Senior Associate Dean Katherine Burke, who chaired the administration's Review committee, and April Thompson, director of Undergraduate Judicial Affairs, led Thursday's talk. Discussion focused on the Review Committee's decision to maintain the standard of evidence as a "preponderance," meaning the amount of evidence needed to find an accused person guilty must be the majority of the evidence. This standard of evidence applies not only to academic infractions, but to all physical and sexual assault cases. The Assembly committee in 2006-2007 suggested that the COS instead require "clear and convincing evidence" on each of these fronts.
"This is an issue where people differ," Burke said, but ultimately the committee chose to maintain the old standard despite the Assembly's report. She added that, while the Assembly report supported increasing the amount of evidence needed to convict, she also received many requests from members of the campus community asking her to do the opposite.
For many students at the meeting, the standard of evidence for sexual assault cases was their primary concern, and some questioned whether or not sexual assault cases ought to have a different standard of evidence than others charges, such as plagiarism.
"We don't think it's a good idea to have different standards of evidence for different cases," Burke said.
Many other schools that have implemented a higher standard of evidence have much greater police forces at their school, Burke said, arguing that Dartmouth is a fundamentally different place.
"We really don't think this community would be interested in having a more intrusive information gathering process," she said.
Thompson agreed with Burke, adding that changing the standard of evidence would not have a noticeably large effect on the COS process. People do not quantify the percentage of a person's guilt in their heads, she said, and they are instead more likely to make either an affirmative or negative decision.
"You're not going to vote to find someone responsible if you don't feel it in your gut," Thompson said.
Students also brought up concerns over statistics of COS cases, suggesting that statistics about the prevalence of cases brought against minority students be released, and that statistics be kept on the complainants.
Statistics are kept about minority students, and are released to the relevant offices, Thompson said, adding that the statistics do not show that minority students are brought to trial any more often than other students. She said, however, that even if the statistics speak otherwise, the perception that minority students are tried more often is still a problem.
"It's still the way you feel, whether it's right or wrong," she said.
Both Burke and Thompson stressed that one of the biggest themes in the recommendations made by the Review Committee was a general increase of student awareness about the COS process. This could be accomplished by dispersing information about the COS process during freshmen orientation, decreasing the restrictions on who can serve and training more people, such as faculty members, to be advisers for students involved in the process.
At the beginning of the meeting, Burke explained that the COS Review Committee was not formed in response to the Assembly's report, but is instead part of a review process that occurs every 10 years. The formation of this review committee was slightly delayed due to the transition between former Dean of the College James Larimore and current Dean of the College Tom Crady. The Committee took the Assembly's report into consideration, along with the input of many other groups and people on campus.
Now that the report has come out, the Committee is looking for responses and suggestions from the Dartmouth community in order to find "what is right for the Dartmouth community," and "to get as much dialogue as possible going in the committee," according to Burke.
"Dean Crady is very committed at this point to having people read [the report] and getting feedback," Thompson said.
