UA Codes and Judicial Committee

Attendance

Present

Louis Alley, Arthur Andersen, Mary Beth Grant, Martin Hatch, Torrey Jacobs, Jeff Purcell, Gary Stewart, Kathleen Rourke, Deborah Streeter, Kathy Zoner

Absent

Manuel Allende, Kevin Clermont, Marc Hennes, Melissa Ysaguirre

Also Present

Peggy Beach, Ari Epstein, Susan Murphy, Charles Walcott

Approval of Minutes

K. Rourke asked if anyone wished to submit corrections to the minutes.

No corrections were proposed. The minutes were adopted as prepared.

Employee Assembly Input on Code and Krause Report

K. Rourke asked if there was any feedback from the Employee Assembly (EA) concerning the code.

T. Jacobs said there was consensus that should staff be involved with the code, there ought to be a process that is consistent among the three groups.

K. Rourke asked if this meant the EA consensus advocated a judicial administrator (JA) even if by any other name.

T. Jacobs said the consensus did seem in favor of continuing an independent JA. The EA will meet on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 and should at that time approve a resolution articulating the consensus.

K. Rourke asked if all members understood the current process. Anyone can be referred to the JA for an alleged infraction of the Campus Code. If an individual wishes to dispute the decision of the JA, he or she may request a hearing with the University Hearing Board (UHB). Either the complainant or defendant may appeal the decision of the UHB to a University Review Board (URB).

M. Hatch said it would be helpful to also get EA feedback on comments received by the committee. In particular, employee attitudes on whether the JA should be empowered to adjudicate work-related matters.

A. Epstein said that Mary George Opperman, Vice-President of Human Resources, previously said there were legal constraints that might prevent the JA from addressing employee misconduct that is work-related. Would the committee like to invite someone from Counsel’s office to attend the next meeting?

M. Hatch said that could be discussed later in the meeting.

J. Purcell asked whether the Faculty Senate had any consensus recommendations to submit to the committee.

C. Walcott said the Faculty Senate would meet on Wednesday, 14 February 2007 [this meeting was cancelled due to inclement weather].

M. Hatch said many faculty had already expressed opinions through comments on the website and letters to the President.

C. Walcott asked if the committee had received letters written to the President about the code.

Discussion with Susan Murphy

K. Rourke asked S. Murphy to identify areas in the current code that she would particularly like to change.

S. Murphy said there were four items she would change, if she could waive a magic want, in no particular order:

• Simplify the code. While the code must comply with the Henderson Law, the current organization of titles is verbose and confusing. This leads many students not to get their arms around the code.
• Would like to see a more aspirational language in the code. While the community has expressed concern about the difficulty of framing rules in “thou shalt” instead of “thou shalt not”, it is important to have a code that articulates the community’s common values. She is not personally in favor of an honor code. An example of one such situation is in medical excuses. Large numbers of students do not show up for exams, citing medical conditions. It would be best if the professor could, citing a principle in the code, trust the students on their word rather than expecting a medical excuse from a doctor.

L. Alley said he did not see how changing some language on a piece of paper would change student behavior.

S. Murphy said it will not by itself, but it gives you a framework and forum to begin programs and student-to-student interactions. For all the fun that was made about the “red arches”, the “open doors, open hearts, open minds” has become part of the language for much of the student and staff community of what we aspire to be. It did take two years for all of the assemblies to endorse the slogan.

M. B. Grant said it sounds kind of like a corporate vision statement.

S. Murphy said it was in a sense. She would love if the committee could look at the aspirational issue. She said that another area of the code she would like to change was:

• Addressing more off-campus behavior. She would be the first to admit that this issue is very complicated. The applicability to faculty, staff, and students should continue, but it is a problem when serious misconduct occurs just outside of the university premises. For example, there have been instances where violence occurs on one side of the gorge but the university cannot do anything because the victim does not want to press criminal charges while the same sort of misconduct on campus would require university action. The distinction between the two is too artificial. I am not in favor of a code that extends into Beijing or summer internships.
• Inability to convene a hearing panel. Hopefully all the discussion this year will resolve the underlying issues. In past years we have been unable to convene a panel promptly.

M. Hatch said the committee has addressed this issue.

M. B. Grant said that the committee has not addressed all facets of the issue. There still is no procedure in place that would provide for a hearing panel outside of the academic year when most student hearing board members are not living on or near campus.

M. Hatch said that was a hypothetical problem which the committee still could address. He asked if the changes put in place had solved the staffing problem the committee had faced.

K. Rourke said that the committee and the University Assembly have already combined the hearing and review board pools to make it easier for the JA to find people to attend. They also increased the number of individuals serving in those pools.

