Allison McVey, chair of the University Judiciary Committee and third-year College student, began her term April 1 with priorities to expand outreach, minimize case processing time and lay the foundation for an alternative mediation process. McVey also hopes to continue building out an endowment and an alumni network, increase student agency within the trial process and hold proactive conversations with the inter-fraternity and inter-sorority councils. She will serve as chair until April 1, 2026.
In her time at the UJC before becoming chair, McVey served as first-year judiciary chair, chair of the hazing response subcommittee and, most recently, vice president for sanctions. Leading the hazing subcommittee gave her a chance to be in a role that was more creative and centered on outreach, while heading the FYJC was a role heavily focused on case processing and got her involved on the executive committee. She said the VP for Sanctions role was one in which she worked behind the scenes, allowing her to form back-end relationships with students and organizations.
“I think that no matter what role I've been in the UJC, the big thing I'm struck by is how dedicated and passionate the people are, and that's why I keep coming back,” McVey said. “It’s been great to…have some outreach, some leadership, some technical case processing stuff … to step into a space where I am going to be doing them all at once.”
According to McVey, one of the biggest challenges facing the UJC includes managing a caseload that is both more voluminous and severe in nature compared to past caseloads. One way the Committee can address this is by ensuring students are fully aware of its processes, McVey said.
“I think that looks like enhancing a lot of our outreach initiatives to really put students … in the driver's seat and really emphasize their agency and their ability to engage with UJC,” McVey said. “If they do find themselves going through a UJC process, to make that process their own, because there's a lot of ways that a student or an organization can really shape its own UJC experience.”
She said cases involving organizations — namely hazing allegations against fraternities — heighten the impact the UJC can impart on the University community, and the Committee must balance both respecting federal privacy laws and student confidentiality in tandem with warding away suspicion and skepticism from the student body.
“We always struggle with the skepticism from the people that we serve, since obviously, we're in an adjudicatory role and with that comes a certain degree of suspicion from the student body,” McVey said.
To combat this tension, McVey said the UJC will continue to enhance outreach initiatives to emphasize student agency in the trial process. She said she would like to install optional workshops for students — both those involved in trials and general student body members across the University — on topics like accessing educational records and understanding FERPA rights. According to McVey, this knowledge could be helpful for students not only involved in UJC trials, but later in life in employment or post-graduate opportunities.
Another outreach initiative McVey aims to achieve is increased collaboration with the Committee’s educator pool — the outreach body that spreads information to the University community on the Standards of Conduct and addresses UJC-related questions — and an increased social media presence. Furthermore, she said she wants to have proactive conversations with leaders from the IFC and ISC to increase awareness of what constitutes a violation before cases are brought to the UJC.
According to McVey, Judiciary Week, an annual tradition of the UJC in its second year that involves a diverse array of events to promote awareness and connection among the University community, was a success this year. She said she would specifically like to continue putting executive members in front of both the University and UJC communities to increase accessibility and welcome different perspectives.
“As many voices as we can incorporate through conversations … is something that I think is super important,” McVey said. “I think that [conversations] kind of infuse a more boots on the ground mentality and outlook into executive decision making, which I think is absolutely essential.”
In addition to outreach, another of McVey’s initiatives involves minimizing case processing time. The Committee has seen an inflation in processing times from 35.17 days in spring 2024 to 92.09 days in fall 2024, due in large part to more serious cases in which students may be facing parallel legal processes. McVey hopes to reduce this time as much as possible to promote the wellbeing of the students involved.
“That period is just such a period of tumult and upheaval when we don't quite know what's going to happen at the end of it,” McVey said. “No matter what, we should always be talking about how we can cut down this time.”
To reduce processing time, McVey will institute more frequent statistics reports and internal reviews. According to McVey, the Committee will take more time to intentionally reflect on how long each case takes and what events occurred during the process that contributed to any delays. McVey said that the senior data manager and a revitalized educator pool — one that is tasked not only with promoting community awareness but also with providing internal critique of the UJC — will help lead these efforts, and their findings will be shared during general body meetings.
One other prominent goal of McVey’s is one that was shared by her predecessor, fourth-year College student Harper Jones. She hopes to lay the foundation for a long-term project to establish an alternative mediation process that students or organizations can pursue when an incident does not rise to the level of a standards violation. If no specific standard is violated, the UJC is currently unable to accept or adjudicate the case in any capacity. With an alternative mediation process, McVey said the UJC would be able to respond directly to student needs instead of having these issues deferred through an informal University administrative process, one that takes control away from the UJC.
“Whenever you can resolve something informally, that's a virtue for the students involved, but it does kind of undermine the UJC’s mission in a way, since those situations end up being resolved by administrators,” McVey said.
The alternative pathway she proposed will not result in charges or sanctions that show on a disciplinary record, but it will provide an outlet for recourse for students who desire an informal resolution provided by a peer, McVey said. She recognizes that this is a large undertaking to build a new process from the ground up. According to McVey, she would install a subcommittee tentatively called the special projects subcommittee to create the framework for this alternative process.
McVey will also now take up the task of growing an endowment for the Committee, something Jones prioritized over the course of the previous term.
Jones secured an additional $60,000 for the Committee, spread over the course of three years from the President’s Office, and she began the work of reconnecting with UJC alumni by collecting contacts and compiling a newsletter detailing the Committee’s work over the past decade. McVey said she would like to continue the work Jones started, and she plans to defer to the expertise of executive members leading the alumni relations and endowment committee.
As a leader, McVey hopes to exemplify humility and elevate other members of the Committee to do their best work in their areas of expertise.
“One of my strengths is recognizing … my own weaknesses, but I think that helps me, and that I see how those are balanced out by the strengths of others,” McVey said. “I want to be a leader that definitely makes people feel confident enough to spearhead their own initiatives.”
McVey said that the model of student self-governance forming the backbone of the UJC’s work is essential due to students’ expertise on the student experience. She said that the peer-to-peer nature of the Committee’s work characterizes the interactions as less adversarial and more collaborative.
“There's conversations that happen in that deliberation room that include details that just never would find their way into a conversation between administrators who don't have the student experience,” McVey said. “That sort of knowledge and expertise that comes from living the student experience currently is something that's completely invaluable.”
A previous version of this article had incorrectly stated that the Vice Chair for Sanctions was the Vice President of Sanctions. It also incorrectly stated that the hazing subcommittee was on the executive committee and that the FYJC was not when it is, in fact, the opposite. The article also misquoted McVey on one word. The article has been updated to reflect these changes.
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