Community Forum Minutes: Restorative Justice and The Tempest abstract, 11/7/2013

Mo si.

Zach: I’m on the Public Portion Planning Committee, which began by changing Public Portion into something more approachable. That brings us to today, which has the theme of restorative justice. And that connects to the most recent abstract release because of the permanent separation.

Brian: Thanks. Let’s so names, class years, and porn star names. Brian, Jiffy Bitler

Abby: freshman. Esther Wachovia.

Erin: Tammy Foot

Cat: Serena 86

Melissa: Tiffany Wakeenan

Caleb: Critter Rocky Ridge

Ben: spec, Freddy 86

Shilong:

Dana: Domino Claire

Zach: Ginger Howl

Damon: Suzy Lafayette

Ellie: Choocoo Oblong

Robin: Achilles Kingsford

Julianne: Michael 7th

Janela: Tyson Bantry

Connor: Firecracker Cavallier

Kaziah: Shiloh Foxdale

Brian: Restorative justice as it relates to the Tempest abstract, or otherwise.

Damon: summary of the Tempest.

Brian: It’s unlikely that he’d be able to get another US student visa for any other school, too.

Damon: I’d recommend the letters from the jury and professor, if you’re only going to read some

Connor: how did they figure out that it was this student?

Brian: he accessed Moodle from a specific location where only he would be.

Erin: he changed 8 grades for the final, but only his own for the midterm.

Connor: do we have background on why he raised other’s grades?

Damon: we can only infer that it was to tilt the curve

Erin: I was on this jury, and Prospero said he changed the grades by random becasuse he knew that the professor did a general kind of curve, and raised other grades to cover his tracks.

Damon: i think the main question tonight is was this restorative justice? And the professor writes that the community could never recover if he was here. And not restoring him into the community was the only way to restore the community.

Robin: Do we know the resolutions from his other trials?

Brian: Neither included separation. the first was minor and included a small grade change and letter to the community, the other abstract hasn’t been released. Is linking them something that would be valuable?

Robin: it is necessary for restorative justice that it works the first time. So i think they’d be necessary to think about the restorative justice aspects fo this case,

Kaziah: I think maybe something else might have happened, and it doesn’t mean the first was a failure. The issue I see here is the severity, not the previous trials. He was acting deliberately, and I think moving in the wrong direction.

Robin: does it seem like trials are a way to identify people who are not part of the community, because they hold different values than the community, and the trial goals of EAR are to restore them. Two would be concerning, but I think if there are 3 trials, either there’s something wrong with the person or the council trial failed.

Brian: note that he had changed his midterm grades before the other trials. So part of the violation happened.

Erin: in circumstantial, it says he’d aletered the midterm grades, then was confronted about the second trial violation, then felt pressure to do well and changed his final grades over winter break.

Melissa: What concerns me is that even after 3 trials, he was still talking about the Code in a way that was not demonstrating the substantitive impact that the first two trials were supposed to have. His blaming moodle rather than his own actions seem like first trial attitudes, not an educated, restored community member. I’d hope he’d have had a different perspective by now.

Robin: he said the system in his home country stressed grades and learning, and was having trouble adjusting even though he’d been through two trials.

Cat: I don’t know that it’s fair that his past trils are brought up. If the student brought them up it could be mentioned, but in some ways it violates confidentiality to tell them if he’s been restored

Janela: even if he’d never fulfilled resolutions?

Cat: i agree that he’s not been restored, but the new jury still had confidential information.

Connor: ideally, there’s no stigma to trials, and you’re the same before and after a trial

Damon: that connects to Toy Story, too, because he was asked to step down, but he was really upset about that, and I agree that he might have been better prepped to be chair than he would have been otherwise.

Brian: the guidelines for past trial information is that juries are not told during fact-finding, so it will have no bearing on the statement of violation, but for circumstantial the librarian and the non-trial-chair both decide that he needs to know. What’s interesting here is that they all happened so close together that the trial chair was aware of all three. Here Propsero brought the trials up himself, and then the trial chair clarified.

Erin: the abstract says that prospero mentioned one trial, and the trial chair clarified that there were two, but not before the statement of violation.

