Project Runway abstract discussion minutes 10/31/2013

Melissa: Thanks for coming. Moment of silence.

Names and class years.

Time to read the abstract.

[Rachel leaves]

Melissa: This abstract was released this past Sunday, and is pseudonymized as Project Runway, which you can see. If you turn to page 5, you can see the discussion topics. We don’t need to stick to them, though, if there are other things you’d like to discuss.

Melissa: Let’s begin with question one. What do you guys think about trust of a confronting party vs. a confronted member.

Megan: Are Heidi and Tim one party, and the professors the other?

Melissa: Yes. And confronting means the professors first approached Heidi and Tim about the potential violation. The jury discusses whether to give Heidi and Tim the same resolutions, and decided to, because Heidi and Tim are one party.

Chloe: A classroom is not a democracy, so the teacher is in charge, and Heidi and Tim needed to be aware of the Code and policies.

David: The professor should definitely get more weight.

Megan: I think it’s unfortunate when students don’t agree with what the professor says, though, especially in this environment of trust and honesty.

Melissa: I agree that it’s tough not to simply trust whomever is speaking at the moment.

Kelly: I think the evidence is also on the side of the professor, and when looking at the work, you can see that what the faculty says is more valid.

David: The decision should ultimately be up to the jury, though.

Melissa: What do you guys think when it’s two members of the student body who have differing stories?

Chloe: I think then it would depend on the situation. You might want to hold one party more accountable based on what the stories are.

David: What about letters of reference for parties?

Ryan: It’s a standard procedure at BMC to get letters of reference, but Haverford does not do that.

David: If it was two student confronting each other, the idea of letters of reference might help a jury determine who

Janela: Do you think that would help identify the truth

David: Hopefully, potentially

Janela: Do you think there would be any difference in references? I think they’d both be pretty positive

David: Maybe if you could get letters from faculty or principles at their old high school, then they wouldn’t have anything to gain or lose, so they might be more honest.

Ryan: I went to two schools, and I think I’d get much better letters from the faculty and admins at my small private high school than I would from my larger public high school, so that seems like an uneven playing field.

Names again. Side conversation about the hall that all the community members are from, and the Batman and Robin abstract, which David read yesterday and which Brian confused with Rip Van Winkle.

Chloe: I feel like they should have separately interviewed Heidi and Tim. They could have conferred together beforehand, but it might have helped to hear if their stories were different.

Megan: I think that could be really helpful to see where to dig deeper in their stories. It might be more intimidating, but…

Brian: Would you begin together or separate?

David/Kelly/Chloe: Begin separately.

Kelly: My HS had an honor code, and they interviewed everyone who was involved separately, and they’d have to either tell the truth or make up a story and hope it matched the other person’s.

David: Also, maybe the “sewing machine” in the abstract could have been a clear indicator.

Brian: We don’t have that information. Even for abstracts, this one is heavily pseudonymized, and it can be hard to read and understand.

Melissa: For Fact-Finding, all the parties are in the room together. I see the benefits of having them separate, but I think it’s also important that each party has the chance to address the same things, and the jury hears both sides of the story at the same time.

David: What was Heidi and Tim’s relationship? Dating. Should that have an impact on how you look at their situation?

Chloe: Tim said they barely saw each other, but they easily could have texted each other or something.

Melissa: Also, one of the professors said that ze became more suspicious when thinking about the fact that Tim and Heidi were dating.

Brian: I think it’s interesting that they said they wanted to receive the same set of resolutions. I agree, but it’s an interesting question about doing this all together or separately. A lot of this process is tailored to the individual situation, but not here.

Chloe: I think here it’s not clear who gave whom the information, so maybe if it was more clear that one had cheated off of the other different resolutions might have been more easily achieved.

Melissa: Brian, do you know of many cases where different resolutions were given to different members of confronted parties?

Brian: No, but I also don’t really know of separate parties of the same violation. At least recently, it’s been one case with multiple party members.

Kelly: Is there a jury for every case?

Brian explains Universal Trial Procedure.

