Blue’s Clues Abstract Discussion 10/9/2013

Public Portion

1. Mo si

2. Damon: Everybody take some time to read the abstract.

3. Damon: Any spots in which you felt the abstract was unclear?

4. Sarah: I have some questions about what actually happened. In terms of getting on the Blue Bus and coming to Haverford and then going to the lab, is this something that isn’t on people’s computers, and how did this play out in the trial?

5. Erin: The way I understand it is that the program was on a Haverford lab computer and so I think part of it she needed to do on the lab computer.

6. Karina: I was on this trial and though my memory isn’t perfect I want to say it was not something she had to do at Haverford but more of a because I was at Haverford, I may as well pass the time doing the work here kind of thing. As someone who’s been through finals week 4 times, I sort of understand the mindset of I should be doing something with my time but I’m not?

7. Damon: Other questions?

8. Ivan: Was the class at Haverford? Is it because the violation was at Haverford?

9. Damon: Haverford trials only happen from Haverford classes.

10. Erin: The Code applies to Haverford students here or elsewhere and BMC, Swat, and Penn students taking classes here.

11. Sarah: I was confused by the part about opening and saving as her name and seeing if it would run and all that. It’s hard to tell if the situation was confusing or the writing was confusing.

12. Karina: The situation was confusing, and because she was international, the way she explained things was confusing.

13. Brian: Based on my experience of being a foreign student for a semester, being involved in an academic trial would be a great way to pick up the local language. I could see having to express herself in that way being really hard.

14. Karina: I think that’s why she suggested the character reference – she felt that someone more familiar with English would be better able to elaborate on her character.

15. Damon: That’s a good segue to delving into the circumstances surrounding the abstract. Let’s see question #1: what to do with the reference?

16. Ivan: What is the librarian’s job? I thought he looked at past abstracts and kept the file organized. Is he a council member?

17. Erin: The librarian is appointed, rather than elected. He can clarify points of procedure and goes to exec board meetings but in my understanding the librarian read this because he does not serve on trial juries, making him more objective.

18. Damon: The librarian’s job to a certain extent is defined by Council. There are some enumerated tasks, but other commitments and style points are defined by Council on a semesterly basis. It can be in flux.

19. Brian: Right now all that Council allows the librarian to do is clarify points of procedure, answer constitutional questions, clarify precedent.

20. Karnia: It was the same with this librarian; just sort of quiet and would speak up if there was some major misconception.

21. Erin: One thing I found interesting is that I understood you would want one if the jury wasn’t getting an accurate picture of who you were but it seems to me that the jury reading such a letter might make the jury more skeptical of you.

22. Karina: Almost as a defensive thing?

23. Erin: Yeah.

24. Damon: My cynical side had a hard time not thinking that this was a lot of justification. You can’t make that sort of assumptions because cases are complicated and language barriers do get in the way. At the same time, there are times when this abstract feels to me like a lot of backpedaling.

25. Karina: The problem to me is that if the confronted party doesn’t say they did it, it’s not our job to tell them that they did. We have to figure out what’s going to help them most.

26. Sarah: I feel like that gets to the second question about guilt/innocence and trust in parties.

27. Brian: The most interesting part of the abstract in terms of proof of guilt/innocence is that there was outside research involved that the professor did in terms of checking logs but the way he described it was looking for “proof of innocence.” I think defaulting to the expertise of the prof and the people on the jury could make it more difficult for each party to have a different story.

28. Erin: I thought it was interesting that, according to the professor’s timeline, he asked Magenta if she used the public computer and then checked the logs. Why did he not come to both students? His instinct was to accuse Blue, which is interesting in terms of how much profs trust students.

29. Karina: Just to clarify, there was no collaboration allowed. The copying he noticed was very obvious.

30. Erin: He seemed to have a very specific order in mind.

31. Sarah: If he asked one of them and not the other it might imply to the jury that he thought Blue had cheated. Karina was talking about how you take what they say, when the jury asked Blue why she had gotten on the Blue Bus and something feels suspicious and doesn’t seem to be trusting the answer that the party gives, what happens?

