The Committee on Standards Review Committee recommended that the College make the COS process more transparent and give accused students better access to resources in a report released Monday, but did not incorporate all of the suggestions of the Student Assembly COS Review Task Force. Dean of the College Tom Crady will take the committee's recommendations and all feedback to the report into account when making final changes to COS this summer and fall.
The nine-member committee included students, faculty and administrators recommended by the Faculty Committee on Organization and Policy, as well as former Student Body President Travis Green '08 and Dan Nelson, former acting dean of the College.
The report suggests that the College implement a COS adviser training program, educate students about the support resources available to accused students and include sophomores as potential committee members. Specific recommendations include permitting charged students to request at least one observer to be present during closed hearings and to seek an outside reviewer to consider all requests for reconsideration of COS hearing decisions. The report also included community feedback and explanations for the proposals.
The review committee's recommendations account for only some of the suggestions proposed by last year's Student Assembly COS Task Force. Student Assembly proposals called for COS to raise the level of evidence necessary for a guilty verdict to a "clear and convincing standard" and recommended that students who had gone before COS be allowed to run for a position on COS. Neither proposal was recommended within the report, but the committee agreed with the task force that those who stand accused before COS should have the right to directly question witnesses during hearings and that a student should maintain the right to a speedy trial.
Throughout the review process, the committee sought to preserve the educational environment of the College, Kate Burke, committee chair and associate dean of the College, said.
"The system needs to evolve as community norms and academic norms evolve," Burke said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "A disciplinary system reflects the value of the community, and a disciplinary system is an important way of recognizing that people come here to accomplish certain things, and behavior can get in the way of accomplishing these things."
The recommended changes to COS are necessary, Burke said, because an increased availability of online academic sources and the increase in collaborative learning and group work have changed the nature of honor code violations.
All proposals are recommendations and Crady has not yet made any permanent changes to COS, according to Burke.
Crady said he the next step will be to solicit feedback from the community on the recommendations.
"Make sure students have a chance to comment on it -- that's one of the things I said I would do when I got here," Crady said. "The goal is to feel that we've let the issues out."
Crady plans to read all feedback that students submit, and all his decisions will come out of proposed reforms from the feedback and the report, he said.
The committee reviewed more than 750 pages of materials that examined disciplinary systems at other Ivy League schools and previous cases at Dartmouth, according to the report. The committee also consulted students who had previously served on or gone before COS.
Review of College policies is customary every 10 years, according to Burke. The College conducted its last formal review of COS policies in the 1994-1995 school year. The Judicial Affairs Office also informally reviews the process each year, according to April Thompson, director of Undergraduate Judicial Affairs. Most recently, the COS process was changed to allow students who admitted to their alleged violation to request a hearing by a dean, instead of going before the full Committee on Standards, Thompson said. Nelson began the most recent formal evaluation process in fall 2007.
"Community values change as students change," Thompson said. "We're a college. Our students are different students than they were 10 or 20 years ago. We need to be responsive to the student community."
The report, released at 8 a.m. on Monday, received 180 internet hits by 2 p.m., according to Burke. The UJA office received requests to view the report before the web site became active, she added.
