Honor announces new chairs, vice chairs

David Truetzel selected as new Committee Chair, discusses plans for future

Cameron Feller, Cavalier Daily Associate Editor
Published: Monday, March 23 2009

The Honor Committee held its annual retreat this weekend, during which the newly elected Committee worked to plan its year-long term and name its new chair and vice chairs.

Third-year Commerce School student David Truetzel was named the Committee’s new chair, replacing current Honor Chair Jess Huang.
“Trusting me to serve as their representative to the wider University community is obviously a huge honor,” Truetzel said.

Truetzel, who has been involved with honor since his first year, said “everyone was really excited” at the retreat for the new administration. The retiring Honor Committee takes time at the retreat to discuss the past year’s activities, as well as to prepare the new Committee for the upcoming year, Huang said.

Truetzel said one of his main goals as chair is to “work with a lot of different, relevant groups at a wide level,” like faculty, students, administrators and the Charlottesville area as a whole.

“What came up a lot amongst all of the candidates is this idea of the aspiration side of honor at the University,” and of having that side pervade the whole University community, he said.

Third-year College student Rob Atkinson, who will replace Ryann Burke as the new Vice Chair for Education, also said he hopes to extend the Committee’s outreach efforts.

“A direction I’d like to take is to get a lot of different perspectives outside of honor,” Atkinson said, adding that he would like to try to reach groups that typically are not connected with the Committee. He said he hopes to do this by meeting with organizations before the end of the school year so that the Committee can “start on the right foot in the fall when we get back.”

During the coming year, the new Committee hopes to “incorporate [these organizations’] views and their opinions in formulating the education initiative,” Atkinson said.

He said he also intends to build on the projects and goals Burke worked toward during the past year, including distinguishing between “the perceptions and the realties” of the honor education system.

Atkinson said the Committee’s education pool is “not always seen in the best light,” but noted that he hopes to improve upon Burke’s efforts and make the whole University community aware of these “realities.”

Third-year College student Alex Carroll, who will replace Sophie Staples as the new Vice Chair for Trials, also said education has become an increasingly pertinent issue for the Committee.

“It is something we all want to focus on in one way or another,” Carroll said.

Carroll said in addition to these “big picture ideas that every committee comes in with,” like educational efforts, she also wants to work on more institutionally-based, albeit smaller and more specific, initiatives.

Some of these initiatives include improving jury panel diversity and composition as well as increasing trial processing efficiency.

Overall, current and future Committee members said they were pleased with the retreat and the new Committee’s elections.

“We were all pleasantly surprised at how well we interacted,” Carroll said. “[We are] already generating ideas, already connecting with each other, and our ideas were overlapping.”

Honor Explanation

Sophie Staples
Sent: Tuesday, March 17 2009


Monday’s lead editorial (“10 days to leave (admitting guilt),” 3/16/2009) reflected several misunderstandings about the by-law proposal discussed by the Honor Committee. First, this proposal does not consolidate power in the hands of one individual. Instead, the language in the amendment explicitly allows both the Vice Chair for Trials and Committee chair — the two Committee members with the most knowledge about the trial schedule — to have input in this decision. This is no significant difference from the current system, which places this responsibility in the hands of two Committee members and a pre-trial coordinator assigned at the discretion of the Vice Chair for Trials.

This will not only expedite the process, but will also provide consistency that is lacking under the current arrangement. Moreover, The Cavalier Daily is mistaken to suggest that this proposal will increase the Committee’s reliance on e-mail correspondence. Official correspondence is sent via e-mail as well as certified mail, in order to notify students as quickly and conveniently for them as possible. Each accused student is also assigned an advisor, who often meets with the student in person to help the student write his or her trial request letter and answer any questions he or she might have. This proposal in no way limits the Committee’s communication with accused students to e-mail. In fact, by streamlining the process, it will likely decrease the opportunity for miscommunication, not increase it. Finally, under the current system, a student is considered to have left admitting guilt if he or she does not request a trial within the ten day period. This proposal does not change that, but simply requires that a student select an available date or propose a viable and reasonable alternative within the already existing ten day deadline. This amendment would not remove the honor system’s existing safeguards, and would in fact benefit accused students: it provides them an opportunity to request a different date if they are not available on the dates provided to them, and will prevent confusion by explicitly outlining the procedure for handling such situations in the by-laws.