32. Karina: What do you mean?

33. Sarah: Are people supposed to put aside their (lack of) trust? What factors into it?

34. Erin: In a lot of ways that’s your personal decision as a juror. Everyone goes in open-minded and you want everyone to go through the process together. It’s all up to you. It does seem like a hard situation when you ask someone to clarify and they don’t.

35. Karina: I personally and the jury as a whole tried to go in open-minded and remain open-minded but there’s a component in which, if something sounds strange, you want the facts, so it’s less of a matter of not trusting and more of getting as clear a picture as possible. Whether that leads to not trusting the person later on is difficult and factors into the decisions we make. That should factor in to meet the goals of the trial. I don’t think it’s bad to be non-trusting per se; it’d be bad to blow them off if you don’t trust them. Facts can be contrary to what they say as long as your goal is to help them.

36. Erin: Should Blue apologize to Magenta? Would breaking confidentiality do more harm than good?

37. Ivan: The violation of the Honor Code in this case is a violation of the entire community’s trust because the restoration is to the body as a whole as opposed to the individual fellow classmate. Although an apology might be nice.

38. Erin: I could also see that going really badly.

39. Brian: I would be very shocked if I were Magenta and someone apologized for stealing my final. I would be totally happy to never find out.

40. Karina: It might also depend on how it was approached. If it never went to Council and someone apologized for it I would send them to Council. Post-process, I would be glad.

41. Brian: I’m talking about post-process. Pre-process, there needs to be a confrontation.

42. Sarah: It would depend both on what Magenta’s role in the confrontation was – sounds like the prof just asked her if she worked on a public computer; was there more communication? – it somewhat depends on how she felt about that, if she felt accused and nobody ever followed up with her. I also feel like in some ways to me it would matter what kind of work it was, whether it’s personal and creative or less so. Knowing that someone took something personal and plagiarized that would be harder to deal with.

43. Brian: As a writer, that would bother me a lot.

44. Karina: I think this is still a type of work that Magenta put a lot of effort into. It might not be personal or creative, but it’s still something they worked on. It brought up a question for me about Ivan’s comment on the responsibility to mend bonds with the community; what’s your responsibility to someone whom you don’t know has broken your trust?

45. Sarah: That’s like all abstracts; we don’t know who broke the community’s trust, but the letter that often is written mends it.

46. Damon: Did you all get a chance to read the letter?

47. Brian: It’s way different from most letters. The whole idea of accountability is this entire letter but it’s not addressed in an intimately personal way. She doesn’t directly take responsibility for what she did. It might be a cultural thing. One of the ways I look at this is an attempt to mediate between Haverford culture – the Honor Code ideology – and the context she’s coming from with Confucian values of shendu that aren’t necessarily held up anyway, especially in her education background.

48. Karina: I thought it was very interesting to read, but it almost felt defensive to me. I almost am worried that Blue feels punished a little for not being from this country, which is pretty unnerving.

49. Sarah: More circumstantial stuff outside of the trial which is defensive in explanation of where she’s coming from in. I felt like it didn’t quite address everything I think the Code should encompass and be about. I feel like it focused on behavior and trust and what you do when no one’s watching and less on the community.

50. Brian: I think she’s trying to not necessarily write I’m accountable for what I did but trying to figure out how to think through the concept of accountability in terms that she’s familiar with, which is really cool. I think this more than anything else hammered home for me the diversity of worldviews underneath the umbrella of the Honor Code. More people experience the document differently from any individual than I think we realize.

51. Karina: I didn’t think about it like that, but it makes me happy to think that maybe she was trying to understand the Code better through values that she understand better.

52. Brian: I don’t know, I’m not her.

53. Karina: I know, but I hope it’s true.

54. Damon: The selling point for me is in the third paragraph when she talks about exams as a personal benchmark rather than a method of ranking students. That struck me as indicative of accepting that what she did is wrong, despite there not being an explicit reference to doing it wrong. It seems that it may be an homage to what she should have done.

