NEWS & NOTES
by Ricky Harris and Craig Seager
Consistency in sanctioning is vital to the student conduct hearing process. Ensuring the equitable actions of student conduct officers is important not only because it provides fairness to students within the conduct process, but also because it impacts the student experience; students likely will not alter their behavior if they feel the system is unjust. By ensuring that sanctioning is consistent, campuses are better prepared to develop a culture that focuses on education rather than punitive measures.
Allowing hearing officers to have a broad discretion with sanctions creates opportunities for inconsistency, even between students accused of the same violation. For example, two students who break the same policy – for example, committing a first-time fire equipment tampering offense – may receive vastly different sanctions just because they live in different halls and their cases are heard by different hearing officers.
This was the situation facing the University of Central Arkansas. To combat this issue, the campus explored creating a sanctioning rubric that would guide hearing officers in determining an appropriate sanction. Fortunately, the campus could consult other guiding documents to help in this process. One of these, the Association for Student Conduct Administration’s (ASCA) Ethical Principles and Practices in Student Conduct Administration, served as the main guide to ensure following best practices. One of the best practices outlined in this document concerns justice. Specifically, it states that “interventions should be just and fundamentally fair.” This provided the central philosophy for developing sanctioning guidelines; it was critical to provide for a fair and just process to students, particularly in relation to the most commonly violated policies. The ASCA practices also reference autonomy, another standard that the campus wanted to ensure was protected in the process. Graduate assistant hearing officers at the university are given flexibility in sanctioning, even with the use of the rubric, because not all cases are the same. This does not give them broad discretion to change sanctions, but allows for minor tweaks when appropriate or necessary. For example, when a required sanction is a warning, some hearing officers may opt to add a short reflection essay or the design of an educational poster to further promote education and awareness of the violation and illustrate the severity of an infraction.
The campus also referred to Jason J. Bach’s 2003 article in the Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal, “Students Have Rights, Too: The Drafting of Student Conduct Codes.” With an understanding of best practices and an agreement to create a system that both supported the existing conduct system and reinforced the protection of student rights, the team began creating its conduct rubric. The first step was to refer to the campus student handbook and list the most commonly violated policies in the Central Arkansas residential complexes. For each policy violation (including first and second offenses), corresponding mandatory and suggested sanctions were listed. In a table listing sanctions for each violation, mandatory sanctions were listed in bold type, with optional ones in normal text. The goal was to provide a quick reference guide for hearing officers to review while sanctioning students who violated common campus policies.
As an example, for a first offense of the alcohol policy, sanctions were as follows:
For a second offense, the sanctions were:
The new rubric was introduced at the beginning of the 2020-21 academic year. Since its implementation, the department has seen greater consistency in the problem areas of the past. Graduate student hearing officers, who adjudicate low-level offenses, simply refer to the rubric to ensure that they are meeting the required expectations of sanctioning consistency. Kinsey Davidson, a graduate assistant residence coordinator, praised the rubric and said she used it frequently. “The guidelines are so helpful,” she said. “This is the resource I use to determine if there are any mandatory sanctions that are needed for the specific violation. These guidelines did not stop me from personalizing sanctions when possible."
While the sanctioning rubric has already proven to be a worthwhile endeavor, it is still a working document. As such, it is updated as needed to fit with new policies or changes. For example, in the fall of 2020, new visitation restrictions were enforced on campus due to COVID-19. Anticipating an increase in the number of visitation violations due to this policy change, the department proactively updated the rubric to account for the new severity of the infraction. More important, frequent assessment of policies and sanctions will drive the reinforcement and development of this rubric to ensure that students experience a fair and just conduct system.
Ricky Harris is the residential student conduct coordinator at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. Craig Seager is the associate director for housing and residence life at the University of Central Arkansas.
