U. releases judicial draft for comment

Students claim they lack input The University has released a draft of a new student disciplinary charter for comment by members of the University community. But student members of a committee charged with drafting the proposal said crucial student input was ignored, and the draft does not allow for enough student involvement in the judicial process. "The document was written over the summer by people in the Provost's office and in the President's office," said College senior Wilton Levine, who chaired the committee. "We did not write it." The proposal includes a complete revision of the procedures governing the disciplinary system, as well as a new Code of Academic Conduct to deal with issues of academic integrity. Provost Stanley Chodorow gave the committee a draft of the proposal last week, according to College senior Ashley Magids, another student member of the group. Since then, the committee met frequently to recommend changes to the draft to Chodorow, Magids said. Levine said last night that he has not seen the final proposal. But he said he may not support it when it is officially released Tuesday. "I see several problems with the charter as written, primarily the lack of student involvement in the overall process," he said. "To us that says that the administration doesn't believe that students can handle being involved in the system. In a way, it's sort of insulting." Chodorow is out of town and was unavailable for comment last night. The proposed charter will be published in full in Tuesday's Almanac. It is now available on the Almanac's World Wide Web site at "http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/". University Council will discuss it at a meeting on Wednesday. Under the new proposal, the Office of Student Conduct would run all functions of the disciplinary system. The OSC would report to the University Conduct Council, a student body which would oversee the OSC and also educate students about the Code of Conduct. The UCC's counterpoint for violations of the Code of Academic Integrity would be the Honor Council, which would educate students about academic honesty. When a complaint is filed against a student, the OSC would investigate the incident to see if it is appropriate to bring formal charges against the student. After charges are filed, the case would be turned over to a hearing board. In hearings, students would have the right to call and question witnesses in their defense. But students' faculty advisors would not be allowed to speak at hearings. A faculty member appointed by the Provost would serve as a disciplinary hearing officer and chairperson of the hearing board. The board would also consist of five students and faculty members. For hearings dealing with violations of the Code of Conduct, three students and two faculty members would sit on the board. In academic integrity hearings, two students and three faculty members would preside. Levine said the system should involve students in many more places than the draft proposes. According to the draft, the hearing board would not decide the outcome of cases, but only make a recommendation to the Provost. Levine said he thinks the hearing board should have the power to make the decision. "The people who really make up this community are the students and faculty," he said. "They should have ownership of the system. The draft should allow them to make a decision and judge their peers." And Magids said she had hoped for a separate system to deal with academic integrity issues. But the draft would create one system to cover all student violations of University policy. "By putting it all in one document there is some kind of need to make everything very parallel," she said. "But the Honor Council is not of the same nature as the University Conduct Council." The charter will be available for comment for the next two or three weeks, Levine said. After more revisions by Chodorow and the committee, each individual school must ratify the proposal before it will take effect.

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