Student leaders await new judicial charter

With revisions to the proposed Student Judicial Charter nearing completion, student leaders said they are confident the next draft released by the administration will better reflect student concerns than the highly criticized draft released last month. Provost Stanley Chodorow published the first draft for a revised disciplinary charter in September. Many students and faculty said at the time that the original draft placed too much power within the judicial system in the administration's hands. The Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate is due to release its comments on Chodorow's draft November 8, Chodorow said. He added that he will release his next proposal shortly after that. College senior Wilton Levine, who chaired a committee originally charged with revising the University's judicial code, said his committee recently met with Chodorow to discuss the next draft. "The impression I got was that a lot of the issues [the committee] raised were going to be addressed and hopefully corrected," Levine said. "I'm generally pleased by the progress on revisions, and I'm interested to see how the final draft turns out." Levine's committee sharply criticized the draft Chodorow released in late September, saying the administration ignored student concerns in writing the document. But Levine said Chodorow took student feedback on the draft very seriously while revising the judicial system proposal. "He reviewed every concern, recommendation, or question that was submitted," Levine said. "We created categories of concern, and the issues that came up most frequently were given the most attention. If a lot of people have a concern on one issue, you focus on that issue." Chodorow said last week that the charter has "evolved quite a bit" since it was first published -- partially as a result of student comments. More than 30 concerns raised by students and faculty members were organized into four major categories by Chodorow and Levine's committee, Levine said. These categories were the roles of the provost, advisor, and Office of Student Conduct within the judicial system, and a miscellaneous category, according to Levine. The Undergraduate Assembly also released a proposal for four major changes to Chodorow's draft early this month. UA member and College sophomore Tal Golomb, who organized the UA's response to the draft, said the body would wait until Chodorow releases his next draft before taking any further action. "We're obviously concerned about what the results will be, but we're waiting for the next stage," he said. "I believe he understands the UA proposal." Golomb added that one of his main concerns with Chodorow's document was the lack of student input during its creation. He said Chodorow did not completely consider student opinion with the first draft, and that he expects the second draft to follow in that pattern. Both Levine and Golomb said they expected the new draft to be released by Thanksgiving. Once the draft is published, it requires approval by the deans of the four undergraduate schools.