The student board of the Organizational Adjudication Committee, which adjudicates minor infractions by campus organizations, held its first hearing at a closed meeting on Wednesday afternoon, according to members of the board.
Student Assembly spokesman and OAC student board member Will Hix '12 said Wednesday's hearings were closed to the public at the request of the organization under review by the board, but added that the closed meeting also signals that the OAC student board is in its preliminary stages and is "playing it safe."
"[The closed meeting is] indicative of the system working," said Dave Imamura '10, who chaired the Assembly committee that proposed the creation of the board. The program is currently in a two-term pilot period, after which the administration will review its success, The Dartmouth previously reported.
"Since it's a pilot program, there's no guarantee that it will continue into perpetuity," Hix said. "Alterations could be made, the program could be eliminated. I would certainly hope that the organization is not eliminated."
This student board came into operation in time to consider violations from Winter Carnival, Hix said.
Five members of the 50-person board are randomly selected to participate in each adjudication, Hix said. Once the students reach a decision, they present it to the faculty advisor, assistant director of the office of Undergraduate Judicial Affairs Nathan Miller, and the two parties work on reaching an agreement if they disagree.
However, the full OAC, which is comprised of students, faculty and administrators, will continue to make decisions on more serious cases, The Dartmouth previously reported.
The possibility of the student body electing the OAC student board in the future was discussed by the Elections Planning and Advisory Committee at their Wednesday meeting, Hix said.
The current members of the board were selected by the Assembly's Membership and Internal Affairs committee, chaired by Assembly Vice President Cory Cunningham '10.
Cunningham is a former member of The Dartmouth Senior Business Staff.
Following an application process, the Assembly selected 25 sophomores, juniors and seniors that represent a "diversity of experience" for the board, Hix said.
"[The Assembly] chose the initial 25 and the administration chose their initial 25, but we hope that in the future [election of the 50 students on the OAC student board] will be regulated by EPAC and the student body will be able to choose," Hix said.
Of the 50 students selected, about 40 are on campus this term, according to Hix. Judicial Affairs ran a training session on Feb. 17 for about 35 of the 40 students, Imamura said.
"I've really got to hand it to the Judicial Affairs Office, they did an incredible job," Imamura said. "While it was the [Assembly] that advocated for [the OAC student board], it was really the Judicial Affairs Office that did all the grunt work."
The training sessions aimed to ground OAC student board members in judicial principles by using case studies as examples, Imamura said.
"It was a good course on what values are held by the general community," said Hix, who also participated in the training session.
In the training session, administrators from Judicial Affairs also went over the "idiosyncrasies" of adjudication at Dartmouth, which does not constitute an official trial or subpoena, Hix said. For example, in Dartmouth adjudication proceedings, the burden of proof is a preponderance of the evidence, not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, as is standard in the criminal court system, Hix said.
The Assembly's Organizational Adjudication Committee Review Commission proposed the OAC student board in May 2009. After reviewing the proposal, acting Dean of the College Sylvia Spears announced in November 2009 that the board would be created by Winter term.
Before the creation of the student board, faculty and administrators on the OAC became "very frustrated with the tedium of the charges they were looking at," Imamura said. "It was very difficult to convene the OAC for a keg violation."
As a result, many cases ended up being decided by individual deans without any input from students. This necessitated the creation of the student board so that these "day-to-day" cases can be heard and so that students can provide input, Imamura said.
"As chair of the commission that came up with this, I'm really pleased with the way this went forward," he said.
Miller could not be reached for comment by press time.
