The Honor Committee released its official case statistics for the 2001-2002 Committee term yesterday. The figures include 196 investigations, 31 trials and 18 guilty verdicts between April 2001 and April 2002, a significant increase over 2000-2001's 77 investigations, 28 trials and 10 guilty verdicts.
The statistics are broken down by race, gender, school, athletic status, offense and whether the student is an international student.
This year's statistics include 158 investigations initiated by Physics Prof. Louis Bloomfield. The Committee investigated 38 non-Bloomfield cases during the term.
Committee Chairman Chris Smith said he expects the future number of cases "will be more along the lines of our [past] total case load" barring another large-scale incident like that initiated by Bloomfield.
Past statistics show that in a normal year, the Committee investigates 50 to 100 cases.
"I want to emphasize that we're getting ready to complete these [Bloomfield] cases, so the system is opening up for initiating new cases," Smith added.
Of the 196 investigations since last April, 20.9 percent of students under investigation were African-American, 10.2 percent were Asian, and 1.5 percent were Hispanic. These statistics do not reflect the racial distribution at the University, which, including both undergraduate and graduate students, consists of approximately 7.6 percent African-American, 7.3 percent Asian and 2 percent Hispanic students.
Caucasian parties filed 197 of 206 total charges this year, 158 of which were Bloomfield's allegations. Only one black party initiated an investigation.
Black Student Alliance President-elect Tyler Scriven acknowledges that the Committee must investigate all initiated cases, but he feels efforts could be made to reduce racial bias in the system.
"They can be more aggressive with their education as far as what the honor offenses are and what an honor trial entails," Scriven said. "I would also like to see them be more selective in their jury selection to make sure there's a diversity in the jury process."
The Committee recognizes the issue and hopes to ameliorate it in the future.
"We do realize that there is a discrepancy," Smith said. "We are vigorously going to re-energize our education capabilities to spotlight that."
The statistics also show that faculty are most likely to initiate honor cases. Faculty members initiated 174 cases, 158 of which were Bloomfield cases. Teaching assistants initiated 12 cases, but only 14 students, two administrators and four non-University-affiliated individuals did the same. Further, 11 cases involved lying or stealing versus 185 that were cheating cases.
Smith said "the majority of our cases are initiated by faculty, who are naturally more concerned with the issue of cheating."
The Committee investigated 16 international students with seven students accused, two going to trial and one found guilty. This is the second year the Committee included statistics on international students.
"The way we've tried to make this useful is by classifying students as an international student if they don't have a Social Security number," former committee chairman Thomas Hall said. "That's essentially the only way the University keeps track of that" issue.
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