As Michael Chapman prepares to hand the reins of the University Judiciary Committee to someone else, he reflected on the past year as the Committee's chair.
Going into the term, Chapman already knew that he would focus on education efforts directed to the rest of the University community.
"We really wanted to reach out to the far reaches of the University and show how [students] can become a part of the UJC," Chapman said.
The Committee's outreach efforts during the past term have continued even through this week's University-wide elections. University students have the opportunity to vote on a referendum on this week's ballot that, if passed, would facilitate greater relationships between Committee educators and different organizations across Grounds, Chapman said.
This focus on education was an attempt to make up for the years before, when the Committee had begun to neglect its outreach efforts, Senior Educator Portia Henry said.
"It seemed like in the past few years, the outreach component [of the Committee] has been overlooked," Henry said. "We would get confused with the honor system, and some people would think, 'If I do Honor, it's like UJC.' We wanted to make sure people know the difference," she said.
Reaching out to the University community would allow for a better understanding of the organization's functions on Grounds, she added.
"We really focused on how the Committee benefits the community - how this is a peer-oriented system, not just trying to tap our neighbor on the hand," Henry said.
To accomplish this goal, Committee members worked to revive old education methods, such as speaking to first-year students at "dorm talks," which had fallen by the wayside prior to the current term. The Committee also has been planning an Awareness Day for later in the year, an event that was last scheduled in 2002, Chapman said.
Other plans for the future include possibly hosting an open mock trial so that students can see a trial's operations for themselves, he added. The Committee is looking to create a fraternal organization agreement program to reach out to fraternity and sorority members more directly, as well.
Despite concentrating so much on outreach during the past year, Chapman noted that there is still a heavy load of work to do in this regard.
Henry suggested that the Committee could create an internal component of the organization that concentrated solely on outreach, which she had intended to accomplish this previous year but was unable to because of time and other constraints.
Chapman also noted that the Committee should try to continue the dorm talks with first-year students, as well as efforts to increase the Committee's presence on Grounds.
Similarly, he added that the incoming leadership should try to replicate the way in which the outgoing Committee was comprised of students from different schools and backgrounds, which contributed to "out-of-the-box thinking."
"I would like to see someone with a fresh and new perspective," he said about the incoming leadership. "One of the most important things is to be open-minded of different ideas"
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