Student Conduct Code revisions progress

Student concerns about the proposed revisions to the Student Conduct Code came to a head last week, when the Conduct Code disappearing task force (DTF) held open-campus forums and met with the Geoduck Student Union (GSU).

The Conduct Code DTF has been working on revising the code since 2008, taking in letters, advice, and student input in order to produce a new document. The previous Conduct Code had not been updated for over ten years, and needed to incorporate new laws and court findings to reflect changes in the way colleges handle student safety and violations of the code. In order to finalize their revisions, the DTF sought comment on the proposal and held two discussion forums, in addition to speaking with the GSU.

Attendance at the forums was poor, attracting one student at the initial meeting on Monday, October 10th and about ten students two days later.

Wendy Endress and Art Costantino, chairs for the DTF, began each meeting with a bit of history about the Conduct Code, the purpose of getting student feedback, and the procedure of making final decisions about the code.

The primary concerns were about the standards of proof that justified revoking an alum’s degree after graduation. An example used frequently was that of plagiarism: if a student is found guilty of plagiarism after s/he has graduated, is it reasonable to use a “more likely than not” standard of proof to judge this scenario and potentially take back one’s degree?

“These things are relatively rare, but they have to do with the integrity of the degree,” said Art Costantino. “I don’t know of a college that doesn’t have some language that talks about that.”

Is it reasonable to use this same standard of proof and punishment for a more weighty example? To use an example that Costantino offered during the October 12th GSU meeting, if a Masters in Teaching student does community work and is later found guilty of child abuse, does that merit revocation of a degree by the same standards?

During both of the October 12th meetings, Costantino reiterated that some of these were questions that he couldn’t answer, but that he would take them into account in considering the possible rewording of sections of the Conduct Code.

So, what happens now?

Costantino will take into account all of the recent feedback and determine whether additional modifications are warranted. Next, the new revisions will be submitted to a code reviser. This code becomes Washington Administrative Law, and then there will be another public hearing about the version of the code.

Wendy Endress said that depending on the feedback from that meeting, “It might suggest that we need to go back to the drawing board, or we might say we’ve heard this feedback before, and we’re not persuaded otherwise, and we’re going to proceed with instituting the code that we sent to the code reviser at that time.”

If that is the case, and no other changes are made, the new code will be implemented this January.