UA Codes and Judicial Committee

CJC Meeting Minutes
January 18, 2007
2pm - 4pm
B12 Day Hall

Call to Order

The meeting was called to order at 2:02pm.

Attendance

Present: Manuel Allende, Arthur Andersen, Kevin Clermont, Mary Beth Grant, Martin Hatch, Torrey Jacobs, Robert Kay, Jeff Purcell, Gary Stewart, Deborah Streeter, Kathy Zoner

Not Present: Ali Arvanaghi, Melissa Ysaguirre

Also Present: Travis Apgar, Peggy Beach, Franklin Crawford, Carol Grumbach, Kent Hubbell, Rebecca Shoval, Marguerite Spencer, Charles Walcott

Approval of Minutes

K. Rourke called for corrections to the minutes of Wednesday, 6 December 2006.

A. Andersen said that his name was incorrectly written as Anderson.

A. Epstein said he would correct it.

There were no further corrections. The minutes were adopted without dissent.

Letter to Campus Community

K. Rourke introduced the draft letter to the campus community.

Several changes were proposed and discussed, and it was agreed that details of the language would be finalized by email discussion amongst committee members.

K. Rourke said that the committee needed to decide how best to distribute the letter to the community.

C. Walcott proposed sending the message to the entire affected community. He said that issuance for such a bulk email would require approval of himself for faculty recipients, Vice President for Student and Academic Services Susan Murphy for students, and Vice President of Human Resources Mary George Opperman for non-faculty employees.

M. Hatch expressed support for the proposal.

P. Beach said Office of the Assemblies would follow up on the request once a final draft of the letter was prepared.

A. Epstein said that the return address for such a bulk e-mail would appropriately be assembly@cornell.edu, because it’s generally problematic to use a personal address when the message is sent to such a large audience.

Open Forum on Campus Code and Judicial System

K. Rourke said that there was also a proposal from the previous meeting to hold an open forum to allow all community members to discuss their thoughts about the code and judicial system.

A. Epstein said that the Office of the Assemblies had tentatively reserved the Willard Straight Hall Memorial Room for the event on Monday, 5 February 2007 for 4pm to 6pm. [This was confirmed on on Friday, 19 January 2007.]

K. Rourke said there were two questions that had to be addressed at this point: How the forum will work and how it will be advertised.

P. Beach said that the event could be promoted in the Cornell Chronicle. The UA could also sponsor advertisements in the Cornell Daily Sun.

F. Crawford said that WVBR and Slope Radio were also possible mean of promoting the event.

P. Beach said that the Ithaca Journal was probably not a worthwhile venue for advertising the event, as other publications would be more effective and resources are limited.

K. Rourke said the second topic was process, how the event would work.

M. Hatch said that there should be a means of enabling people to submit their comments on the way out. There should be a record of people who were there and the substance of what they said.

K. Rourke said this could be addressed with a sign-in sheet and an exit form.

K. Zoner said it would be more effective for participants to fill out forms before they spoke, in case they don’t get a chance to speak or are not as interested in writing their views after they have spoken.

K. Rourke said information collected should include name, email, affiliation (student, faculty, staff, other), and a 4–5 line summary of what the participant has to say.

K. Rourke asked if the meeting could be recorded. A. Epstein said that an audio recording could be produced.

J. Purcell said that it was important to have neatly printed comment cards rather than blank sheets of paper. At the last November UA meeting there had been only blank sheets of paper and some participants saw this as a sign that their comments were not going to receive full attention. A suggestion was also made to include the Krause Report web site on the form.

Ari suggested that it would be helpful if some interested members of the committee would be able to assist as a coordinating group in designing comment forms and other elements of forum planning and promotion. Interested individuals should email him after the meeting.

J. Purcell and K. Zoner expressed interest in being part of such a group.

University Policy Office on Krause Report recommendations

P. Beach said that it was not clear how engaged the University Policy Office (UPO) was when the Krause Report proposed a role for it in management of the Campus Code of Conduct. At the last committee meeting, interest was expressed in speaking with a member of the office who could better explain the role UPO could play with the code. She invited Marguerite Spencer, Director of University Policy, to answer questions committee members might have.

M. Spencer thanked P. Beach for inviting her. She said that UPO was mentioned in an exalted way in the Krause Report. Whether the UPO’s proposed role is appropriate depends on the thinking concerning two questions:

1. Who are the constituents that are covered by the code?
2. What exactly would be the responsibilities in “taking over” the code?

M. Spencer said there are two things that the policy office can contribute:

1. A “policy template” a format that is consistent among all policies. This assures that the policy is clear and readable to any community member.
2. A process of review in three stages:
   1. An executive policy review group, composed of senior staff VPs and deans, gives general approval for a policy change. The UPO then develops a detailed written proposal to reflect the general direction of this group.
   2. A policy approval group, including members of University Counsel’s office, reads and reviews the written proposal for contradictory language and other practical problems.
   3. The final proposal returns to the executive policy group for final, wide-angle view.

M. Spencer said that the process does reach into the community, but mostly on the administrative side. The UPO does not work with students. Policies do not belong to the policy office, but instead the office provides a service to various units in helping them to maintain and review policies.

K. Rourke said right now the code covers faculty, staff, and students. The Krause Report proposes separating student disciplinary process from that of faculty and staff. It also proposes elimination of the CJC’s role in review of proposed changes.

