Fourth-year College student Harper Jones will step down from her role as University Judiciary Committee Chair Tuesday. Jones’ term, spanning from April 1, 2024 to Tuesday, was characterized by an increase in caseload more than two-fold, with 49 cases adjudicated this past term.
The UJC oversees the adjudication of cases involving violations of the University’s 12 Standards of Conduct. Jones first worked as a counselor and then senior counselor for the UJC, guiding students through the trial and reporting processes. After three years in this role, she was elected as Chair last spring.
Reflecting on where she was this time last year, Jones shared her thoughts on how she felt stepping into the role of chair. Specifically, her work in the Committee has reinforced her belief in the student self-governing system at the University, a system which she believes can uniquely work with students as they undertake the trial process.
“[This year] has reaffirmed for me the belief that this is the right system because it's representative of students [and] because we can meet students where they are,” Jones said. “The ability to have a student sit before a panel of their peers and be represented by their peers, I think, is so unique to U.Va., and has been a defining factor of my experience.”
The principal initiatives Jones hoped to accomplish during her term included the creation of an endowment, increased transparency and boosted student engagement, among other things. Jones said she had to balance these long-term goals with the increased caseload.
“[I had] to balance priorities and work through both the long term initiatives that I hoped to accomplish, but also the short-term goals and our main responsibility, which is case processing,” Jones said.
Jones reported that in her term, the UJC handled cases that involve threats to health or safety, allegations of physical assault and violations of federal, state or local law. Much of Jones’ term involved dealing with the increased caseload, both in terms of quantity and severity of the individual cases.
“The cases that we were seeing were just generally more severe in nature,” Jones said. “The challenge this term has really been to approach those cases with the same care and commitment and due process as we would with any of the cases before.”
Because more serious cases took longer to process, Jones said the Committee’s mean case processing time increased from the previous year. She cited increased visibility of the UJC as a potential explanation for the increase in case numbers, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic’s influence on the interpersonal development of students.
Entering her term, a key priority Jones had was to strengthen the alumni network and create an endowment which could supplement funding from Student Affairs. The Committee is financially limited in programming and expansion efforts and in supporting officers and representatives. Jones used the Honor Committee’s endowment as a starting point, which has allowed the Committee to maintain a level of independence and discretion over their programming.
Aside from endowment efforts, the UJC receives an allotted amount of funding each year from Student Affairs. Jones said the Committee has felt limited by this amount. This term, the UJC was able to work with the President’s Office to receive an additional $20,000 for the next three years, totaling to $60,000.
According to Jones, this money will fill in for the pressing needs of the Committee while it works to build an endowment. The needs covered by this budget include outreach events, meals for trials, parking, co-sponsorships and marketing materials. A new subcommittee that Jones installed is in charge of building the endowment as well as heading up alumni relations. A UJC closet with business professional dress clothes — the mandatory attire for trials — is also in the works to remove the associated financial barrier.
The Committee has spoken to partners at entities like the Jefferson Trust, the Alumni Association and the Jefferson Scholars Foundation to gain understanding of how to build their endowment. With this insight, they began to conceptualize the endowment and the necessary foundations for future representatives and leaders.
“A lot of the work that we've done has been setting the stage for fundraising efforts to be undertaken in the next year and the year following,” Jones said.
Alumni will play a role in the creation of the endowment, but Jones also said that the historical memory and institutional knowledge that alumni provide is meaningful. She sees a benefit to potentially connecting current members to alumni working in fields of interest. The Committee is also working on an alumni newsletter which will contain the progress of the Committee in the past 10 years and seek engagement with alumni.
Under the goal of increasing transparency, over the past several years the Committee has implemented both the publication of the statistics report each semester and the institution of an internal initiative called Community Comments which encourages members of the UJC to attend the first 30 minutes of executive meetings to share their concerns and ideas. Furthermore, Jones aimed to improve awareness at the administrative level by presenting to the Board of Visitors alongside the Honor chair.
“Being able to have those conversations with [the Board] … has been really beneficial,” Jones said. “Everyone [I’ve spoken with] is very supportive of student self-governance, and that's something that has been echoed to me on multiple occasions by multiple administrators and members of the Board.”
In reference to awareness and transparency, Jones recognized that the nature of the case work the Committee undertakes is often confidential under legal protections and that because of this many students are unaware of the step-by-step processes of the UJC. She said this challenges the Committee to generate ways of raising awareness while abiding by federal privacy laws.
In terms of student engagement, Jones said the big push of this term was expanding the educator pool, a group that is tasked with spreading awareness of the UJC’s mission within the University community. The Committee has also engaged in co-sponsorships, tabling and hosting a Judiciary Week filled with an array of events to increase student involvement in the Committee’s work. Jones finds it important to meet students where they are and get as many community members involved as possible.
“We don't have to engage with students in Newcomb 480 in the trial room every single time,” Jones said. “There's much work to be done, I’ll be the first to admit that, but [it’s important to] increase knowledge of [the UJC] on Grounds, and also make sure that students feel that the Committee is accessible to them if they have questions about our process.”
According to Jones, she could not have prepared for the volume or intensity of cases received. Nevertheless, she was continually appreciative of the work of the support officers and representatives in broaching the more severe cases that involved difficult conversations.
“[I will miss] working with people who aren't afraid to tell me when I'm wrong, who aren't afraid to disagree, and ultimately, who all have students at the forefront of what they're doing,” Jones said.
Jones’ advice to the future Committee would be to recognize that there is always room to grow. She appreciates that the turnover of leadership each year allows for new ideas to be realized and new energy to shape the UJC’s work. Aside from prioritizing the processing of cases and initiatives to expand outreach, she hopes the Committee will continue building community within the UJC and relying on each other for support. As Jones prepares to step down, third-year College student Allison McVey will officially replace her Tuesday.
Another priority Jones had entering her term was to create an alternative resolution process. This would be a pathway for the Committee to support complaints that do not rise to the level of a violation handled by the UJC but for which students may still feel the need for a modified resolution. Ultimately, her other initiatives alongside the intense caseload prevented her from achieving this goal — however, she believes future leadership will adopt this initiative.
“There's a need for some sort of conversation about what went wrong [in these lower-level offenses], and if a student feels that harm has been perpetuated against them, that they have avenues by which they can express their take on the situation and come to some sort of desired outcome,” Jones said.
As Jones reflected on her time as Chair, she recognized that the self-governance feature of the UJC requires active effort to ensure it is upheld. Although the governing model is a long-held tradition that the UJC is “lucky” to have, that does not necessarily mean self-governance is a guarantee.
“I think what this term has made me realize is that we can't be necessarily complacent in upholding student self-governance,” Jones said. “I don't think that student self-governance as a system is the inevitable outcome for the University every single time, so the real call to action is for students to be the ones that are driving student self-governance.”
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