55. Ivan: This letter strikes me as highly impersonal. I like the beginning when she talks about watching yourself when you’re alone. On the other hand, she talks about what students do generally rather than what she did. I don’t like that. The good point Damon brings up is just one sentence in the entire thing that doesn’t really address the whole issue. She doesn’t explain herself. It sounds like a justification but doesn’t address herself. I like the concept of the letter, but where is Blue in it?

56. Erin: One thing I find interesting is should a confronted party be obligated to share a personal circumstance with the jury? I know you want to share circumstances because that way the jury can best figure out the way to restore it. There might have been some cultural problem. On the other hand, the foggy memory Blue Bus thing makes me suspect that there was some circumstance going on that she wasn’t comfortable sharing, but I hope that if such a thing exists it can be addressed.

57. Sarah: Hopefully the confronted party can trust the jury to keep his/her intimate details a secret. You’re right that there might be cultural things. Juries can’t force people to say what’s going on.

58. Karina: It also has to do with what the confronted party wants to do with the trial; they’re in charge of how it’s going to help you or not help you. I also want to clarify that the foggy memory is at least in part due to the big time lapse between the events and the trial.

59. Sarah: Can we talk about how separation from the Haverford community plays out?

60. Erin: I think it’s interesting for 2 reasons. The tentative resolution was separation from Haverford but not Bryn Mawr. If you think someone isn’t restored enough to separate someone from Haverford, can you think them OK at Bryn Mawr?

61. Ivan: I think that was weird given that the communities are in sync. It’s not like you are only in one community at a time.

62. Karina: I’m pretty sure that we we can’t separate someone from Bryn Mawr, we can suggest it. Was it suggested in this trial?

63. Erin: No.

64. Karina: It’s just what the jury was talking about. As far as full separation, because they were not from this country, that’s a bigger step. There was talk about whether it would cause more harm than good. The separation from Haverford was because she was already enrolled in 2 Haverford classes, thought it would be unfair but also thought it would be uncomfortable for the student to take final exams. I do agree that the setup of BiCo is awkward.

65. Erin: We do have a BiCo liaison.

66. Karina: Does it happen?

67. Erin: Constitutionally, yes.

68. Jeremy: The BiCo liaison has generally been ignored, but the current co-chairs want to have one.

69. Sarah: The Honor Codes are different, and I have no clue how that stuff works. I never read Bryn Mawr’s Honor Code.

70. Ivan: It’d be interesting to think about – on Moodle we have that chunk of text about academic integrity – I’m curious if BMC Moodle does that. Haverford profs do a good job about educating for academic integrity, I don’t know if BMC does. Also their plenary didn’t work, they select Honor Board by lot, etc.

71. Karina: Would it work for the groups to be more coherent?

72. Ivan: It would have to combine the wishes of two different communities.

73. Erin: We wouldn’t have to do everything the same, just be on the same page.

74. Sarah: Only kind of serious, but maybe you should have to read the other school’s Honor Code before registering for one of their classes.

75. Karina: That’d be super productive. If you sign up for a BMC class, you should know what their Code is.

76. Sarah: We get our abstracts; we don’t get theirs. We’re supposed to get access to their abstracts.

77. Jeremy: I tried to get a BMC friend access to the Muppets recently and she couldn’t open it.

78. Erin: It’s been an hour. Any final comments/concerns?

79. Damon: There’s been talk about having an education panel that would work to help the customs programs better reflect the other school’s honor system. Because we share so many resources between the 2 schools and there’s been a number of cases that a BMC student did something here that they just didn’t know was wrong. What are your thoughts on better educating the schools on the other school’s honor system?

80. Karina: I’m an HCO and I’m wondering why I didn’t have my freshmen read the BMC Honor Code?

81. Sarah: Maybe the Honor Code quiz?

82. Jeremy: I feel like we could work it into the academic integrity tutorial.

83. Sarah: We’re doing a good job with freshmen education, not so much with upperclassmen.

84. Mo si