Tempest Abstract Discussion 11/5/2013

Mo si

Ryan: This is not a normal case. It’s arguably the most egregious (or top two) case at Haverford. Permanent separation is a key point, and it’s where I’d like to start. It’s easy to get passionate about this, but let’s be respectful.

Claire-Marie: When I was reading the abstract, I was struck by a juror who felt they would never be comfortable taking a class with the student. If I knew this person and knew they were still here, I wouldn’t be here. In this case you have to think restoration of the individual to the community vs. restoration of the community itself.

Meg: In fact-finding deliberations someone says that it wasn’t just changing his own grade, but lowering other people’s, and that’s something people seem to do a lot but it’s not talked about

Phil D: Comparing it to Amelia, I like saying permanent separation instead of maintaining non-permanent separation just because Haverford doesn’t do that. At some point people do things that are so egregious … most people said when Amelia came out that it was effectively permanent separation. I like that the jury just did it instead of making 15 impossible hoops to jump through.

Ian: Counter to that, I served on the Amelia Earhart jury, and I don’t like what this says about it. I think the reading about effectively permanent separation does a disservice to those deliberations to suggest that these are merely hoops to jump through. The deliberations were thorough, and we considered the needs of the individual and the community. But it seems like that painstaking deliberation process is treated very banally in this abstract, maybe not the trial, but using the idea that Amelia was effectively permanent sounds like we didn’t consider the possibility of restoration, but really it was a lot about anger, from many sides.

Ivan: I kind of agree with the permanent separation seeing that it wasn’t his first trial. It was egregious, and he had been restored twice before. In a sense, I feel that the Code has a limit. You cannot violate it so much … you are going to be held accountable. I saw some red flags. He lowered other people’s grades because he could and wanted to be better comparatively. Here you see the limits of the Code. You can say that Honor Council is powerless, but this shows that Council does things. You will be held accountable for violating the Code in such an egregious way.

Phil L: Adding onto that, when you lower someone else’s grade, it shows a lack of concern for them, and to think that someone could do this… If IITS didn’t find this, maybe the changes for their grades would have been applied. And what would it mean to them that someone within the community did this to them? He separated himself from the community by a huge margin, and there’s no circumstantial excuse, either. It’s just…

James: I feel to some degree that by permanent separation we are giving up on Prospero ever learning the concern we are saying he didn’t show. There are a couple comments in the letter from the jury saying that Haverford just isn’t the place for Prospero. The jury said that Prospero not only lacks respect for the Code but cannot and will not develop it.

Ryan: I agree with you, but a quick note about the letter itself is that the letter includes a disclaimer about how the paragraphs are from individual jurors, and one person stood outside of consensus, so the views may not be from the jury as a whole. If anyone wants to talk about anything else, please feel free, although this conversation is a good one. Someone touched on this a little: would the case be different if Prospero had changed only his grade, or only raised some?

Josh: I think permanent separation, if he had raised other students grades, it would not have been necessary – it still would have been a bad offense, but not on the level of robbing others of what they earned. There probably would have been some separation warranted, but not permanent.

Alison: To go into this sort of hypothetical is to stray from the idea of restorative justice, which takes each case differently. How the entire trial goes has to influence the decision, not just single facts like this.

Connie: The thing is that in the bigger picture lowering others’ grades is attacking them. Raising others grades is attacking them by misrepresentation. Raising your own is attacking by comparison. Every way it’s attacking.

Phil L: What if you raise everyone’s grade?

Connie: That’s not the point. This is hypothetical…

Phil L: The point here isn’t about the attack, it’s the–

Connie: It’s the act itself that is wrong. It doesn’t matter what he does with the grades.

Phil L: Still permanent separation?

Connie: Yes. I would like to think that we’re not giving different levels based on how severe it is. To me, permanent separation is fair. It doesn’t matter the circumstances; if you do something bad that hurts the rules the school is trying to keep, if permanent separation is the right punishment, that’s what it should be.

Ryan: I want to clarify some wording: the goals of all trials are education, restoration, and accountability. Restoration can be restoring yourself to the community, outside of the community, and for the community independent of you. But punishment is never a goal.

Claire-Marie: Answering Phil’s question, I would still support permanent separation. This is not a case of changing the rules to support one person. It’s systemic. If he had just changed his grade, it would have gone unnoticed. The prof only noticed that many students weren’t matching his data. There’s something here that said it wasn’t individual, he messed with the system. He attacked the prof, the grading system, and the Code. This is the same issue if he just shut down Moodle. You mess with the system you agreed to abide by.

Lake: It’s likely that he only lowered grades to keep the class average the same, which makes sense because the final grade is the only thing that would make a difference to him. In the end, his transcript is the only thing he’d have, and the grades of everyone else’s transcript has no effect. Lowering the other grades only tips off the professor.

Ryan: A quick response, on the 3rd page under circumstantial he talks about the focus on grades and ranks in his own country. He may not have understood that profs do not grade on a scale. We don’t know what went on in his head.

Claire-Marie: Some classes are curved, too.

Chris: I think a small but important point is that he didn’t pick 5 particular students (or however many), I believe he chose them at random. That means that everyone in the class and at the school is equally affected, as they might have been chosen. That makes it worse.

Irene: in the letter from the jury, there’s something about how the fact that he attacked the entire community could be ascribed to jealousy or anger, which makes it more egregious than a pointed attack

Panda: Connie spoke to raising your own grade and lowering others. The result is the same. It’s more reasonably to analyze one’s intention – there’s a difference between premeditated murder and a crime of passion. Raising your own grade is because you want to look better. Lowering someone else’s is deliberately hurting them.