M. B. Grant said she has not had difficulty convening a hearing or review board since the changes were implemented.

S. Murphy said lastly she had a final observation more than an issue. There have been several serious infractions that do not align with the number of suspensions or expulsions that result. Is there something we can do with the hearing and review board process? Is it appropriate to define a number of cases in which the JA can do more than an emergency suspension that only runs five days?

S. Murphy said that especially emerging from the external review of the Dean of Students (DOS) office, that tighter integration between the Division of Student and Academic Services (SAS) and OJA would benefit the community. In almost all peer institutions, the OJA function is within the DOS office.

M. Hatch said a key issue in the external DOS review was a suggestion of moving the OJA to the dean’s portfolio, but the report does not provide arguments for that suggestion.

S. Murphy said another model that might work is the auditor model. The auditor nominally reports to Steve Golding, but primarily reports directly to the Board of Trustees.

M. Hatch asked what the proven advantages were to a less independent JA. The committee has received a lot of feedback in favor of continued independence of the JA, but has not received arguments in favor of integrating into DOS or that the current system is not working.

S. Murphy said she would not say that the current system is not working. But some of the advantages typically cited are:

• If you embed the judicial process into DOS, there are more resources available to assist in administrative aspects of OJA. The crunch time for the JA coincides with a time of the semester when DOS has a relatively low workload. This works if the community sees the disciplinary process as educational, where the advocacy and disciplinary functions are not completely separated. The workload issue, however, should not be the sole basis for moving OJA to DOS office.
• OJA is a barometer of the campus climate. Presently there is some coordination between SAS and OJA to keep track of what issues are currently affecting students. The code should mitigate complete separation of OJA from DOS in some way because the separation is artificial.

J. Purcell asked if S. Murphy felt the path to suspension and expulsion was too long or if, rather, she sought more options besides suspension and expulsion.

S. Murphy JA does not currently have the power to suspend. If the JA sees that is the best thing to do, even if the accused party agrees to it, OJA cannot provide that sanction. The other problem is that hearings on suspension and expulsion have taken so long to convene that the suspension or expulsion could take weeks or months to implement.

M. Hatch said he would like to see numerical data about the number of cases where delays were a problem since the hearing and review board changes were implemented. It seems that a simpler solution to handling off-campus violations than the vast extension of jurisdiction proposed in the Krause Report. Perhaps the Presidential prerogative for action could be changed.

S. Murphy said that was one solution, but that she felt there is a class of offenses which should affect students no matter where they occur.

L. Alley said maybe if the code could cover off-campuses that occur within a certain time of the student being on campus.

G. Stewart asked whether the community police were interested in referring local misconduct to the university.

K. Zoner said she works regularly with local police and some departments would rather refer students to OJA in some circumstances because they think it works better. There is a fairness issue of some being reported to the university while others are not. But in some cases the student would prefer the non-criminal JA process over the criminal justice system.

K. Rourke asked if an employee were charged for drunk and disorderly conduct in Trumansburg, is it conceivable that they could be referred to OJA?

K. Zoner said she was not familiar with all the legalities, but from how she understood the proposal of off-campus jurisdiction that was the case.

J. Purcell said certain actions off campus are important, but we need to decide what specific actions merit university action.

M. Hatch said it seemed most sensible to construct a category of offenses off-campus that should be covered.

S. Murphy said truth be told this recommendation was probably right. There is value in the current process used to evaluate the code, but having seen how long it has taken to implement previous changes such as the Hazing Policy she wonders how the existing process will ever get to such large changes as extending the code off campus. Certainly the administration feels that some misconduct off campus requires action. It would be great if the CJC could recommend specific standards in response, such as “We think some extension of the code off campus merits action by the university, and we propose the following…”

M. Hatch said the committee could probably easily agree to off campus extension of some sort. For example, the committee would probably agree that felonies would merit action.

K. Rourke said there was a Sunday, 28 January 2007 entry from Jesse Gillespie in the online comments which proposes five specific things the committee might consider for framing the issue. If there are no other comments, the committee will move on to the next topic.

M. Hatch had one more question about “simplifying the code”. He asked what were the practical dimensions to that process.

S. Murphy said that if the committee indicated a direction, the UA could request an extension from the President to deal with particulars over a larger time frame.

K. Rourke asked if the Office of the Assemblies (OA) could look into getting someone from Counsel’s office for the next meeting.

A. Epstein said this would be done.

M. B. Grant said that from a practical, not legal, perspective title 2 could be completely eliminated.

S. Murphy said the list provided by Jesse Gillespie was very helpful.

Mary Beth Grant

K. Rourke asked what M. B. Grant really thought about proposed changes in general, but in particular about the independence of OJA. There are some real challenges to running an office without supervision.

