The Student Assembly announced Tuesday night that it will host a mock Committee on Standards hearing next Monday at the Kappa Kappa Kappa fraternity to educate students on the group's procedures should they ever be tried for standards violations.
Members also passed a resolution to fund a hurricane walkathon and a proposal to fund the Assembly's Profiles in Excellence Teaching Awards. ROTC member Jason Hartwig '06 spoke to the organization to raise awareness about the ROTC's floundering program on campus.
COS hears cases that involve undergraduates violating the academic honor principle, standards of conduct and academic standards and requirements, as well as cases that involve the appeals of certain registrarial actions. Normally, COS hearings are closed to students. The mock hearing is designed to bring awareness to typical COS procedures in order to reduce student tension surrounding the hearings, organizers said.
Karan Danthi '07, who worked with Undergraduate Judicial Affairs Director April Thompson to set up the hearing, said it should alleviate students' anxiety in case they are called before COS.
"It is nice to get a sense of how the discussions go. This is an eye-opening experience because people who go before the committee usually don't know what to expect. They are freaking out, and they get flustered," Danthi said.
Sixty cases appear before the committee for suspension each year, 20 of which are honor-code-related. The hearing on Monday will be about an honor code violation, with Student Body President Noah Riner '06 playing the accused student and real administrators and deans presiding.
"It's a big deal that the administrators have agreed to do this," Danthi said. "It's crucial that a lot of students come. Even if your case doesn't reach COS, at least you know how to defend yourself."
Members also passed a resolution to fund a hurricane walkathon, which Elisa Donnelly '07 sponsored along with Raymond Rodriguez '09. The resolution allocated $500 for T-shirts and publicity for the Oct. 29 event.
The Assembly plans to orchestrate and actively publicize the campus-wide walkathon, which will charge participants $10 in coordination with KatrinaHelp.
Dean Drizin '06, Leslie Shribman '08 and Elizabeth Silvey '08 sponsored a proposal to fund the Profiles in Excellence teaching awards. The annual program, now in its fifth year, will solicit nominations from students and conduct a review of those submissions within the Assembly's academic affairs committee before recognizing a different faculty member each term.
Selected professors are expected to facilitate a dinner discussion on the current state and future of undergraduate teaching at the College. The Assembly plans to give $400 per term to finance plaques and the group dinner.
Jason Hartwig '06, one of five members of Dartmouth's Reserve Officers' Training Corps, spoke before the Assembly in an attempt to raise Assembly support for larger ROTC scholarships.
According to Hartwig, Dartmouth is one of the only three Ivy League schools, including Columbia and Brown, that do not give ROTC participants full scholarships. Currently, Dartmouth awards $7,000 per person, which Hartwig said is not a big incentive.
"The program could very well end when myself and the three other '06s graduate," he said.
Hartwig stressed that as elite schools like Dartmouth lose interest in the ROTC, a trend of more "close-minded, less educated" people becoming officers in the army is emerging.
There is even a stigma on campus attached to participation in the ROTC, Hartwig said.
"People should realize we are not a bunch of militarists waiting to go spill blood in Iraq," he said. "We just feel a sense of duty."
