Public Portion Minutes 3/31/13

By admin Published April 15, 2013 Public Minutes

Honor Council Minutes from 3/31/2013

Members Present: Tamar Hoffman, William Bannard, Janela Harris, Brian Guggenheimer, Jon Sweitzer-Lamme, Ann Wolski, Emily Brown, Damon Motz-Storey, Erin Berlew, Andrew Szczurek, Max Findley, Joost Ziff, Jon Laks, Austin Boyle, Allie Kandel, Ryan Baxter-King

Members Absent: Henrik Born

Public Portion Guests: Jeremy Steinberg, Alison Marquesee

Moment of Silence. (Emily: I woke up at like 7:30…)
Tamar: Thanks for coming. First meeting in like a month. Any public portion-type concerns anyone has about Special Plenary or anything?
Jeremy: Could you give a recap of everything that’s happened since the last time you met
Tamar: Working on Special plenary with StuCo, wrapping up old business. We decided we could continue to operate and finish up things that were already underway, but not begin anything new. So, we’ve been working on the old stuff, nothing new.
Jeremy: More abstracts soon?
William: yes. More than 0 are in the works. Thoughts on Special Plenary (Splenary)? And the new code.
Allie: there should have been a discussion between the third resolution and passing the Honor Code, because those were kind of like two different things.
Ann: Or stating that the discussion in the beginning would be the only one.
Tamar: That’s definitely good to keep in mind. Because I think more discussion on ‘editing’ vs. ‘rewriting’ would have been valuable, to clarify what was happening.
Brian: I was really happy with quorum, the discussions, and the community overall.
Joost: i think it didn’t address many of the structural flaws. I don’t know that it will do much in the long run.
Jeremy: issues like what?
Joost: I can’t be super specific, but I’ve heard about rampant cheating on the Code than we’d like to admit to ourselves.
Ann: any ideas about possible solutions?
Joost: No, I couldn’t think of anything. I feel kind of neutral.
Tamar: I think plenary is helpful for that reason, to remind people that there is a way to address problems, and they don’t need to just deal with something that isn’t working. Anything else?
Max: I heard a lot that people were uncomfortable feeling like they had to choose between the new Code and nothing at all. And that maybe Splenary wasn’t the forum to make the final changes
William: special plenary is supposed to be a place where we ‘make any changes necessary for the ratification of the code’
Damon: i think lots of people thought they’d get in, ratify, then get out. When instead, there were issues addressed there, which people didn’t expect. Being more explicit about the fact the splenary isn’t just a revote, but an actua forum for changes
Jon: I wasn’t comfortable voting on resolution 3 at plenary rather than like a normal code. And I get that there’s not point in Splenary if it isn’t for making changes to the code, but for me the point was a more general abstract discussion. And maybe resolutions would be allowed, but that it was supposed to be more open.
Ryan: I was thinking that it was a place to talk until we came out the other side. I think it’s sad that people felt pressured to vote for the new code, but no one felt so uncomfortable that they left, so i’d count it as a success
Jeremy: do people think it’s really necessary to require changes to the code at Splenary? because maybe people liked the code as was.
Brian: there are no changes required, only modification, which can include voting down resolutions then ratifying.
Tamar: i think there’s a number of people who voted for resolutions even thought they’d have like the code without them, so maybe we need to be more clear about what the options are
Ann: according to Swatter, this happens every 6 years, but that makes it hard for HoCo to remember what went wrong or what to do, so is there anything to do?
William: chair’s report at the end of the year.
Jon Wm: Also, I should do my job, which is to keep track of all of this and make it accessible for future councils
Austin: I feel like most community concerns stem from lack of understanding about how our student government works, so maybe more education (HCOC) about principles and logistics could be really helpful.
Tamar: good idea. People have been thinking about things like this, but haven’t been very active
Max: also, posters, or something else easy and short to get out the message about ground rules would help more than the plenary rule packet. No one wants to read that much more after homework and everything else
Tamar: good idea.
Andrew: could we consent on reminding next council to send out those kinds of reminders?