M. Spencer said she did not want the idea of moving the Campus Code to the UPO to get so far advanced before the community is sure it wants to encourage use of the UPO in this situation. Perhaps that is something the administration should consider later on depending on how the code is structured.

Location of Disciplinary Function for Students and To Whom and Where the Code Applies

K. Hubbell said his ears perked up at the suggestion that the Judicial Administrator (JA) move to the Dean of Students (DOS) office. Staff DOS are generally speaking not involved with disciplinary matters. He thought there was something generally right with this approach. But an external review Cornell’s DOS office done by the analogues of the DOS at Princeton and UCLA made the following observation:

M. Hatch said that the Office of the Assemblies had prepared a survey of many institutions for CJC and had also found that the disciplinary function often falls to the same office as the advocate for students. It would be nice to get a copy of the external review to assist the committee in its deliberations. [for text of the report, see Monday, 18 December 2006 Report on Judicial Practices of Other Universities] The question here is “what is best for Cornell?” What is different about Cornell’s environment? In tweaking the system, we should make sure that it reflects what we think is best given the particular values and needs of our community.

M. Grant asked whether it made a difference if faculty and staff continue to be part of the judicial process if it’s under the DOS.

K. Clermont said that the first question should be “Who should be covered by the code?” rather than where the disciplinary function should reside, because the location of the disciplinary depends on to whom and where the code applies.

K. Hubbell said he feels very strongly that issues of physical violence that occur off campus should be addressed by the university.

C. Grumbach said if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The existing system was generally a functional approach and should not be changed. Suspension and dismissal were not educational actions. The DOS should not be involved in administration of such sanctions.

C. Walcott said he was not representing faculty, as faculty have not discussed the topic in an official capacity. He said he was convinced that it makes sense for all students, staff, and faculty to be under one umbrella, one code of conduct.

M. Hatch said M. Grant had prepared a memo summarizing cases the JA has examined. The memo shows that the overwhelming majority of cases involve students. Covering staff and faculty is useful in its symbolism that everybody is treated equally. At the November UA meeting, one student had talked about the experience of moving from a high school environment to an college, adult environment. In order for the proposed approach to trump the current approach, the educational value to the student would have to trump the disciplinary function.

R. Kay said he needed to get a transcript of that UA meeting. There was a basic contrast between the rights-oriented model of the current system and the education-oriented model of the proposed system. The proposed system eliminates checks and balances.

M. Grant said the location of the disciplinary office will not necessarily affect the rights of students. Changing the right to remain silent does not necessarily depend on whether the JA is placed under the DOS.

G. Stewart said people in the community wonder why there are no repercussions on campus when students commit violations off campus.

M. Hatch said current rules allow the President to intervene for off campus offenses.

K. Hubbell said Presidential intervention is very laborious in the current system.

M. Hatch said the off campus issue is something that might be corrected without applying the whole code off campus. It could be dealt with through tweaking the existing code rather than a complete overhaul.

M. Grant said she had an external review of the JA’s office that she could share with the group. She requested that members not circulate the parts of the report that have to do with internal matters of the office.

There was a proposal to invite M. Opperman to a CJC meeting to discuss the implications of referring staff to supervisors for all campus code violations on and off campus as is proposed in the new code.

P. Beach asked whether M. Opperman would be invited to provide information on behalf of the Office of Human Resources or to make recommendations about Krause Report proposals.

M. Hatch said he didn’t think recommendations were needed at this time, only information. Any recommendations should be based on the current code.

C. Grumbach said in response to M. Grant’s suggestion about location of the JA being separate from the question of rights that she prefers a more rights-based approach. Location impacts rights. DOS staff are advocates of students but in some disciplinary cases “education” is not possible. What does it mean to have discipline housed in the DOS office?

M. Spencer said she agreed with K. Clermont that the first question should be who is governed by the code.

K. Clermont said he thought the dilemma between the “rights” and the “educational” models should be made more prominent as most of the feedback received focused on those questions.

M. Hatch said each of the major issues brought up in the Krause Report must be argued in great detail. The time for discussion is very limited.

K. Clermont said he is concerned that most participants in the forum will stray from the topics presently chosen by the committee.

M. Grant said the concern got to whether the committee was going to look at the whole forest or individual trees.

K. Clermont said he felt that a fundamental question was whether the process should be of a judicial or an administrative nature.

M. Grant said she felt the JA could still have a judicial function even if it were under the DOS.

K. Hubbell asked if there was a perception that the Krause Report advocates taking rights away from the community.

Several members of the committee said yes.

K. Clermont said that the committee should add something indicating that it will address recommendations concerning process and rights in addition to the topics of interest already identified.

M. Hatch said almost all comments received pertained to process and rights and not to the topics selected for special focus by the committee.

K. Rourke asked K. Clermont to summarize the question he was getting at.

K. Clermont said he would take a stab at it and proposed, “Should the judicial system be rights-based, legalistic or educational, paternalistic?”

A voice vote of the committee members concluded that we should hold off on adding this language at this time.

In reference to our e-mail to the community, J. Purcell said no one will read email for more than a minute.

Next meeting time

The committee agreed to meet again 2pm-4pm on Tuesday, 30 January 2007. After the meeting, the CUPD conference room in Barton Hall was selected for a location.

Adjournment

Meeting was adjourned at 3:52pm.