Connor: i think having all three released together would have been helpful. In this case, it was the progression as well as the final violation that matter with restoration

Robin: that would break confidentiality

Damon: i think the number of trials is different than saying that any of them were operating on precedent…

Brian: precedent means that the circumstances dictate the result.

Robin: got it. I misunderstood.

Melissa: if we think having the other abstracts would help with Tempest, do you think the other two might become addons, and wouldn’t be seen as as valid on their own?

Zach: i think it would be difficult to read them on their own…

Damon: like it or not, the jury was aware of the other two trials, so the jury had information that we now don’t, and i’m not making this argument, but I do think the argument could be made that it mattered to understanding the jury’s decisions. Do people think this was restorative justice?

Brian: Can someone be restored if they can never come back? How is that restorative?

Robin: you could make that analogy with greater societal restorative justice, and the death penalty. Is it restorative if the person is gone forever?

Ben: justice doesn’t need to be restorative. It could be preventative.

Zach: imprisoning someone for life is also eliminating them forever.

Brian: this abstract references Amelia Earhart. Summary of resolutions. I think of those effectively permanent resolutions as life in prison whereas this is like death penalty.

Connor: so no one has ever been expelled from Haverford?

People: Not for an Honor Council trial since 1975.

Andrew: Booba Center

Brian: what do people think about Ben’s idea that justice is restorative vs. preventative?

Zach: i think here, in this context, restoration means repairing the damage to the community that a person has caused.

Damon: quotes jury’s letter

Erin: in terms of restoring Prospero to himself, not the community, is that 10 semesters of separation isn’t enough, and we want 10 years, that seems unfair and if you don’t think someone is fit for here, cut them off rather than putting them on a shelf.

Robin: he also had other options for separation time

Andrew: 5 years might border on reasonable, but it’s not fair to entirely validate the possiblity of return. if he wants to wait, that’s okay

Melissa: if someone goes to this experience, and doesn’t belong or feel part of the community, if there’s any chance that Amelia is here, maybe she will be here. And if she does, she has a way to prove that she does belong here. it’s almost impossible, but it’s an opportunity.

Brian: there are a few voices I haven’t heard, and would like to.

Josh: Maggie Hampshirehill

Andrew: you mentioned justice. In the realm of a college, justice is weird because the things that are important to us in academia might be exaggerated. when we say we have to separate him forever as a matter of justice, because we might be exaggerating how big this actually was. i think we need to be careful with the term justice. restoring the community and integrity i see separation as valid, though

Zach: often one of the stipulations is reapplication, and if someone needed to do that the admissions office would know. But what if someone did something like this in high school? How would that be different?

Ellie: high school and college are so extremely different that I think it’s incomparable. if you’re choosing to be here, it’s different than cheating before being here.

Zach: but what if the applicant had cheated?

Ellie: i think if cheating was the norm, and you did it, but chose to be here because it was different, that seems legitimate

Janela: I let people copy off of me in high school, and I agree with the things that Ellie is saying.

Brian: I cheated in high school. The teacher knew, and some of us did the work, but I knew I was doing it and I knew it was wrong, but once I started studying things I care about, I wanted to do it right and I wanted to be around other people who were also doing it right.

Robin: how does that apply to the Tempest? We know that Propero came from a place where cheating was everywhere

Janela: I disagree that cheating was everywhere. The emphasis was just on grades.

Connor: I remember Blue’s Clues also saying grades were the emphasis in her home country, and people did whatever they had to to get ahead. So how is the Code cultural?

Damon: we very deliberately didn’t put his home country in this abstract, to protect confidentiality and prevent stigmas.

Melissa: and there is also regional difference even within country

Josh: depending on the culture, I think a less extreme first offense would warrant more leniency, but as a third offense and not remotely acceptable, I think cultural background is no longer an excuse. He’d had a chance to become a better ford, and the other trials did nothing

Ellie: I think cultural background should be ignored altogether, because there are other things, like household environment, to have just as much influence and variety

Josh: my HS has a code, and it didn’t get respect, and it would be easy to come here and believe that this code, too, was all just talk. So without seeing the code in action, it’s hard to see people not cheating, because you’re not around them all the time.

