Matilda abstract discussion 9/18

Mo si.

Brian: This is a strange case and not a great example as the first abstract you read. How is this different from most trials/abstracts?

Callie: The teacher wants to be lenient and let it go undocumented; help Matilda rather than want punishment.

Damian: It’s short.

Andy: More fixated on the process than the end result.

Janela: Procedurally different b/c academic almost never goes to mediation rather than trial; in this case due to time.

Brian: An academic mediation is not a procedure in the constitution for council to use. Mediation for a violation isn’t really either. It’s for solving difficulty. You come to Council for a mediator; council doesn’t mandate mediation. In academic cases, mediation’s interesting b/c there are no binding resolutions. In trials the confronted party’s gotta do what the jury says. In mediation the jury can’t say anything b/c it doesn’t exist.

Brian: Discussion questions are often more broad and talk about issues that it brings up. The first one is interesting, talking about whether minor instances of violations that result in grade changes should be treated differently in terms of reporting to grad schools. Grad (specifically med and law) schools often ask the Dean whether or not a student has been involved in a disciplinary action. B/c HC proceedings aren’t always disciplinary, the Dean gets to decide. She asks juries whether or not they think it should be reported. This didn’t happen exactly b/c there was no jury, a result of sending it to mediation rather than trial.

Andrew: What do grad schools ask?

Brian: Not always the same. Usually “was the student involved in disciplinary action?”

Andy: Academically or any sense?

Brian: Any sense.

Callie: If it results in failing what otherwise would have passed, it should be reported.

Leeser: If it went to mediation, it feels private. There was no jury and process for it to go before. It was more informal – this is the situation I arrived at. The mediation aspect makes it less disciplinary. It’s not imposed, it’s agreed.

Kate: In terms of education, restoration, and accountability, it is different every trial. Grad school stuff is a super-disciplinary thing. Having it on a med school app is serious b/c med school’s crazy. Looking holistically is the only way to go about it. I’ve spent a lot of time deciding this in trials b/c it’s wrenching; it decides not just what happens at Haverford but someone’s future. It’s case-by-case, but I think we shouldn’t decide it. It takes forever, it’s just a recommendation, and we don’t even decide it. Other schools have their disciplinary systems; there’s a lot of context the deans know and juries don’t.

Janela: It’s interesting and varies by case b/c if a jury recommends reporting and the person never applies, it doesn’t affect the rest of life; if the jury isn’t sure to report but does and the person ends up applying, it could have a much bigger impact.

Leeser: How do the deans report it?

Brian: Yes or no.

Leeser: Doesn’t really capture it.

Brian: We don’t have context; I’ve made the decision but don’t really know what it is. The deans don’t either b/c it varies by school. Usually when the box is checked the student has a chance to explain.

Leeser: Discipline feels imposed. If you get written up, they invoke a rule on you. Mediation feels different b/c nobody invokes anything, you just reach mutual agreement. In some HC trials, if the individual is separated in a serious case, as soon as you have resolutions, even though it’s restorative, it’s imposed. In mediation you’re on the same level.

Andy: The reporting needs to be looked at instance by instance and has a lot of implications outside the community. HC has a powerful role within the community. It make sense to distinguish whether or not grades were involved, but it can get into territory where HC’s decision can affect the person more outside the community than inside. That’s not HC’s role. This incident seems relatively minor. As a Quaker youth, we address things that come up inside the community as it affects the community. We don’t try the fix the world at large; that’s a very self-righteous thing to do.

Andrew: In response, I strongly disagree that HC has any power at all. If HC has any power, it can organize things like trials that are handled by community members, alongside HC members who make sure things run smoothly & follow the Code, but HC as such has no power. You see it in the fact that it’s only a recommendation. I understand that recommendation only started b/c when the deans looked at reporting they hadn’t been in the trial and wanted insight into what the people who handled the matter thought and what they went through. It’s not like HC or even the jury changes someone’s life, it’s just that it has a minor impact on what the decision maker thinks. Once again, there’s a common misconception about this, but HC is powerless.

Rebecca: There should be a distinction b/c she’s a senior. In my hiigh school with a Code, freshmen who may not have understood were treated more politely.

Callie: Could she have been treated nicer because she had followed the COde for 4 years?

Leeser: If someone doesn’t follow resolutions, can the dean take that into consideration when deciding on reporting?

Brian: I don’t know how good a job HC does of following up on resolutions. When a student is going to graduate with outstanding obligations, we tell the dean and they usually do it. I don’t know how this specific case is handled. That would make sense though.

Leeser: The whole idea of resolutions is that you can be part of the community again even though you did something not in the spirit of the code. You went through the healing process. If our philosophy says you’re restored, why pass it forward?

Janela: It’s important to mention that Haverford as an institution has an important reputation. One of the reasons reporting is important is that if HC juries establish that we won’t affect someone’s life outside of the community but sent plagiarizers to institutions without telling them, that’s unfair. THey care that the students they accept have academic integrity. While not every violation shows a lack of academic integrity, it would be a problem if we sent out cheaters without telling people.

Ryan: It’s in our interest as a college to report things we consider disciplinary action. You can imagine if someone gets in trouble at grad school and then an HC process comes out that the school didn’t care about, the grad school might reject future Haverford students b/c they don’t trust us.

