UA Codes and Judicial Committee

Minutes
Codes and Judicial Committee
Wednesday, 6 December 2006
1:00pm - 3:00pm
G24 Goldwin Smith Hall

Call to Order

K. Rourke brought the meeting to order at 1:05pm.

Roll Call

Present: M. Allende, A. Anderson, M. E. Grant, M. Hatch, J. Purcell, M. Ysaguirre, K. Zoner

Not Present: A. Arvanaghi, K. Clermont, M. Hennes, E. Loew, D. Streeter

Also Present: Peggy Beach, Andy Cowen, Franklin Crawford, Ari Epstein

Approval of Minutes

There was a motion to approve the minutes.

M. E. Grant said she had not yet read the minutes, because she was not aware they were available online, but that she did not object to approving the minutes.

M. Hatch dissented, saying that he did not think it was appropriate to approve the minutes. He said that he also thought it was not appropriate to post draft minutes to the public website. Only the final record should be displayed.

A proposal was accepted by consensus for future approval of minutes. Draft minutes will be circulated by email before the next meeting of the committee. Any amendments will be submitted to the chair and the final draft will be approved at the meeting and then posted.

UA Charge to CJC

Timetable

The chair said that the UA had charged the committee to report back no later than March 7. She and M. Hatch had met with the President’s working group to discuss process. They had made it clear that the committee can only address some of the issues presented in the report with the limited timeframe given.

M. Hatch said, for example, that the committee could not be expected to develop a properly informed opinion on the right to remain silent.

The chair said that the working group had assented to the memorandum of understanding (MOU), with two modifications from original form. The MOU is included in the meeting materials. The committee will priorities the most crucial items on the report and then move onto the remaining issues. Members should think about what their constituencies and constituent assemblies have to say about issues. Members should bring those ideas back to the committees. The committee will also meet more frequently next semester, probably every week from the start of classes.

There was some discussion about when such meetings should be held.

A. Epstein said 4:30pm to 7:30pm is a good range when students are involved because no classes are scheduled at that time.

A. Anderson said that some graduate students might have classes in that range, including law students like him.

M. Hatch said that 4:30 was still likely a good time to meet. It will be important to have a regular schedule. Perhaps it would be best to wait until students know their schedule of classes before deciding on a regular meeting time.

There was some discussion about choosing a specific time for the next meeting. There was consensus to hold a meeting on January 18 from 2pm to 3:30pm. If there was a conflict with courses, 4pm was proposed as an alternative start time.

Resolution Concerning Working Group

M. Hatch said that when the agenda was prepared, the MOU had not been adopted. Since the working group accepted the MOU, this resolution is no longer necessary to enable the committee to look in a due, deliberative way at changes recommended in the Krause Report.

Fundamental Issues for Review

The chair said that originally, the working group was going to attend this meeting, but couldn’t because of a scheduling conflict. Consequently they met yesterday with the chair and with M. Hatch to discuss the MOU. The first question for the committee to address is whether the UA should retain its legislative role with respect to the code. Put another way, is the current process broken? She felt that it was not.

P. Beach asked the chair to clarify what she meant by “the process”.

The chair said she meant the current legislative process by which changes are proposed to the committee, approved or rejected by the UA, and forwarded to the President for a yay or nay. The process provides valuable community input.

K. Zoner said there has to be some central process for change. She had not yet seen evidence that the system is broken. The only bottleneck is the frequency of committee and UA meetings.

M. E. Grant said that in different years there have been quorum difficulties. Even when there have been quorum problems, the committee and assembly have found ways to work around them. Perhaps there are other ways to address the issues of the current system.

M. Hatch said the process of combining the University Hearing and Review Boards’ (UHRB) staffing pools has made the work of the committee much more interesting to him. It has helped him to understand what the role of the committee is in the judicial process.

The chair asked P. Beach to briefly explain what had been done with UHRB.

P. Beach said the committee is responsible for interviewing and selecting students and staff to serve in a pool from which members of UHRB are selected when students wish to appeal the action of the Judicial Administrator (JA) in the case of a University Hearing Board (UHB) or the UHB in the case of the University Review Board (URB). Because the committee found it difficult to staff separate pools for UHB and URB, they decided to combine the pools with the proviso that for any given case, different people would serve on the URB from those serving on the UHB.

K. Zoner said that a very small percentage appeal the JA’s decision, and of those an even smaller portion appeal the UHB decision. In some years, no URB is convened at all.

The chair said under the new system, only one set of interviews is anticipated per year.

M. E. Grant said the university has a policy office that reviews all policies except the Campus Code of Conduct. She didn’t know that the recommendation of the Krause Report was the way to go, but she could think of three reasons for the proposed change: the current legislative system is broken, the policy review process was not in place when the current legislative process was brought into existence, or simply a philosophical argument that the Campus Code should be like other university policies.

The chair asked whether any members objected to maintaining UA and committee control over the campus code. No objections were noted.

M. Hatch said he would like someone from the policy office to comment and explain what rationale might exist for changing from the present system. Maybe a community or working group member could answer what value there is to having an administrative policy group manage the code rather than the committee.

The chair said that beyond that it was important that each member of the committee go to their community to solicit feedback, and that feedback should not be limited to the working group.

P. Beach said that “going out to your community” is a little vague. Some thought should be put into how specifically feedback should be sought.

K. Zoner said that creating a whole new policy process would be a bit like reinventing the wheel since any new process would have to be pretty similar to what already exists.

P. Beach said it might be possible to get someone from the policy office to discuss implications of this change.

The chair said that it would also make sense to involve someone from the Dean of Students office.