Ellie: I was talking about the judgement factor, though.

Andrew: in trials where international students are involved, the cultural difference is frequently invoked by the party themselves.

Melissa: and that’s what circumstantial portion is for.

Brian: Tamar used to make the point that people come to haverford because of the code, which may be sometimes true, but also people come here without knowledge of the code because it’s a good school. So to some degree, the code is an expression of our shared values, but you have to wonder how many of our values it really shares.

Andrew: i think it’s partly idealistic, but that’s part of what we do at a liberal arts college. I didn’t come here because of the code, but i was on council as a rep for a year, and it changed my perspective a lot. It wasn’t why I came, so i agree.

Zach: I agree, me too. My high school had a functionally useless honor code, and in the back of my mind I wanted an environment that was not so cut throat. And i wrote my honor code essay about a joke violation, but i think i felt like it was insincere of me to talk about academic integrity when i was surrounded by people who didn’t respect it.

Melissa: we’re talking a lot about redemption, and our experiences, but that’s making me think of the abstract. Certainly the violation is not like the things we did in high school, but it resonates with me that redemption is valuable to hear on one hand, but on the other hand we’ve been conversing about him as beyond redemption.

Andrew: do you see a double standard?

Melissa: i appreciate both sides, but about Tempest, stories of redemption are inspiring but it also bothers me that Prospero had a line drawn and now he’s beyond redemption. This wasn’t accidential, but…

Caleb: whether or not we’re here for the code individually, the code creates an atmosphere of change and the potential for restoration, and the line was drawn in this case

Erin: do you guys think there’s a line where Honor Council’s jurisdiction is drawn? like, if someone puts tons of people in founders and sets it on fire, I don’t think they should be here, but I also don’t think it should be up to honor council to decide that.

Connor: council being a restorative place for the individual to get over guilt or feelings of alienation, i wonder how this would have been different if he’d turned himself in? is this setting a dangerous precedent?

Josh: i think turning oneself in is a sign of genuine remorse for what they’ve done. In this case, I think if he’d jumped through enough hoops to come back, I wouldn’t be sure that everything he’d done was not just a front. You can fake appearing to have changed, finding religion or whatever.

Janela: what about the fact that the code demands that we trust one another? i’d argue that the jury may have owed him the chance to be trusted again.

Ope: i think the fact that it’s called separation, not expulsion, because they are not presently able to be a part of the community. based on his actions, it seems like this is such a huge violation that they cannot change sufficiently enough to return, but if it’s possible to violate the community so harshly, we need to acknowledge that. we try to be one, but not everyone can really be in the same environment.

Brian: what does this mean for bringing oneself to council? I’m confident that he would not have been permanently separated had he brought himself to council, because it would show what he did to hurt the community. But my actual concern is what about his close friend who knows that he did this. Does he think that council let Prospero down when they permanently separated him? How can he ever trust the process enough to bring him forward?

Andrew: i still wouldn’t have trusted him entirely, even despite Janela’s point. i’d put myself in prospero’s shoes and imagine fear that he were going to get caught in the future, preventatively. So there’s no way for me to say confidently that the jury would have more trust had he brought himself.

Robin: Janela said that the jury separated him, but in line with the justice part of restorative justice, wasn’t it his actions that separated him from the community?

Brian: I tend to think that any breach of the code is a separation from the community, and the goal of a trial is to bring someone back

Damon: maybe the separation here was just too big, and he’d never have been able to be part of the community

Ben: who is the jury to say that he will be the same person in 5 or 10 years?

Robin: the abstract doesn’t say that, it says his actions were too great. Damon was saying was this the redline case where council can’t handle restoring prospero anymore?

Brian: it’s not really council that makes the decisions, I just want to point out that these decisions are made by the community as a whole, not council.

Connor: do those requirements include having international students?

Brian: no, they are gender and color.

Damon: there’s no stipulation

Robin: there’s also 1/10 international here now

Zach: being from london also wouldn’t help me understand the experiences of someone from China…

Connor: Prospero also did choose to come here, and putting myself in his shoes, the only way I can feel myself feeling is that Council doesn’t understand because it was just a bunch of americans.

