Masthead Editorial: Judicial Commitee Deserves More Authority Recent Events Emphasize JC’s Limited Role in Non-Honor Cases
The News Staff
In one day alone, and in two separate incidents twenty-three students were disciplined with two dismissed from school. Present in the cases was the use of drugs or alcohol.
“The moral fabric of the school is unraveling,” said one student regarding the most recent disciplinary actions.
While we don’t think that the punishments doled out following the off-campus alcohol fiasco were inappropriate, we must ask why the Judicial Committee has been left out of the loop on cases such as this. If the circumstances of a case do not warrant that it be brought before the Committee, then it only seems right that the Chair and Vice-Chair of the JC, as elected representatives of the student body, should be included in the decision process.
The Judicial Committee is, by all accounts, the upholder of the community standards we have at our school. They are our elected student officials whose job is to not only educate students on the rules but also recommend punishments to the Dean of Students in Honor Code and harassment cases.
Currently substance abuse and other major school rule violations are not brought before the Judicial Committee, but rather are taken directly to a caucus of the deans, who go about deciding the fate of the student.
This system was put in place on the heels of the cocaine scandal of 1984 when 16 students were dismissed in the trafficking of cocaine. In fact, at least one member of the JC was involved in the scandal itself. According to Lolly Hand, former Dean of Students and current head of the upper school at Pace Academy in Georgia, this change was made as part of a total overhaul of the school’s disciplinary process.
“School disciplinary systems must decide whether the focus of adjudication will be on the violation or the violator. Honor Code and Code of Conduct and Respect cases naturally demand attention to the degree and circumstances of a violation; thus they are usually heard by a Judicial Committee. A decade or so ago at Choate, violations of curfew, alcohol and drugs, etc., were not heard by the judicial committee because the school did not recognize degrees of the circumstances. Either the student was guilty or his wasn’t, and if he was guilty of the violation, the punishment was automatic. Individual circumstances did not persuade outcome,” commented Hand on the change in the handbook.
However, the current process now has a degree of objectivity to it and does, in fact, take into account circumstance.
According to Dean of Students John Ford, the deans decide on disciplinary action via a multi-step process. The first step is a meeting between the student in question and his or her form deans and adviser. The administration feels it is important to always maintain the presence of multiple adults. The student is asked to explain what happens and also fields any questions that may arise as a result of that explanation.
After this initial round of questioning, all of the form deans, Dean of Residential Life Amy Salot, and Mr. Ford meet to discuss a possible response. This group met Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss punishments regarding the alcohol abuse on the previous weekend.
Often when the deans meet to deliberate on such complex cases, their decision on a punishment is the object of much suspicion. Some students and faculty believe the punishment is too harsh while others find it too lenient, both groups pointing to various unfounded justifications, often racial or socio-economic.
With the Judicial Committee’s deciding Honor Code violations and the Deans office deciding behavioral cases, our school has a pseudo-bicameral punishment system. In our view this multi-bodied system needs to have a weighted balance of powers, and at least allow for some student representation in disciplinary action in all major cases.
Mr. Ford already sits in on Judicial Council meetings and has the power to overturn a recommendation for punishment regarding academic dishonesty. Similarly, this kind of check on power should be present when decisions are made in the deans’ office. Though the JC shouldn’t have the right to overturn the deans’ decision, it—or its top leaders—should at least be allowed to offer its viewpoint as a unified body elected by the students.
It is not our place to affirm or rebut the decisions made last week; however, we can and should analyze the process that led to those decisions. A closer examination of that system reveals serious flaws in that students have no voice in it. Any system that allows for more suspicion than support is not a good one and should be reevaluated with the goal of possible reform.
As a school, we have suffered an embarrassing few weeks. The disciplinary process has had to be invoked multiple times in connection with unrelated incidents. With Choate’s integrity on the whole in question right now, let’s take a first step in the right direction by bringing more integrity to the system of punishment.
