Codes & Judicial Committee
10/01/07
Present:
Kathleen Rourke (staff), Andy Cowan (student), Jamie Rogers (JCC), Ari Epstein (Assemblies office), Marty Hatch (faculty, UA liaison), Kevin Clermont (faculty), Jack Cao (student), Rachel Dorfman-Tandlich (student), Gary Stewart (staff), Kathy Zoner (CU police), Nighthawk Evenson (grad student)
9/17 Minutes: Postponed till the end all members could read
UA:
- Hatch: UA is ready for forum
- Rourke: Susan Murphy will not be there but hopefully send a representative
9/17 Code Revision:
- Rourke: Do we need copies at the forum
- No comments for draft
Forum:
- Epstein: Forum will be the same as last year
- Rourke: No need for computers�people can bring their own computers
- Epstein: Physical drop box would be necessary
- Rourke: There will be banks of chairs and microphones
- Epstein: 2 microphones for committee
- Rourke: Forum introduction
- Kathleen will introduce herself, then others introduce themselves
- Kathleen will then go through highlights
- Cowan: OJA should be changed to JA (OJA is confusing)
- Stewart: Take out information regarding computers
- Make the time slots definitive because people have different interpretations of “a few minutes”
- Rourke: Someone will need to keep track of time
- Dorfman-Tandlich: There shouldn’t be a time limit�it’s better to ask people to be brief
- Hatch: People should be brief to give others time
- Rogers: Should we take minutes
- Rourke: it will be videotaped. Wanted Jamie and Jack to participate not be taking minutes. Asked Ari to take minutes
- Hatch: Generating a transcript would be more important than minutes.
- Epstein: Agreed to write this transcript.
UA Meeting:
- Hatch: Dates: 11/14 (aim date to get code revision to UA); 11/28 (backup)
- Extended invitation for all committee members to come
Next Meeting:
- Rourke: October 15th
- Cowan: People will wait till the last day to hand
- Rourke: Oct 28 is a problem because
- Rourke: Oct 17 or 24. Asked Epstein
- Epstein: Meeting could conflict with UA meeting
- Clermont: Meet on Oct 17 with Oct 24 as a backup
Comments to Code Revision:
- Evenson: Wanted clarification on definition of lewd
- Clermont: We could spell out everything and have 400 page document. Didn’t feel we would need to spell out lewd because it is taken from New York Criminal Code. NYCC does not define lewd. There was a case in which defendant challenged the meaning of lewd and court rejected that.
- Rourke: Photograph comment
- Clermont: This is a misunderstanding. The provision says you can’t violate someone’s privacy (up-skirting and down-blousing)
- Rourke: Jurisdiction question by David Lipson
- Clermont: Something like rape in collegetown is something that the criminal process would take care of
- Hatch: The question is when does the college take note of something like that (when grand jury takes action, or when person is charged).
- Rourke: The language is clear that you can be charged with both criminal and on-campus violations
- Zoner: Because of different burdens of proof someone could get off in criminal court but expelled from school.
- Stewart: What happened with the kid abusing the dog?
- Clermont: We couldn’t touch him but under can under the revisions
- Cowan: it depends on definition of danger to university
What conduct does this cover that grave misconduct doesn’t cover.
- Hatch: If there is an off campus fight (reported via email), how would university get involved?
- Zoner: It’s very hard given the nature of fraternities to conduct investigations. There are many faults within the system. They have internal processes and adjudication mechanisms.
- Hatch: Is this sufficiently strengthened to handle this and respond to president’s message.
- Zoner: The facts may have been different from what people heard.
- Dorfman-Tandlich: What is gravely?
- Zoner: Interpreted as a threat to life
- Clermont: We inherited this term and it has rarely been invoked.
- Cowan: What is covered by “threat to educational mission” that isn’t covered by threat to safety or property
- Zoner: Lower level crimes where the victim may be arbitrary (for example, child porn or abuse of dog). There is a fear that this is a way for us to prevent protestors.
- Clermont: Regarding child porn, Pace has just discovered a professor that had that a cache of child porn. We are approaching this through a procedural mechanism where someone has to convince the president that the educational mission is at stack.
- Zoner: Don’t we want to prevent people who have tendency to be a child predator but don’t act on it.
- Cowan: But there’s no law against having those feelings
- Clermont: Does speaking in favor of bin Ladin constitute a threat to educational mission.
- Rourke: If people don’t engage us, do we engage ourselves
- General response: No.
- Rourke: We’ve opened up the process a little bit by also giving the JA a say.
- Cowan: President usually invokes off-campus jurisdiction upon JA’s request.
- Rouke: Disagreed with this statement
- Rourke: Did the dog abuser quit school or was he kicked out?
- Clermont: He quit.
- Rourke: Do we feel comfortable enough with the language to defend it?
- Cowan: We don’t have to defend it, we hear comments and answer questions
- Hatch: Didn’t we vote on this?
- Cao: We need to explain and clarify, not just take comments.
- Rourke: Anything else to talk about
- Hatch: Dog abuser pled guilty and was described in the paper as a former Cornell student
- Evenson: Time limit to raise jurisdiction
- Rogers: Mary Beth said it was a waste of time if someone held onto a jurisdictional claim until after the hearing; raised his concerns with this.
- Cowan: Originally the draft said 3 days
- Clermont: There was a case this summer where someone had a jurisdictional claim after the hearing because he was already suspended. In law, if you show up in court, you waive your right to challenge the court’s jurisdiction over the person.
- Evenson: Do we have reason to believe that this change could actually hurt someone?
- Clermont: Apparently its very rare
- Rourke: The amount of volunteer time involved is a big issue.
- Cowan: It would be stupid to bring it up later because if the code doesn’t apply to you you’d bring it to as many decisionmakers as possible.
- Zoner: Things that go do hearing boards are usually the more serious cases where there is far more at stake then 15 hours of community service. Hearing boards start at 4:00 and go until they’re done (which could go into the night). Therefore there are people who suffer.
- Rogers: But these people volunteered for this position and the long hours. This will only catch the people who ignorantly think they can handle this on their own.
- Hatch: But these students are smart and we should up the ante.
- Rourke: This also applies to faculty and staff.
- Hatch: They’re smart too.
- Cowan: This is important and therefore should be preserved.
- Clermont: But personal jurisdiction comes from the Due Process Clause of the Constitution and that is waived from the get go.
- Hatch: Email regarding harassment
- Rourke: historically every time we’ve tried to enlarge the list we worry that by excluding things we may have a bigger problem.
- Zoner: Age is not the right word.
- Cowan: What work is subsection (e) doing?
- Clermont: Virtually nothing. It is an historical holdover. Didn’t make any changes to this. Is there a distinction between © and (d).
- Cowan: We should wait till close of public comment before we make more decisions on text of code.
Approval of 9/17 Minutes:
- Voted: Minutes approved (unanimous).