10 days to leave (admitting guilt)

The Honor Committee’s proposal will increase efficiency but should also include protections


Published: Tuesday, March 17 2009


Next week, the Honor Committee will vote on a proposal to increase the expediency with which honor charges are handled. This proposal will increase the efficiency of the honor trial process but also lacks safeguards necessary to protect students. The Committee is right to continually work toward a faster trial process but should not overlook potential problems in its efforts to do so.

The notification of formal accusation of an honor offense includes five to six dates, selected by the Vice Chair for Trials, on which a trial can be held if the student should desire one. The student must select one of these dates or notify the Committee if he cannot make any of the given dates within 10 days. It seems unlikely that a student would not be able to make one of six dates for something as important as an honor trial, and Vice Chair for Trials Sophie Staples pointed out that this change is aimed at those students who request a trial but intentionally try to delay it. Currently a student can do this by submitting a request for a trial but not submitting a date for which he is available within the 10 day trial request period. In this case, the Vice Chair for Trials selects a date and if the student would like to change this date, a pre-trial panel must be formed, which Staples said takes at least a week. The proposed change will allow the Vice Chair for Trials to work with the student directly if he would like to request a different date, making the process much more efficient. Additionally, should a student prove unable to establish a trial date within 10 days of his initial notification, he would be assumed to leave admitting guilt.

This proposal puts a lot of power in the hands of the Vice Chair for Trials. Staples noted, “The Vice Chair for Trials has the ability to determine what is a good excuse,” as well as the best ability to find new dates on which a trial could be held. Staples also said if a student was unable to respond within 10 days for a legitimate reason, the Committee would be understanding of that. The proposed result of not specifying a viable trial date, however, makes it much more important that the Committee ensure such a guarantee exists. While a student can appeal the status of leaving admitting guilt, it is a weighty consequence that should not be taken lightly.

If a student was unavailable for trial on one of the suggested dates, the Vice Chair for Trials should instead attempt to meet with the student to work out a date. In person, it is easier to judge if a student has a legitimate conflict or if he is merely trying to delay a trial unnecessarily. Such weighty decisions cannot be made based solely on e-mail correspondence. If a person fails to respond to the e-mail and does not have a good reason for doing so, it is acceptable to declare he has decided to leave admitting guilt. Miscommunication, however, is always possible, and a face-to-face meeting will reduce this possibility greatly.

By looking for ways to make the trial process more efficient, the Committee is fulfilling its obligation to serve the student body. The Committee, however, should reevaluate this proposal to ensure appropriate safeguards, such as meeting with the student, so a student is not declared to have left admitting guilt without an intention to do so.

Honor considers two legislative proposals

Committee discusses bylaw, constitutional change that would give students 10 days to select trial date, alter jury selection

Cameron Feller, Cavalier Daily Associate Editor
Published: Monday, March 16 2009


The Honor Committee last night discussed two legislative changes respectively intended to incentivize the expediency of accused students’ trial date requests and ease the selection of jury members for some high-profile trials.

The first proposal affects how a student chooses his or her trial date. Under the current bylaws, when a student is accused of an honor offense, a notice of accusation by the Investigative Panel is provided by e-mail and certified mail. In that notice, a student is provided with about six possible trial dates, Vice Chair for Trials Sophie Staples said.

A student is then expected to choose a trial date from these dates and alert the Vice Chair of Trials of his or her preferences for date, counsel and jury panel, and whether he or she wants a closed or open trial. If a student requests a trial but does not specify the details, then the Vice Chair for Trials decides the details, Staples said.

Under the new proposal, the Committee would continue to provide a list of at least five proposed trial dates. The proposal creates a 10-day period after the notice has been delivered, called the “trial request period.” If a student does not choose one of the dates provided by the Committee, or does not provide an excuse deemed legitimate by the Vice Chair of Trials or Committee Chair during the trial request period for a delay, then he or she would be expected to leave admitting guilt, or “LAG,” to the offense.

