laws, it would be what is called a violation compared to a misdemeanor or a felony and a for violation there would be no record. Her particular concern is for repeat offenders. She has no plans to impose a disciplinary record for a first time alcohol offense. It would still be an oral warning, go to the class and pay the fee. There is a concern when there is a repeat that there has to be, at some point, the ability to impose a disciplinary record. Right now, somebody could have multiple violations and they would never need to report it to, for example, a Law School and the JA’s office would never be able to reveal the information. She feels that graduate and professional schools would want to know that.

A. Gonzalez asked what are the implications associated with multiple offenders and their legal record.

M. Grant said that what it would do by removing that section would be to give discretion to the disciplinary system. Disciplinary records are actually not supposed to be used as a sanction, although they do have an impact on the students, they are really administrative functions. For first time minor offenses, the JA’s office is giving many more oral warnings and an oral warning does not carry a disciplinary record. For students who do mid-range things, whether it’s a first offense or subsequent offense, there will be a record until their date of graduation. At the time of their graduation that disciplinary record is expunged. Files still exist in either of those cases, and can be viewed by them for figuring out graduated sanction and things like this, but after the time where no record exists, it is not being reported out. So it’s really more of a recordable disciplinary record. One of the things that the JA’s office got feedback on during an external review last year is that there was inconsistency in the use of disciplinary records and also it seemed like a rare event that someone would have a permanent record. So the office took a look at that and thought about what should be the way to approach a permanent disciplinary record. They have now tied a permanent disciplinary record to probation. So if something is serious enough that it warrants probation, suspension or expulsion, then there would be a permanent disciplinary record, but otherwise it is either a limited record or no record at all. It is more consistent with what the Code was contemplating and it also feels like it is a more consistent way to apply it. The overall result is that there are more students who don’t have any disciplinary record.

K. Rourke asked what PABAC stood for and wondered why they didn’t reach a consensus.

M. Grant said that PABAC is Policy and Behavioral Accountability Committee. That is the committee that was looking at the alcohol issues 2 years ago. They came to this group to talk about the disorderly conduct and to look at whether Section V should be changed regarding the underage possession of alcohol. There was consensus in the committee to remove the 15 hours of community service but there was no consensus with respect to disciplinary record because people feel differently about disciplinary records in general. This was before the JA’s office had reassessed the sanctions more generally. There was a concern by PABAC that there would start to be a disciplinary record for every infracture to Section V. Students felt strongly that they did not want disciplinary records associated with Section V and that Administrators and Faculty on the committee felt that if not on the first one, there should be the ability to report a record on subsequent violations.

R. Helms said that these students are most concerned about graduate and professional school and those applications ask students not “do you have a record”, but “have you ever been convicted” and so if a student is honest whether it is recorded in a file in the JA’s office is irrelevant, but if they are dishonest, they shouldn’t be setting up a system which helps them get away with that.

M. Grant said that questions do vary. Under the system where they are giving warnings when there is a violation, it seems like it is Ok to have to report a minor violation, but they are not going to be hearing from the JA’s office and it would be based on self disclosure.

The motion to remove community work limitations related to underage possession of alcohol cases and to remove limitation of disciplinary record for underage possession of alcohol cases passes unanimously.

K. Rourke made a motion to move #6: “Imposition of any sanction shall not preclude the imposition of any other remedy or sanction under the code” under Section D. It seems to fit better in “Other Actions”. The same phrase is repeated under B2 under “Remedies”. She then suggested to take both out and move it to D. Other Actions for clarity sake. B. Chabot seconded.

The motion passes unanimously.

S. Braig made a motion that the title for D. should be rephrased to General Provisions.

B. Chabot seconded.

The motion passes unanimously.

C. Add to Title Three, Article II a new section “BB” that would prohibit the possession of firearms and weapons.

The committee decided to wait until K. Zoner was able to clarify.

The committee had a little more time so they moved onto #3 of M. Grant’s memo.

M. Grant said that in a hearing they were talking about the way to interpret the current section that discusses community work and fines. First you would figure out what the amount of hours would be and then multiply what the minimum wage was to define the fine. The CJC had questioned where the fine should go.

There was some discussion about the money staying at Cornell or to give to a charitable organization and the committee concluded that they needed to talk about this again.

R. Helms motioned or a vote to approve M. Grant’s proposed changed and reconsider changing the last sentence later.

S. Braig seconded.

Motion approved unanimously.

VI. Adjournment

R. Helms adjourned at 3:00.