Jucidial system to be revised

Students who are bewildered or intimidated by judicial proceedings at Oberlin will hopefully soon have a clear understanding of their rights and responsibilities as part of the community.

After spending two years examining the school's Rules and Regulations as well as its judicial system, an 11 member Judicial Task-Force is finalizing a draft proposal for a revision of the system. The task force consists of five students (although they are in the process of filling one of the five spots), two members of the faculty and four staff members.

"We started with looking at what's working and what's not. A lot of the time was spent looking at other schools," said Bill Stackman, associate dean of students, who heads the task-force. According to him, the draft is a 27 page document which both lays out the system the committee would like to implement and summarizes changes which will be made to the current system. In his opinion, which is echoed by other members of the committee, the current system is not very concise.

He said, "We are developing a policy that puts together in a clean and concise way a list of behaviors we expect students to abide by."

Senior Sarah Fineberg, one of the student members of the task-force, said, "In the end students will be held more accountable for what they are going to do, but there will be more freedom to do it."

"The major thrust of my interest [is that] we want to make sure students are treated like adults and will be responsible like adults," said Fineberg.

The inaccessibility and complicated wording of the current judicial system has been a cause of consternation for many students. Since Stackman began working on it, he has realized how hard the current rules and regulations are for students to grasp. He said, "One of my concerns is that I learned quickly how convoluted and confusing the j-board system is. Students say the rules and regulations are very confusing and contradictory."

Stackman is not the only member of the task-force whose focus is to clarify the judicial system. In fact, that has been a major concern for the entire body. Fineberg said, "[the proposed revision] clarifies a lot of things that were very vague before." According to her, one of the specific changes regards the wording of the rules and regulations. She said, "The language is different. [The task force] has been careful to choose words that don't sound so legal and are more educational." Explaining her hope that students be able to read and understand the rules and regulations, she said, "This will hopefully make it clearer what things one might run into."

Dean of Student Life and Services Peter Goldsmith said, "One thing the process must accomplish is making the system much more comprehensible." While he is not a part of the task-force, he had seen the draft in the summer and wrote a fairly lengthy memo in response to certain aspects of the proposal. One concern of his regards the incubation time of cases before the judicial board. Incubation time is the time between when a student goes before the board and when it decides upon his or her case. Currently, that can take many days, and he explained that he wants a shorter time than is allowed for in the current proposal. "To allow days to go by is problematic to students," he said.

The concept of switching the focus of the judicial system to a more educational approach regarding the rights of not only the accuser, but the accused as well, is a major issue for the task-force. According to Stackman, the principles of the proposal are based on education. He said "They are certainly based in the community and upholding standards of community and recognizing rights. We wanted it to read in a sense where not only it didn't feel punitive, but at the same time, we wanted students to know the policies and expectations, but also let them know about their rights"

Fineberg reiterated the importance of education and said, "The task-force emphasized mediation as an important tool in conflict resolution. It's emphasized not as punishment but education."

Some of the other changes proposed include an elimination of much of the bureaucracy currently involved in judicial proceedings. The draft proposes that instead of judicial and community boards, there will only be a judicial board. Currently, the judicial board is made up of students and the community board is made up of faculty. Although the lines sometimes get blurred, the judicial board is currently supposed to deal with less serious infractions while the community board deals with more serious ones. Additionally, the task-force is proposing a review board which is made up of both faculty and students and would deal with appeals of judicial board rulings.

Although many changes are included in the proposal, it has not yet been finalized. The task-force has yet to meet this year (it's first meeting will be Monday at lunch), but Stackman said it is on target to be passed on in November. First it will go to Nancy Dye for her opinions and those of others she thinks should see it. Eventually, it will go before the Student Life Committee, and ifapproved, on to the General Faculty for a final decision.

"I think we're hoping to really bring it this year," said Fineberg.

But before it even goes to the SLC, it is generally agreed upon that students and the entire community need to provide input on the proposal. Goldsmith stressed the importance of this. "At some point, I hope sooner rather than later, there will be an airing of this draft to the entire community. It is very important that students take the opportunity to examine and express their opinions." He said, "The only danger is if students don't take an interest."