Kate: I’m not sure that having students make decisions regarding long-term institutional integrity is the best way to go about it. The deans make the decision. You can spend 5 hours talking about it (I’ve done it) and you still don’t make the decision.

Ivan: I feel that since this measure can only affect people who pursue grad school, it loses all its power if someone doesn’t apply to grad school. It’s not universal. Since HC doesn’t work on precedence, having sent it once doesn’t mean it happens every time, which is marvelous. Clearly this case is straightforward – in this case, given that time was of the essence, I would say it was appropriate. Most people outside of HC would think HC is a disciplinary body, but not really.

Brian: Any final thoughts on grad schools?

Callie: We keep talking about punishing the person, but we should also recognize that it keeps people unworthy of getting into grad schools b/c they cheated from getting in as easily.

Ryan: That’s a tough question b/c there are many types and levels of plagiarism. To some degree you’re right but there are gradations. Also cheaters can later become very upstanding members of the community.

Brian: Let’s move on. This next question comes up in trials too. To what extent should a professor’s opinion limit/guide a jury in resolutions and what kind of trial it goes to?

Callie: This trial is different. In the book Miss Honey basically adopts Matilda. It’s like her mom saying don’t get my daughter in trouble. Can teachers show favoritism?

Natasha: Beyond that she’s saying that she won’t consider it a violation if this is the path you are going to take.

Damian: Does this apply to any confronting party? Do they usually have this much of a say? Can we bring it up only b/c we believe in the spirit?

Brian: The confronting party can say anything they want and, like the confronted, have an opportunity to propose resolutions. They can also say they don’t want to be the confronted party anymore. Technically, once it goes to HC, it’s out of their hands.

Callie: Is that a measure to avoid favoritism?

Brian: No. It’s based on a desire to restore the breach of trust between the parties. In the case when the breach is minor, it’s considered a good thing. I haven’t come across favoritism.

Andrew: We have a certain responsibility to trust that profs are better than favoritism. Even here where it seems like there’s a bias, I think we’re reading too fast to call it unfair. Profs have been through enough to be above that. We gotta trust them.

Kate: To a certain extent there’s nothing we can do. Grade changes are up to the prof. Juries make recommendations. There has to be some measure of trust there. Profs take HC’s opinion seriously. HC has to work with profs; it’s not their governing body.

Katie: Maybe this goes into the next question. I struggle with the way this ended up being resolved. It kinda relates to Miss Honey’s recommendations and how she came to the trial saying I didn’t want it to have a huge effect, but there was a violation and something came before council. Regardless of the time crunch, it seems weird that it wasn’t given enough weight as it otherwise would have.

Andrew: HC consented to taking the course of action it took. HC talked about it for a while with more info than what we have and decided it was the best course of action. Again I invoke trust. The circumstances can’t be ignored.

Brian: I’m not sure it was the right thing to do.

Leeser: Given that, as Andrew said, HC is powerless, it facilitated both parties – the one who felt there was a breach and the one doing the breach – both were able to get together in an expedient manner and find a mutually agreeable conclusion. It could have taken much longer. We can’t speculate on what could have happened in a trial. I think it was pragmatic.

Jeremy: An academic violation is a breach of trust with prof and community. The mediation doesn’t address the latter.

Brian: It’s in the Code and constitution that academic violations need to be resolved with the community at large as well. I go back and forth. In the front it says it was released in accordance with the timeline; that’s not true. It happened a while ago. It was before the Emergency Powers section of the constitution was added, allowing HC to make small but necessary adjustments in UTP in response to extraordinary circumstances. It did it here w/o permission from the community; I waver on whether or not HC had the right to do this. To what extent does HC’s ability to interpret the Code let them control procedure?

Leeser: Does the jury represent the community?

Brian: That’s the idea.

Ivan: At the same time, HC is also composed of students who are part of the community, though their job is different. I’m not saying that HC by itself will fix the breach with the community. I don’t think that sending this to a trial would have resulted in anything different. I might expect that some juror would recommend something impossible and it wouldn’t have come through. Considering the circumstances, I think this was the most effective way to handle it. I do recognize that it was bizarre in the way HC acted beyond its power w/o the legal authority to make it mediation instead of trial, but justice was served. A trial wouldn’t have resulted any differently. The student recognized their faults and the breach w/ the community.

Andrew: I think the spirit of the Code is more taken into account than the word. It’s a case where the word makes it impossible to do the things it aims to do. To go around actual procedure requirements for the sake of legitimacy and justice is not a problem. There is no interest in HC for having undeserved control of the procedure. HC only does this in extentuating circumstances.

Kate: This gets to structural issues with how juries and HC works, a much bigger problem. It’s impossible to get a jury together. That’s a huge issue that at the present does not serve the spirit of the code.

Brian: I think from my experience (2 semesters on HC) there’s been some improvement in response rates. I don’t know if it will stick.

Callie: Freshman representative for something had to be voted on 3 times.

Kate: Is email really efficient?

Brian: Co-secs used to call people’s phones in rooms and would call room by room until they had enough acceptances. Before that they did campus mail.

Callie: Every hall had a list of phone numbers.