Ryan: I agree. The metaphor is extreme, but intent is very relevant

Panda: My personal opinion is that he’s trying to hurt others.

Alison: Does this case constitute some kind of crisis, like Prof Ferdinand suggests in his letter? Like maybe he didn’t know of the code, or maybe the code is in trouble

Josh: This isn’t just an isolated case. We’ve had other very bad but not quite as bad cases recently, like Amelia, and from what I’ve heard there has been a rise in the frequency of Honor Council cases. That would seem to indicate that there are more infractions and that the community is becoming less unanimously devoted to the Code.

Ryan: Some numbers: it was a tradition that the Co-Chairs gave an online forum for the parents, and three years ago 0-6 cases was normal, then 3-5, and now 10 is about normal. That doesn’t mean a particular thing, and there are a lot of reasons why this could be; maybe people are being caught/turning themselves in more. One of the questions is about things that we can do now with technology that we couldn’t do before, so does that suggest that our community is crumbling or that it’s the technology?

Ariel?: There’s a difference between survivalistic cheating and this, in which a student inflated himself for no apparent reason, just a slightly better grade. Cheating on a test could also be wanting a professor to think better of you.

Phil: I had this discussion with Ryan earlier, and I think a lot of cases have been like this, where the professor looked at a record that didn’t exist before. And I feel like that’s where the rise in cases has come from. Who knows if people who looking at books 10 years ago, but now that it’s online they’re being caught. And even if a student did cheat before, the professor has a much harder time checking than now, with Google. In the long term, we’d be setting ourselves back if we used this as an excuse to limit technology in the classroom. I don’t know the culture from 10 years ago, but I’d guess that the issue is that technology makes it easier to catch people

Connie: we’re asking about technology, so yes, we have awesome technology now, but it’s two-ways. While we have more exciting ways to cheat, the professor and college have better ways of catching us. And 10 years ago, there weren’t very many ways to catch someone. I know there are a lot of ways to potentially cheat, but the decision to use them doesn’t matter.

Oscar: I think the discussion about blaming technology is what Prospero did saying we could change moodle, not him. You’re not supposed to blame the system, and the rise in technology is not an excuse for not following the Code. The values are not technologically based, and the idea about the Code being in crisis… I loved Special Plenary, which was the last Haverpocalypse. And the rigor of the analysis the jury went through, as well as the Amelia jury, reinforces the idea that students serve, and take it seriously. The human aspect that Prospero was an international student also increases my idea of the strength of the Code. It wasn’t easy, but the jury’s decision is great

Phil L: the reason we don’t have a set of rules about what we should do and what will then happen is that we measure not the external actions, but the internal integrity. The Code is supposed to get us all to a place of introspection, and we’re supposed to be thinking about if we’re acting in line with the values set. The fact that technology changes doesn’t change the internal process that we want to follow. The power here lies in the fact that we all value this attention to the internal.

Ian: this has been interesting, especially the part about punishment and tit-for-tat, but we’re thinking of the people involved as a unique individual who has done this thing. I just want to suggest that the Code is also about shaping a community that is not just individuals alone, but a moral community with vulnerable membership. And it’s great to be part of the community, but it’s also important to remember that membership is vulnerable. I’m struck by the lack of conversation about restoration. The discussion about technology should be less relevant to a community less concerned with grades, and our focus on real knowledge influences both our attitudes and the way we deal with these people.

Ryan: Something else I thought of was that it’s easy to read this and get angry. It’s a lot harder to be compassionate, but the question I’d like to ask is, if you were this student and had screwed up this bad, how would you feel being tossed out of the institution? Is that the compassionate thing to do?

Jacob: I found this case devastating. I was struck by the professor’s letter, but when it comes to entering a community like this, I know my peers have concern for me and I for them. And I know that a lot of people feel for each other, and I’d hope that everyone here acts in the same way. When it comes to restoration, it’s important to feel like everyone has compassion for each other, and to think that someone would consider changing someone else’s grade outside of their own is devastating. And I came here because I wanted to be surrounded by a concerned student body, but it’s important that the community remains a safe space.

Josh: in this case, cultural difference should be taken into account at the first offence, but Prospero’d already had two cases, and those had the goals of A, E, R. If he didn’t see this as the violation it was, I think it’s clear that you can’t change him into a respectable member of the community. It sounds callous, but at a certain point, you have to eliminate him to save the community.

Claire-Marie: the question about how much information a jury should receive: I think from an ethical standpoint you should judge a situation independently, and maybe the jury shouldn’t have other information. From a community standpoint, though, Haverford isn’t a legal paradise, but it is a group of people sharing a way of life. And once you join it, your actions affect others, and your actions throughout your time as a community member are all up for scrutiny. And he came here intentionally, so there’s something about this that implies to me that restoring the individual to the community is not the only goal, though most juries think of more than restoring the community itself. And the community is vulnerable, and everyone has the same authority, so all you need is one cancerous cell to mess everything up.

Michael: I agree. I don’t think that everybody belongs at Haverford, as acknowledged by the application and Honor Code essay. And I don’t think that just because you made it past that process means you are guaranteed a place here forever. The goals of Council are wonderful, but I think Prospero is past the point where personal and community restoration should be balanced. I think the attempt to restore him would be a detriment to the community’s health.

Ryan: the jury mentions in the letter that they believe that permanent separation is the only way for Prospero AND the community to heal. Do you guys think that’s true?

Sharoda: Prospero talks about being a child of the community, and gives the sense that he couldn’t trust himself with the power he had on Moodle. And he wasn’t able to see himself as an adult member of the community, so I think he clearly needed the guidance and structure that could be offered at a different kind of institution.

Ryan: Let’s officially end with a mo si.

Mo si.