K. Zoner said that providing background on the proposed change, including a summary of the current system and proposed changes would help members of the larger community to provide informed and practical feedback.

P. Beach said that the committee could utilize the Cornell Daily Sun and Cornell Chronicle to promote its comment-gathering website.

J. Purcell said he was concerned that publicity in the Daily Sun and Chronicle would not raise sufficient interest. Other means of publicity should be considered in addition.

M. Hatch said that the committee would focus on three of the Krause Report major issues that are the essential issues.

Discussion continued.

M. Hatch said the five principles previously discussed by the committee were good guiding principles but did not identify which sections of the Krause Report should be highest priority for review and discussion. Once the committee gets into details, there will be a lot of discussion. For example on the issue of off-campus jurisdiction, there were many comments. This will be very complex.

K. Zoner said that regardless of what the committee prioritizes it would be important to solicit feedback on all aspects of the report, because members of the community at large may be more concerned about different issues from the committee.

J. Purcell proposed that the committee recommend the UA ask President Skorton to push up the deadline for feedback by a month.

A. Cowen said many students are concerned about off-campus jurisdiction issues, but he agreed that it is important for the committee to prioritize fundamental issues of control over the code.

M. Hatch said he is trying for a middle ground between the committee’s need for deliberation and the President’s mandate to review the specific recommendations and report back to the UA by March 7.

P. Beach said it is still important to cover the bases on the other issues by collecting feedback. Perhaps the committee can develop a clear timeline and process to propose for reviewing the other issues of the Krause report after it resolves the fundamental issues.

The chair said that as she understood it, Krause report issues 4, 5, and 6 were the fundamental issues that the committee must address in depth before March 7. She provided an instructive example concerning what elimination of the office of the JA would mean: Currently stealing on the job is treated differently from stealing in another context. Stealing on the job is handled by your supervisor where stealing elsewhere is handled by the JA or referred to the criminal justice system. In the new system your boss would be responsible either way.

J. Purcell asked what would constitute “extraordinary circumstances” under the current system in which the university would excercise jurisdiction for offenses committed off campus. How does the university find out about such offenses other than through the newspapers?

M. E. Grant said that in her tenure, there had been only two instances in which off campus jurisdiction was excercised and both involved bar fights that resulted in serious physical injury.

K. Zoner said the local police cooperate with Cornell Police in reporting crimes committed by local residents, including students.

M. Hatch asked what the changed standard would mean in practice.

M. E. Grant said that it broadens jurisdiction but she could not say to what extent.

M. Hatch asked whether the committee wanted to get into how broad the scope of off campus jurisdiction should be.

M. E. Grant said she thought off campus jurisdiction was a separate issue from the independence of the JA.

The chair asked if the committee wanted to consider the “where” of the code’s reach as a fundamental issue.

K. Zoner said this was already covered somewhat by including major issue 5 as a fundamental issue.

J. Purcell said that some members of the committee seemed to be reading issue 5 more broadly than others.

K. Zoner said it will be important when presenting the issues to the community to show in clear terms how the current system and proposed system differ from each other. There should be a bullet point for each.

The chair asked whether the committee was in agreement to consider major issues 4, 5, and 6 as fundamental issues that must be thoroughly addressed in the next semester.

There was consensus.

J. Purcell said he wanted to know whether it was possible to get feedback specifically from the victims and defendants who have gone through the JA process.

A. Epstein said that for public comments, the Office of the Assemblies (OA) had been asked to create a set of topical blogs to which the community at large could go to review and add to the discussion about specific issues. OA can set up a blog for each issue, placing the fundamental issues at the top of the page to emphasize their particular importance.

J. Purcell said he wanted to have more discussion about targeting constituencies and raising awareness.

P. Beach said that assemblies have access to a large number of communities through their listserves, but email often fall on deaf ears so to speak.

M. Hatch said Tommy Bruce seemed genuinely interested to assist the committee in publicizing its efforts in a manner prescribed by the committee.

P. Beach said that while she did not want to discourage the committee from sending mass emails, that it would be difficult to persuade administration to send bulk emails to the whole community. Such emails are sent very rarely because of a desire not to spam the community.

J. Purcell said that he thought it was important to engage as much of the community as possible sooner rather than later, starting before everyone leaves for winter holiday. Perhaps contact could be made through the deans.

P. Beach said that requests for mass mailings would be a function of committee members rather than OA or another administrative unit.

M. Hatch asked whether the UA could make such a request.

P. Beach said that no one wants to get spammed and the respective custodians of the contact information, Susan Murphy (students), Charlie Walcott (faculty), and Mary George Opperman (staff) had a policy obligation to strictly limit the number of approved bulk mailing requests. She did not want to discourage the committee from make such a request, but wanted to make sure there were realistic expectations.

A. Epstein said that if the whole community had opted in to a UA listserve, the UA would be free to use it. The administrative lists are not meant to serve as a point of contact for non-administrative communications.

J. Purcell said the committee should also consider timing for bulk mailings.

K. Zoner suggested to start mailing notices as soon as possible because most students, staff, and faculty check their email over break.

J. Purcell said he would start working on a message to be circulated for bulk mailing. He asked how long it would take to set up blogs for community feedback.

A. Epstein said that a prototype was already available, and that such blogs should be in place by the end of the week.

J. Purcell asked whether another community forum could be held, an event that would be open to anyone who wished to attend.

There was consensus to reserve a room for a forum to be held in the first week of February, 4pm-5pm. Willard Straight Hall was proposed as a possible location.

Adjournment

The chair adjourned the meeting at 2:45pm.

Approval

Minutes were approved on Thursday, 18 January 2007 by a quorum of the CJC.