Tamar: i don’t know that we need to consent on it, so much as just remember
Allie: I also think a huge flier campaign needs to happen before every plenary.
William: spring plenary isn’t honor council’s responsibility
Allie/Jon: it is, though?
William: the people in the community
Jon Wm: that’s a lazy answer, everything is everyone’s responsibility
Tamar: honor council has a lot of responsibilities, and balancing public outreach and private portion matters is difficult
Allie: honor council is part of student government, and should be used for the manpower
Damon: we could do it even if it’s not our written responsibility
Jon L: not just Plenary, but also public portion, and other events in general.
Jeremy: I’m also glad I’m here, but if I came every week, how much would I learn per meeting?
Jon: it really depends
Wm: if your reason for coming is to hear council members talk about philosophical opinions of the code, you’re probably not going to get that. but if you’re coming with concerns to address, or to hear what’s done by council, it’s awesome, and you should get a lot out of it.
Jeremy: the way that what you just said came across is that it’s community members’ responsibility to bring what they want addressed in, and if they just want to observe, they might as well not bother
Jon L: that’s kind of true
Ryan: it’s difficult for council to try to guess what people would want to hear in public portion and then act that out, but it’s easier for the community member to come in with somehting to address
Wm: would it be better if every public portion had a theme, and people could come address things each week?
Jeremy: i just meant that i’d like to see some kind of intentional community outreach on the part of council to encourage people to come
Tamar: that’s something we panned to do, and we have had some more public portion guests than last semester, but with the lapse in code and we haven’t been meeting, so it’s been hard to work on that consistently
Damon: this is kind of like a professor’s office hours, where you can bring issues, or we could give you some vague idea of what kinds of things we do, but can’t go into details of what we’re doing
Jeremy: i think that’s a good analogy for what public portion is right now, but not the way it should be, because a professor also has class-time, but there’s no honor council class-time equivalent
Max: i think student council is the class-time portion, and outreach is more their job. we’re elected, but also have specific jobs that aren’t in the public community perview
Jon Wm: the code does say that we need to balance community outreach and confidentiality. Is there room for another body, whose job is specifically outreach?
Tamar: i think it’s problematic to have a disconnect between the confidential parts and the outreach parts, because the confidential matters guide what kind of outreach we want to do
Jon: i think minimal cross-pollination could solve that problem pretty easily.
Wm: council is busy with other stuff, but more importantly, if i come up with ‘community issues,’ those are going to stem from confidential matters that i’ve seen, and people are going to know that. so i think it’s difficult to say ‘let’s talk about plagiarism,’ without people assuming that we’re having trouble with plagiarism
Jon: there’s nothing that says we can’t, explicitly, but previous councils have been very cautious of releasing that kind of information
Jon L: what info to give people is also a conversation we said that we’d have to have
Wm: Dora example
Emily: abstract discussions are kind of the place where these discussion are supposed to happen
Brian: abstract discussions are also kind of like the professor’s class times.
Jon L: the kind of things we do at retreat aren’t confidential, and there’s always plenary resolutions and stuff, so i think some of those kinds of things could be public
Ryan: Seems like you’re worried that the only way plenary resolutions come about is secret council information, but with abstract discussion, people outside of council know more of what’s going on
Tamar: I’m really sorry to do this. We do have to close up. We can take a few more comments if there are those.
Jeremy: I have another question that’s separately. I was thinking about the rise in cases. I wanted to know the percentage that were self-confronted and the percentage that were international students and the percentages that were athletes.

These minutes reflect the interpretations of Janela Harris and Brian Guggenheimer, Co-Secretaries. They are neither reviewed nor approved by the rest of Honor Council. Questions/comments? Email hccosecs@hc!

Tags: Community Outreach Honor Code Ratification Special Plenary