IN THE WAKE of the recent open honor trial of Steve Gilday, who was expelled from the University for lying to his teaching assistant, it has become clear that these trials do not enhance the legitimacy of the honor process. Only rarely are honor trials open; only two open honor trials have occurred since 2002. Rather than shedding light on the trial process, these open honor trials provide spectacles that do not lead to meaningful reform but undermine the working of the process and concretely harm the accused student.
One claim often cited for having trials open to the public is the supposed welter of procedural reforms that are seen as necessary as a result of the open honor process. Advocates for open honor trials claim that these trials serve to make the process legitimate by allowing outsiders to make constructive changes to the process.
But there is no evidence that this reform process actually occurs, nor that open honor trials are conducted in a fairer or more impartial manner than closed trials. Alison Tramba, confirmed that in her experience there was "no difference" between the procedures employed in open and closed honor trials or the fairness and impartiality of the process.
Moreover, the changes that result from open honor trials are usually silly and non-substantive, like the infamous "triviality" clause, or they reflect a basic misunderstanding of the system. For example, jurors were reportedly confused because evidence was introduced of two instances of lying on the part of Gilday. Following Gilday's trial, some students voiced concern that Gilday was actually acquitted on one count but convicted on another. Gilday himself said that "having the two charges combined in one trial could be potentially confusing for a jury."
Well, this would certainly be true if the jury were incompetent enough. But individual jurors are asked to render verdicts on multiple charges all the time in actual courts of law. Rules designed to reduce juror discretion and eliminate "confusion" could have the effect of stifling the jurors' independent judgment and introducing meaningless technicalities into the system. Jurors should be given room in which to exercise their own independent judgment about what actually occurred. If the effect of open trials is to pile on procedural rules about where and when jurors are supposed to consider differing pieces of evidence, their effect will be deleterious indeed.
Moreover, the system would still be ultimately accountable to the community at large through the employment of student jurors.
The greatest harm of the open honor trial process falls on the accused student. Most of us can feel fortunate that our college-aged foibles are not actually on the public record. But for the rest of his life, Steve Gilday will have to live with being publicly branded a liar. In the Internet age, Steve Gilday's biggest mistake can be brought up by anyone in a Google search. This poses a real problem because however much a student believes he is innocent, he runs the risk of being convicted of the charge and thus creating a problem for himself and for his reputation that will never go away.
One beneficial effect of the single sanction is that it allows students to begin at another college on a clean slate. But the slate will never be clean for Gilday. Some students, in the heat of anger at being brought up on honor charges, may opt for an open trial out of a misguided desire to spite their accusers and a sense of self-pity. They may be in denial to themselves that they are even capable of cheating, and wish that their own victimhood be conveyed to the world.
For example, Gilday told The Cavalier Daily last week that he was "shocked" that he was convicted and "a little worried about my future and my academic career." There is always a risk in these situations of a guilty verdict, no matter how much the accused student protests his innocence. Accused students should be encouraged to start thinking constructively about their futures, not given incentives to engage in hot-headed protests.
Finally, open honor trials create perverse terms on which to carry on the public debate over the honor system. In the short term, we tend to sympathize with the accused students because, knowing we are all vulnerable to acting desperately and making mistakes, we think we could be the next ones expelled. This emotive response to the honor trial process is a dangerous one, however. We need to evaluate it not in terms of the short-term loss of a potential friend, but the long-term effects the honor system has on our community. Open honor trials obscure this process by aggrandizing the particular, invariably contested circumstances of individual cases, as opposed to the greater benefits and demerits of having such a system in the first place.
The overriding point is, however, that closed honor trials perform their purpose without any loss of legitimacy to the system as a whole. Open honor trials turn a process whose aim should be in discerning the truth into a gaudy spectacle and distort the entire debate about the honor system into emotional identification with an accused student.
Noah Peters' column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at npeters@cavalierdaily.com.
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