M. B. Grant said she felt a need to remain neutral. She does think the outcome of that system needs to be balanced, practical, efficient, and developmentally appropriate. Wanted to be sure to raise the issues of resources. [Presented chart.] The chart shows a substantial increase in caseload of OJA. Since 2000, added one full-time support staff member. Residence hall directors are now hearing some of the alcohol-related cases in the residence halls. That has helped somewhat. A lot of the increase is in alcohol/drug-related and mp3 cases. Some of the increase this year seems to be the absence of a Napster agreement. Without an increase in case-handlers OJA has had to substitute sending a letter to students in a lot of cases where there used to be one-on-one meetings. Any decision-making concerning jurisdiction will have implications for the staffing needs of OJA as well as the resources of the hearing and review boards. Hearings can run 7, 8 or 9 hours. Hearings can be difficult to schedule depending on board members’ schedules. In the past, about half of the suspensions have been agreed-upon, so the requirement of a hearing board seems unnecessary and “agreed-upon supsension” could reduce the administrative burden.

A number of people also asked what has not worked. Here are some examples:

• Not being able to gather a hearing or review board at an odd time of year. I think that can easily be corrected by having an emergency system.
• The Judicial Codes Counselor (JCC) said one student felt he did not have enough opportunity to be heard. This raised a question of to whom complaints about process should be addressed.
• One person raised a serious allegation, but was intimidated by the cross-examination process.
• It is hard to say how many suspensions should have been granted versus how many were granted. Since the 1990s there have been a handful of cases involving a weapon with substantial injury where suspension did not result. It is not clear what the specific circumstances of those cases were.

K. Rourke said the committee was particular interested in the OJA perspective on independence.

M. B. Grant said that the first time she had received a recommendation that OJA be integrated into DOS or another unit was in the external review. She requested an external review primarily because she was concerned about staff resources.

K. Rourke asked whether it is a problem for OJA not to have anyone to report to.

M. B. Grant said it can be a problem when she needs coaching or an annual performance dialogs. Her first performance dialog was with M. G. Opperman, S. Murphy, and E. Loew (representing UA). They gathered feedback from people she worked with and said that it was a lot of work for them. Also, it would be helpful if someone could be an advocate for the office for administrative resources.

P. Beach said OA also struggled with whom to refer an individual last year who had a complaint with OJA. We ended up referring the individual to the Ombudsman. Students should know how to bring that forward.

M. Hatch said he cannot grasp onto this issue in the same way that he can grasp onto other issues. It should not be necessary to move OJA to DOS just to provide annual performance reviews.

J. Purcell said the concern about complaints against the JA was compelling, and the committee should see what it can do to address it.

C. Walcott said you can have both an administrative reporting line and a source of resources. In the case of OJA, I would guess resources come from the Office of the President.

M. Hatch said the committee and the UA are also, in conjunction with the President’s Office, able to get an outside examiner to evaluate the resources and performance of OJA.

A. Epstein said that connected with that is the question of what needs to happen if someone needs to be removed from the hearing or review boards. Something that is missing from the current system is a lack of process for oversight of the judicial system.

Letter to Barbara Krause

K. Rourke said charge to Barbara Krause was not made public until last week.

P. Beach said that letter was public information, but not posted on the website.

K. Rourke asked if that the presence of the letter was very important to the discussion of proposed changes.

M. Hatch said he thought it was not, and that aside from providing it on the website there was nothing else the committee should do to publicize it.

Process for Developing Written Report

K. Rourke said initially M. Hatch would draft the written report.

M. Hatch said he thought it would be best if the respective sectors came up with consensus about the attitudes of respective positions.

J. Purcell asked what benefit would arise from classifying positions by sector of the community, especially since consensuses from each committee seem to align pretty closely.

M. B. Grant asked if the Thursday, 15 February 2007 deadline has been advertised to the community.

P. Beach said she did not know, but it could be checked and posted on the website if not already.

A. Epstein asked if the blogging feature should be disabled after this date.

The committee expressed consensus against disabling feedback.

A. Epstein said he had two suggestions:

1. One thing that would be helpful for discussion is that individuals could digest the comments received from the website and other sources, write up briefs expressing their positions about what should change or should not change, and circulate that around the committee. Perhaps then sit down with the committee and develop consensus about broad ideas.
2. Perhaps with assistance of Counsel’s office, have a very small group of just a person or two write up a report summarizing that consensus.

M. Hatch said that everyone should share their opinion in the manner A. Epstein suggests.

K. Rourke said the second half of next week’s meeting should be devoted to drafting a report.

P. Beach said that dates and locations of future meetings are posted both on the committee website and on the events calendar.

A. Epstein said it was important not to be writing the report by committee.

K. Rourke said that before the next meeting each member should review comments submitted on the website, and form opinions about what should be done on each issues.

Adjournment

Meeting ended at 5:05pm.