Faculty Senate to assist overwhelmed Honor Council

By Jocelyn Wright     10/2/08 7:00pm

Feeling that the Honor Council may be overwhelmed with student judicial matters, the Faculty Senate plans to form a working group to assess whether the system is functioning optimally. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Professor Evan Siemann said the Faculty Senate wants to assess the reasons for an increased number of Honor Council cases, since at its busiest times the council can expect a case per day. The working group, which is not yet fully formed, will be headed by Siemann and History Professor Edward Cox and will include Mathematics Professor John Hempel, Management Professor Duane Windsor, Physics and Astronomy Professor Thomas Killian and some students from the Honor Council. Honor Council President Jackie Ammons said the Honor Council had sent a suggested list of people to the task force but that, currently, no meetings had been set up. Siemann said the final group would probably have one or two additional faculty members so that all the disciplines would be more equally represented. This group plans to observe whether the Honor Council system is functioning optimally, Siemann said.

Faculty Senate Speaker Deborah Harter said the working group should not be seen as an indication of any Faculty Senate disapproval or distrust of the Honor Council.

"We have 100 percent support for and belief in the Honor Council," Harter said.

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In a joint proposal to the Faculty Senate, Cox and Siemann expressed their concerns that the current Honor Council was not functioning at its prime. They said a growing number of cases were being referred to the Honor Council, resulting in a very high work load for Honor Council members. This heavy workload leads to long delays between when cases are sent to the Honor Council and when they are tried. Siemann said when he referred a student to the Honor Council last year, the student was not notified until 8 weeks later.

Siemann said many faculty members were also choosing to handle Honor Code violations on their own, which was leading to a huge discrepancy between the punishments for students given by individual professors and the punishments decided on by the Honor Council.

"The normal penalty structure [for the Honor Council] is a one- to two-semester suspension and an F in the course," Siemann said. "If a faculty member handles the case it could range from a stern warning to an F in the class. If the faculty is involved it's on a totally different scale."

Siemann and Cox also expressed their concern in their statement that there was a large difference between undergraduate and graduate students in terms of the severity of different types of violations, making it difficult to determine appropriate penalties for each group of students.

Siemann also said Article XII of the Honor Council's constitution would be discussed. The article gives an accused student a three-day window during they can choose to withdraw from Rice for two semesters and forfeit credit for the course in question if they do not wish for their case to go to trial or appear on their permanent record. The student body voted to keep the loophole.

Siemann said since the vote was not overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the loophole, the provision ought to be reconsidered.

"There's a diversity of opinion within the student body," Siemann said. "There was a huge amount of variation over something that potentially changes peoples' lives."

Over the past five years, Harter said there have been occasions where members of the Honor Council have come to the senate and reported that they were feeling extraordinarily overwhelmed. Harter said the task force would examine whether or not there had been a increase in cases and, if so, what the reason for this may be. Harter said Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman and Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Paula Sanders formed a working group to investigate whether more students were plagiarizing.

Ammons said from what she had seen, the number of cases sent to the Honor Council have been consistent with past years. She said the Honor Council had not been feeling any particular pressures so far this year.

"We're really doing a good job of keeping on top of things right now," Ammons said. "At this point, we're doing great."

Ammons said the Honor Council was looking forward to collaborating with the Faculty Senate.

"We're really excited to help with any improvements we can with the Honor Council if they have any suggestions for us," Ammons said.

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