Kelly: So in this case, the President changed what the jury said. Could that really happen?

Brian explains the appeals process.

Brian: Appeals are rare, and a successful appeal is even rarer.

David: Are they rare because people admit what they’ve done?

Brian: Generally yes, people adit to violations. Or they think the trial was fair, even if they haven’t admitted to something.

David: This appeal does seem unHaverfordian. It feels a little suspect, since there was nothing majorly substantive or procedural.

Short discussion of the scary clanging noise. (Ryan Gym is Haunted! Happy Halloween.)

Melissa: Let’s move to question 3, which is about the appeal process. What do you guys think?

Chloe: I think in the US you can always try to appeal, so I think it’s fair to give the option for an appeal. I don’t know who other than the president would hear the appeal if not the president, and having the college at large would never work.

David: It could include deans…

Megan: Is there anything after the president?

David: How does appealing actually work?

Brian and Melissa explain the details of the appeals process.

Brian: There is also some legal basis for the appeals process. In the case that a jury does something that could cause legal problems from the college, this gives the college as an institution an out. At the end of the day, a jury represents the college, and in the administration’s eyes, this gives them one last check on the process to prevent gross mistakes. This also gives the party a pre-legal way to say “this was messed up” without legally suing the college or something. So it’s important, but also frustrating for a jury to see something like this that negates hours of work.

Kelly: I did something in my high school similar to this jury, and we always came up with recommendations which were sent to the administration for the final decision, and that was similar in terms of giving the institution a legal safety.

Brian: This was really a substantive decision, though. It wasn’t legal or procedural, it was about the President disagreeing with the decision that was made and overturning it. So this very well might undermine the trial process.

Kelly: Did this really happen?

Melissa: Yes.

Melissa describes the life of a chair’s report and abstract.

Brian: That means that someone really actually wrote this letter to the President of the College, too. Thoughts on that?

Sarah: It’s really aggressive.

Brian: Yeah, and very informal.

David: Yeah, and it seems like maybe the trial chair believes him/herself to be at the same level of authority as the president, and the president is superseding their authority, so they don’t feel respectful anymore.

Brian: Whether or not it was a good thing to say, I enjoyed it.

Melissa: I think it’s also important to note that there are definitely two stories being told, but the jury thought long and hard and decided what they held to be the truth. Then the President decided that they did agree that there was a violation, but were changing the resolutions anyway.

David: The two resolutions that were passed, about separation, seemed very harsh. At the same time, the president’s response seems to have very little weight.

Melissa: I agree, but I thought two semesters of separation was longer than what I’d have done, but is it something that you think should be standardized trial to trial?

David: Yes, I think you should treat cases that are similar similarly. No two cases are identical, but the difference between no separation and a year’s worth is very extreme.

Brian: Assuming Heidi and Tim are lying, should that play into the trial resolution at all?

Chloe: I think it does matter. They are pooping on the Honor Code, and they clearly have no respect for it, so they’re not taking it seriously. That fact alone should warrant some kind of response in resolutions.

Megan: Honesty deserves more sympathy. It demonstrates regret, but denying it doesn’t show any kind of growth from the experience. I think regret can go a long way.

David: I’m not sure you can really expect the truth, though. I can understand leniency if they admitted it on the spot, but expecting them to tell the truth when they expect to get off without any punishment, why would they tell the truth?

Brian: I think that’s true in the world at large and in the US justice system, but we hold each other to a much higher standard here. The trust here is higher, and someone who is not willing to own up to the things they did, they are also likely to breach the system in other ways, too. I expect a higher level of integrity here than people do in the real world. Maybe it’s a little unrealistic to expect people to bring themselves to council, but that is where the bar is, I think.

Melissa: I think the trial process can only be effectively restorative if you believe that the parties are telling at least some of the truth. Juries are representative of the whole community, and shouldn’t be out to get anyone, so the more honest everyone is the more beneficial the trial process can be.

Melissa: It’s been about an hour. So, we’ll end with a moment of silence, but you’re also welcome to stay and continue talking should you wish.

Moment of silence.

All the breadsticks are gone.