For what seems like the hundredth time, UVA students are currently voting on an Honor-related referendum, proposed by Hoos Against Single Sanction (HASS), and like the HASS referendums that came before it, this referendum proposes the abolishment of the single sanction.
UVA’s Honor code, which has been in place for over 165 years, states that any student convicted of lying, cheating or stealing by a student jury will be subsequently expelled from the University, the one and only way of dealing with an infraction.
Voting will end this Sunday, which means tensions between HASS and the Honor Committee are high. For the past few weeks, UVA students could hardly move around Grounds without being confronted by fliers and passionate editorials related to the referendum.
Currently, the panel of jurors in an Honor trial not only votes on the guilt of the student, but also on the triviality of the offense. If an offense is deemed trivial, the student is not punished.
Under HASS’ referendum, the default penalty for nontrivial offenses will remain expulsion. If a student commits a “trivial offense,” the proposal creates a tiered penalty system, under which a panel of three Honor Committee members would choose from a student-approved list of sanctions.
According to HASS, the proposal would ensure that student jurors would no longer have to choose to either expel a student for a minor Honor offense, or to allow the student to escape punishment entirely.
In a 2008 survey of students conducted by the Honor Committee, 22.6 percent of students said they would not initiate an Honor case against a student whom they believed was guilty of an Honor offense because they do not believe in the single sanction.
Additionally, in a 2006 Honor Committee survey of faculty, 31 percent of faculty and TAs said they didn’t report infractions because the “single sanction was too strong a punishment for the level of the infraction” and 21 percent said they “did not want to be responsible for having a student dismissed from the University.” HASS hopes their proposal will ensure that lying, cheating and stealing are not tolerated at UVA.
Most, if not all, of the students who have spoken out about the current referendum have not had the unfortunate experience of being the defendant in an Honor trial, and as fourth-year Architecture student Emily Bauer will tell you, the Honor trial procedure looks very different from the inside.
Bauer’s summer 2008 trial revealed to her that the current Honor system “is full of holes,” she says in an e-mail. As an accused student, Bauer had the right to choose one of three types of jury panels: a panel of Honor Committee members, a panel of her peers or a combination of both.
She originally wanted to have a jury comprised of a combination of Honor Committee members and peers, but because “not enough Honor reps could make it” to her summer trial date, she faced a jury of her peers, several of which may not have been in an appropriate state to judge an hours-long trial.
“In the bathroom, my mom heard one juror complain [about] her hangover and another agree,” she says. If her fate had been left entirely up to Honor Committee members, however, Bauer says she is convinced she would have been expelled.
“A large problem is the stigma of an Honor trial. Like an impeachment, once people hear that you have been accused, they assume you’re guilty before proven innocent,” she says.
“The only reason I am still in school is because my mom took the time to help me and, most importantly, took my side.”
Though she calls her experience with Honor “heinous,” Bauer says she does not blame the Honor Committee.
“They are students, and unpaid students at that,” she says. “They are basing their actions off an archaic rulebook which fails to take flexibility and human error into account.”
Bauer feels that the Honor constitution is due for a major overhaul, and though this current referendum won’t fix all of its problems, it’s a step in the right direction.
“They need to redo their constitution,” she says. “I think [Honor and HASS] should work together, and they do to a point, but with the attack ads [related to the referendum], the relationship has become strained.”