Student group struggles with judicial reform

and Joshua Fineman Students pursuing justice at the University have struggled to push their plans forward this fall. Last year, now-College senior Beth Hirschfelder took the reins of a Student Judicial Reform Committee that set out to create three plans for various parts of the University's judicial system. The Code of Conduct developed at that point has already been approved and instituted. But the original plans for the Code of Academic Integrity and the Student Judicial Charter have been overhauled since they originally appeared in Almanac last April. "There are a lot of significant changes," Hirschfelder said at Wednesday's University Council meeting. The students involved in the process have attributed the difficulties they have faced to revolving-door administrators. "We're dealing with concerns raised [by] one administration," Hirschfelder said, referring to President Sheldon Hackney's administration. "Our committee was created by another [interim] administration and plans will be implemented by a third administration." Provost Stanley Chodorow has been the principal administrator to deal with these issues, as was Interim Provost Marvin Lazerson before him. But Hirschfelder said the two provosts approached the plans differently. "I think in many ways, our committee is serving a much more advisory capacity to Dr. Chodorow," she added. "He has some very specific issues on points where we disagree. "We try to take his vision and push him in another direction based on our knowledge of Penn and the research we've done," Hirschfelder said. One issue that has caused great disagreement between students and the provost is over the hearing panel on Academic Integrity. In the current report, the hearing board consists of two faculty members and three students from the Student Judicial Council developed under the plan. Originally, the SJC's hearing board was to include four students and one faculty member. Chodorow sent a letter to all faculty dated November 1 indicating his belief that "the determination of guilt or responsibility should be made by a faculty panel," Hirschfelder said. But she and the other students on the committee want students to "have ownership of the process." College senior Carolyn Choi, chairperson of the Academic Integrity committee, said the provost "is definitely not in full favor" of the student committee's plans. Chodorow said he disagrees with the students over the panel's makeup. "They are trying to create a specialized group or panel for handling academic integrity issues," Chodorow said at the Council meeting. "They persuaded me that this is a good idea." "Where I differ is in the constitution of [the panel]," he added, saying that the main issue is whether the panel should be composed of faculty or students. Hirschfelder said progress has been made to bring the two parties together. "We're still not in complete agreement, but I think that after some discussion he was much more amenable to [our] view," she added. Choi said the most important issue the Code of Academic Integrity deals with is cheating. "Cheating should be a top-notch priority on behalf of the administration, making it the most important at Penn," she said. Choi added that the University does not have an ethos of honor currently, and attributed this problem to its size. Choi stressed education as the key to combating cheating. As part of the code, she hopes to implement a program for incoming students that would discourage cheating and promote honor and integrity. The provost and students agreed on most of the Student Judicial Charter's main ideas, although Chodorow attempted to simplify the process outlined in the original document. "It's a proposal that is a skeleton of the [original] judicial charter," said College junior Wilton Levine, chair of the judicial subcommittee. "There are certain issues [Chodorow] initially thought should go in one direction and we feel should go in another direction." The Charter focuses on mediation and increased student involvement in the judicial process. Levine said he hopes both documents will be available for public examination before the semester's end and that he wants them to be implemented by next fall. The University Council discussed the two documents for half an hour on Wednesday and Chodorow said he hopes to continue discussion with the committee.