Jurisdictional Issues
Throughout the history of the Harvey Mudd College student judicial
system, there have always been questions about the jurisdictions of
the various courts that existed. It appears that in the beginning,
the Honor Code was intended mainly to apply to academic aspects of
life on campus, but this expanded to apply to all aspects of life on
campus.
The first two-court system appears to be an attempt to get all of the
serious cases heard by the Judiciary Board, while petty cases can be
tried by the more general Student Court. This system clearly didn't
work out well, since it was replaced very quickly. Part of the
explanation for this may stem from the fact that dorms no longer seem
to levy as many fines as they did in the past, and it may also be true
that as the college aged, the administration made more rules,
eliminating the need for dormitory and ASHMC rules.
The dual board structure seen in place today arose from a perceived
need to separate academic and non-academic systems. I believe that,
in many ways, this has failed. The current perception of students
involved in the Honor Board is that the Honor Code applies to more
than situations in which academic integrity is at risk, but also to
situations on the residential side of campus that reduce the integrity
of the community. One example of this is that in the past few years,
cases involving offensive posters have usually been heard by the
Judiciary Board, rather than the Disciplinary Board. The current
distinction between the Judiciary Board and Disciplinary Board is that
the Disciplinary Board hears cases in which there are written rules,
while the Judiciary Board hears cases in which Honor Code violations
occur.
In many cases, it appears that both of these instances have occurred.
In such cases, the current rules require a board that's about twice as
large to hear the case. This can cause scheduling nightmares for the
chairs.
Another jurisdictional issue that has come up in the past few years is
when the Sexual Harassment Peer Counselors and Grievance Board has
jurisdiction over a case. Due to the way that the college must have a
policy for preventing sexual harassment under current law, this board
must act in certain ways that don't necessarily match up with the ways
in which the Honor Board currently operates. Unfortunately, this
creates a problem when a case involves sexual harassment as well as
other violations of the honor code or disciplinary code.
Closed Trials
I am unconvinced of the necessity of opening trials and releasing
information to the public. I believe that the important question to
ask is what right the plaintiffs and defendants have to privacy.
Those who are arguing for opening all cases by default are arguing
that students don't have any such right to privacy, and that we
shouldn't be giving them such privacy when other members of the
community want or need to know what's going on.
In some cases, it seems necessary to release some information
regarding cases to the general college community. As I outlined above
in the section regarding changes considered by the current council, I
believe that the administration should have released some sort of
statement after the initial analysis of the allegedly explosive
material was conducted.
In other cases, it seems more prudent to protect the confidentiality
of the involved individuals. For example, in cases where a professor
accuses a student of cheating, it may make sense to protect the
privacy of both individuals involved. The confidentiality of the
current system protects students who are found guilty and later learn
from their mistakes. If their indiscretions become more widely known,
they may be subject to more careful scrutinization from professors in
the future. Publishing a list of people convicted of cheating on
tests and plagiarizing their homework could cause these people to be
the target of harassment in the future, even if they change their evil
ways. Additionally, the current system involving confidentiality
makes more professors comfortable bringing cases to the Judiciary
Board, and anything that lets us continue our tradition of
self-government is a good thing.
In 1963, ASHMC Council decided to look into exactly the same
question (ASHMC Minutes, Jan 7, 1963). Unfortunately, the
minutes state only that the Council decided that no such amendment was
necessary (ASHMC Minutes, Feb 18, 1963). It does not appear
that there are minutes in the ASHMC Archive detailing the
deliberations of this committee, so we may never know the reasons they
came to this decision.
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