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Bennet’s task force to examine Honor Board and SJB

by Anna Talman
Assistant News

In response to data showing an increase in the number of Honor Code violations and to a growing faculty concern about the function of the Honor System, President of the University Doug Bennet announced the formation of a task force to investigate the workings of the University’s Honor Code and Code of Non-Academic Conduct.

The task force will examine the Student Judicial Board (SJB) and the Honor Board, the student-appointed committees that adjudicate alleged violations of the Code of Non-Academic Conduct and the Honor Code respectively. It will look at outside data of other institutions’ honor and judicial systems to see if there is a more efficient method.

The impetus for the creation of a task force was a mounting concern among faculty members about the efficiency and the reliability of the University’s Honor Code and the SJB.

“The task force grew out of the faculty’s concern about academic standards and community standards,” said Dean of the College Freddye Hill. “Not only was there a precipitous increase in Honor Code violations starting in the fall of 2000, but the types of violations were also changing. For example, students were found in violation downloading material from the web or sending material across the web to each other,” Hill said.

Hill mentioned “a major code of conduct issue regarding stolen property, regarding the theft of an examination,” a reference to a specific case that caused some alarm among faculty and administrators. Howerver, Hill would not go into more detail about the case.

President Bennet was dismayed by the recent data about the Honor System.

“The data about infractions of the Honor Code and the Code of Non-Academic Conduct are… discouraging,” Bennet said.

Bennet said he does not think the current systems work.

“I think that people try very hard to make them work, but I have concerns that they’re structured in a way which appears to be quite inefficient, and inefficiency and slowness probably make it harder to be consistent,” he said.

RaShawn Woodley ’02, co-chair of the SJB, agrees that the board should be revised, but said he’d be concerned if the Administration tried to take the powers of the SJB out of the hands of students.

“With any board, there’s room for improvement,” he said. Is it working well? Yes. Would it work in ten years? No. There will have to be changes made…[However,] it would be an injustice to the Wesleyan community for the Administration was to take away the rights of students to be heard by their peers,” Woodley said.

Chair of the Faculty Joseph Rouse worried that neither students nor faculty give the Honor Code the weight it deserves.

“There is a sense that the Honor Code has less visibility and less salience in the way in which faculty, administrators, and students view it,” Rouse said.

The charge to the task force is to conduct an in-depth review of the University Honor Systems, and an examination of possible amendments or alternative options to the current infrastructure.

The task force should make a “careful and nuanced review of the issues,” Rouse said.

Now that the task force has been appointed, they will be asked to produce a preliminary report this semester, with their final report to be finished in the fall.

“What I hope is that we are able to articulate and affirm those values which we deem essential to the Wesleyan experience. I also hope that we clarify some policies and procedures,” Hill said.

President Bennet said that he strove for diversity in selecting the task force members.

“[I wanted to] maintain some balance among divisions. The faculty have the largest role on the committee because it was they that raised the issues,” he said.

The Faculty members of the task force will include chair John Salzer of Astronomy, Carla Antonaccio of Classics, Christina Crosby of English, Ann duCille of African American Studies, Richard Elphick of History, Susan Hirsch of Anthropology, and Ishita Mukerji of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. Other members of the task force will be Jenina Nunez ’04, Vice President of the University Peter Patton, Mike Roy of ITS, S. Sheih, Gina Zorzi ’03 and Ryan Ungaro ’04.

Ungaro, the chair of the Student Affairs committee of the Wesleyan Student Assembly, said he thought the system was pretty effective in its current state.

“Having a peer to peer judicial system is important,” Ungaro said. “Students at Wesleyan are mature enough and responsible enough to judge one another’s case.”

Rouse touted the importance of student participation on the panel.

“Student representation [on the task force] is important, not just to reflect student attitudes and opinions, but also student understanding of how the Honor Code is grasped … how it’s experienced by students,” he said.

He emphasized that the review is not meant to pit any one group against any other.

“It’s easy to misrepresent this issue, to make it seem that ‘we’ need to treat ‘them’ in a certain way. But it’s important to realize that academic integrity is something that matters to all of us.”

President of the WSA Matt Fox said that he was concerned the task force might jeopardize student input into the systems.

“I fear that student involvement is far less a concern than pure efficiency. … Students lost voice and vote last year on the EPC [Educational Policy Committee]…It’s imperative that there remains strong student participation [on the SJB and Honor Board], because those groups make decisions that affect students’ futures,” he said.

Fox added that the current review may not be sufficient.

“I feel that the Academic Review Board should be addressed in the same manner as the Honor Board and the SJB, because the current system puts the process before the person. At a school as intimate as Wesleyan, this should never happen,” he said.

Woodley defended the SJB.

“I don’t think that Wesleyan students realize how lucky they are to have a

student run Honor Board and Judicial Board,” he said. “We have a diverse board, so that everyone in the community is represented.”

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