The University Judiciary Committee is currently considering increasing the number of College representatives from three to five. UJC judges voted seven to six to allow the Issues Subcommittee to continue exploring the proposal and the possibility of drafting a referendum for the committee to review.
Currently there are two representatives from every school except the College for a total of 21 voting members, including one open position from the School of Medicine. One advantage to increasing the number of representatives from the College would be establishing fairer representation for College students, Issues Subcommittee Chair Will Bane said. There are about 11,000 College students, and with three judges representing them, there is about one representative for every 3,300 students, Bane said. If the number of representatives were to increase, there would be one representative for about every 2,100 College students, which is still less than the representative-to-student ratio for the Engineering School, which has one representative for every 1,200 students, Bane said.
“When students come before our committee they do deserve to be held responsible and heard by their peers,” UJC Chair Merriam Mikhail said. “A significant number of accused students are from the College.”
Both Bane and Mikhail, however, said they do not believe UJC is meant to be entirely proportionately representative.
Vice Chair for Trials Grayson Lambert said the proposal has another benefit that should be considered: UJC would have two more representatives to hear cases in addition to the two representatives from the Batten School of Public Policy that the committee is expecting.
“With the case overload, it’s needed,” Lambert said.
Vice Chair for First Years Michael Chapman, who voted against the pursuing the proposal, though, said he believes the number of College representatives should remain unchanged and the addition of two representatives from the Batten School will be sufficient for the Committee’s caseload.
Bane said some of the initial concerns expressed about the increase in the number of College representatives included the possibility of electing an all-College Executive Committee and whether it could fairly represent the entire University. Currently, the Executive Committee consists of four members, so even if all three College representatives were selected for the Executive Committee, there would still be one open spot for a non-College representative. If the University student body, however, were to vote to increasing the number to five representatives, there would be the possibility of having an Executive Committee with all College representatives and no representation from other schools.
Mikhail, who has served on the Executive Committee for three years, said this is the first year she has been on the Executive Committee without a graduate student serving as well. Having a graduate student serving on the Executive Committee was very beneficial to UJC as a whole, Mikhail said. With an increase in the number of College representatives, she noted, UJC will also face an increased chance that UJC could have an all-undergraduate Executive Committee.
The number of College representatives serving on the Executive Committee should not matter, Lambert said at Sunday’s meeting.
“If you have four really qualified people to fill those spots, then that’s who you want there,” Lambert said.
Others, however, felt that an all-College Executive Committee would hinder UJC.
“There ought to be diversity on [the Executive Committee],” said Payvand Ahdout, who is a counselor and a member of the Issues Subcommittee. “But it’s up to the representatives to decide who should be on [the Executive Committee].”
Chapman said allowing five College representatives in UJC would compromise the committee’s diversity. Including Chapman, who is from the Education School, this year’s Executive Committee has two representatives from the College and one from the Engineering School.
Bane, though, said it would be very difficult to end up with an all-College Executive Committee.
“Even with five judges from the College, that’s only five votes out of 23 with the Batten School,” Bane said. “They alone could not elect themselves onto [the Executive Committee]. If [the judges] are truly concerned that [the Executive Committee] will be all College students, they could prevent that during the election process.”
Though Chapman said he is not worried about the chance of an all-College Executive Committee, he and others did express concern about the possibility of having a College-dominated trial panel, which consists of five judges, including one voting member from the Executive Committee who serves as chairperson of the trial. Several UJC members said they believe that a student being judged should be fairly represented by his or her peers in a trial panel.
“If it’s important for a trial panel to be diverse, then it’s extremely important for the [Executive Committee] to be diverse,” Chapman said. “That’s what makes the UJC great is that people from different personalities and backgrounds come together to promote our tenets of safety, freedom and respect.”
Mikhail explained that the allocation of judges to a trial panel is random. When judges sign up for a trial panel, all they know is the date and time of the case. They are given no additional information such as what school the accused student is from or what standard of conduct was violated, she said.
Law Rep. Carey Mignerey said he believes there is a difference in the way graduate and undergraduate students would view a case because judges use their own life experiences when determining how to sanction a student.
Bane, however, said while the potential of having more undergraduate students on a trial panel increases if students were to vote to increase the number of College representatives, he does not think it will affect how a case is judged.
“I don’t think the chances of that affecting the outcome of a case are necessarily that high,” he said.
Second-year Engineering student Ryan Calonder, who was recently tried for a violation of the third Standard of Conduct, said he thinks an increase in the number of College representatives will neither help represent the College better nor create any bias in the system.
“I just went through my own UJC trial,” he said. “There were people from the College on it and from the [Engineering School]. I didn’t feel like members from either school were harder or easier on me.”
Lambert, who voted in favor of allowing the Issues Subcommittee to draft the proposal, also said that even with the proposed increase, almost 80 percent of judges, or 18 of the 23 judges, would come from other schools.
“The College is the largest school by far,” he said. “This is another step to recognize it. [It is] not a dominant force in the committee ... You’re not going to have this sway [toward the College].”
This is not the first year UJC has tackled the issue of representation; the issue was raised in 2003 and eventually led to the resignation of a UJC member. When the Issues Subcommittee then presented three reapportionment proposals to the entire committee, the proposals were met with some resistance. Unlike the outcome of Sunday’s meeting, the voting members of UJC did not direct the Issues Subcommittee to further explore the issue and come up with a proposal, Mikhail said. She further explained that when UJC votes to put a referendum on the ballot, two-thirds of judges must approve placing the referendum on the ballot.
The 2003 Issues Subcommittee then decided to try to bypass the committee after being met with disapproval and collect the 900 petition signatures then needed from the University student body to put the referendum on the ballot. Then-Data Management Subcommittee Chair J.V. Nable felt the Issues Subcommittee decision was not ethical and decided to resign from his position, Mikhail said.
Bane said the current Issues Subcommittee will deliver the proposal of a possible referendum to UJC before the end of the semester. He said he does not believe, however, that the committee will begin debating it before next semester. Even if less than two-thirds of UJC’s voting members do not pass the proposal and it is not put on the ballot for the spring election, any student has the ability to put it on the ballot as a referendum, Mikhail said. According to the University Board of Elections’ Web site, 950 petition signatures are needed to put a referendum on the ballot.
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