Robin: a commonality between londoner and chinese student is the F1 visa

Janela: the jury may or may not have had intetrnational students, but either way they did consider the f1 cisa.

Ope: everyone here is agreeing to abide by the Amercian rules by coming here. like you’re still responsible for the actions of your drunken self, he still took the actions, and I wouldn’t dismiss the visa stuff, but going to another country includes entering their culture, and consideration of the consequences of his actions.

Zach: you could also have many different kinds of international levels, and it is a varied experience

Ellie: i have nothing against diversity, but there is a point at which you are forcing it. And a random sampling of the community for jurors should end up

Zach: i think the jury is intended to represent the student body, which can come from selecting them or using people they elect.

Andrew: i think a requirement for international students on a jury wouldn’t add anything, and the point about the different experiences of international students is enough.

Connor: My point was that even despite the simplistic way it counts for non-American people, we don’t know the jury’s experience level with this, and we can see that the f1 visa was taken into account, but from an outside perspective one might look at the decisions differently knowing that there was an international student on the jury. It would be important for students to feel that that trial represents them.

Zach: that’s important to consider, but confidentiality is important too

Erin: the expert witness resource is also important, and the trial chair talked to someone who knew more about f1 visas than the jury did. and mental health is also a common area.

Brian: the best thing is actually that haverford students are incredibly apathetic, and juries spend a long time listening to someone explain their own experiences. We build in listening, and couldn’t find a juror to match every experience anyway

Andrew: that is nice, but i’ve been on trials where people didn’t show much empathy. I think it’s important not to idealize juries too much.

Zach: that doesn’t make them less perfect, just more balanced, which might be better

Ope: the students of color could also sometimes be international. it’s easy to say that a component might not appear in a jury, but there are aspects of people that’s not public to council

Brian: we’ve talked a lot about the multicultural juror requirement, and what it means to be multicultural. But it you extend it to “diverse or not,” you’d get everyone as a yes.

Robin: is there a multicultural juror requirement?

Brian: that’s the juror of color requirement

Melissa: i’d say yes because i’m a wiccan, but that doesn’t mean I could sympathy with a student of color

Janela: but you’re not supposed to. I think coming from a 2 parent household has more to do with my experience than my color, and the requirement is never ever ever going to account for what it’s supposed to account for

Ellie: eventually we’ll just be selecting everyone for their demographic

Connor: i think labels are a bad way of sorting people, but they’re all we have, and regardless of how that international student judged the party, it would be more real than judging someone from the outside

Andrew: do you think there should be that requirement?

Connor: i think it would be important for an international party. not necessarily for an american student

Zach:

Ope: discussing the muppets, one of the most prominent comments was “well i’m black, and i’m not offended.” and i disagree with that, and I don’t think it’s their place to make that statement. Haverford has a tradition of social justice, and there could be a question about “strongly affected by a multicultural or diverse experience that has shaped the way they have viewed their experiences”

Robin: the requirement to check that box and three who are not going to, i can’t think of people who won’t

Ope: i don’t think that’s a problem

Ellie: I wouldn’t

Zach: I could being gay, but I don’t think I would

Janela: I think the requirement is inappropriate and insulting for academic trials, and unhelpful for social trials

Melissa: i’ve faced problems being Wiccan, but i’d feel very uncomfortable in a trial about racism, and being expected to sympathize. but a religious case would be up my alley

Damon: Dan Savage made a point about trying to include every group, and constantly failing. And we’ve singled out gender and race

Ope: i think people who have learned about race and racism could be helpful on a case about racism, even without personal first hand experience

Brian: i’ve served on a couple of trials now, and one thing is that in theory the multicultural juror requirement can’t capture everything that makes people diverse. But i’ve been in a room and had a student explain a perspective that I’ve never considered, and it changed the opinion of every juror. and maybe that’s just anecdotal, but i think it makes a difference

Zach: i think that is an argument for broadening the requirement beyond just color

Josh: the requirement is there to ensure that we don’t have a completely insensitive jury, but i think being at haverford is more of our shared experience than our demographics. I’m “jewish,” but i think i have more in common with the rest of haverford than I do with every other jew.

Brian: it’s 9:01, so let’s end with a mo si.