“It’s important to keep in mind that this is not trying to LAG students with legitimate excuses,” Staples said.

Instead, it is an attempt to prevent unnecessary trial delays by students and create an increased incentive to designate a trial date as soon as possible, Staples said.

“The point is that we’ve discussed throughout committee of this overriding problem to want to have your trial sooner rather than later,” Staples said, adding that this amendment should help address the issue.

Committee Chair Jess Huang said the bylaw change would also prevent unnecessary drains on Committee resources because it eliminates the need to prepare for trials that will not happen. In this way, the amendment should help “streamline the process,” Huang added.

Though Staples believes the change will help relieve trial delays, other problems still remain and must be addressed, she said.

“I think that in order to have any real substantial effect on that we would need to address credit accrual,” Staples said, noting that a discussion needs to take place about whether students should lose academic credit for the semester during their accusation. “This committee did not show much interest” in the issue, Staples said, adding that she hopes pressure will be put on the future committee by the public to deal with these other issues.

The proposal will be voted on at the Committee’s next meeting, Huang said.

The second amendment the Committee discussed last night deals with jury panels and would alter the Committee’s constitution.
Under the current system, an honor trial jury panel must include “at least two panel members from the school of the accused.” The change would modify the honor jury panel to include the two members “whenever possible.”

Huang said in a situation in which a case is from a very small school and is very public, it is very difficult “to guarantee two students from that school” to be on the panel who have no knowledge of the case.

So far, no such instances have occurred, Huang said, but this new amendment would “protect us legally if there ever were such a case.”
The change would still require the Vice Chair of Trials “to do everything in his or her power” — such as calling the entire school — to find two members for the panel, Huang said.

Because this change is a constitutional one, it must be voted upon by the entire student body. The incoming Committee will undertake this task, Huang said.

“We’re going to have the language ready and set to go” for the new committee, she noted.

The current Committee will hold its last meeting April 5, and the new Committee will take charge the following day,

Curing the Moral Hazard : By Josh Hess

This post reflects the opinions of Josh Hess only.

Critics of the Honor System frequently insist that the inflexibility of its sanction creates perverse incentives for guilty students to lie once accused. At the heart of this contention is the realization that the system actually rewards those who decide to contest their guilt by allowing them to continue to accrue course credit until the date of their dismissal at trial.

In recognition of this state of affairs, critics of the system propose replacing the single sanction with an “informed retraction.” Under this new regime, students who admit their guilt within a certain period of time after accusation would be permitted to return to the University at some point in the future. Students who contest their guilt and request a trial would still face only permanent dismissal.

One problem with this approach is that it creates perverse incentives of its own. The potential disparity in outcomes for students deciding whether to “leave admitting guilt” or contest their guilt at trial is substantial. Students who are genuinely unsure as to whether they have committed an Honor offense confront a choice between admitting their “guilt” and facing mere suspension and contesting it and facing permanent dismissal. There is a very real risk here that not guilty students would subject themselves to suspension because it is the “safer” option.

But the realization that the informed retraction is undesirable (as students did in 2002) leaves the problems it sought to address untouched.

This past Sunday, the Honor Committee reviewed three proposals to address the “moral hazard” without stirring up new complications. These ideas represent a moderate, creative alternative to the informed retraction and my hope is that the Committee will adopt them.

The first proposal offers to change the transcript notation for students who LAG (“leave admitting guilt”) rather than request a trial from “enrollment discontinued” to “withdrawn.” “Enrollment Discontinued” is already meant to offer dismissed students a certain measure of confidentiality post-dismissal. The switch to “withdrawn” would simply offer one more degree of anonymity.

The differentiating degree is not large enough, though, to create the perverse incentives that one finds with the informed retraction. The shift simply makes the decision by knowingly guilty students to more clearly rational. The shift in transcript notation, unlike the informed retraction, does not present a stand-alone incentive to LAG for not-guilty students.

The other two proposals seek to place reasonable limits on accused students’ capacity to “game” the trial scheduling process to obtain more credit. One proposes giving accused students who request a trial a pre-determined set of trial dates in the near future from which to choose, shifting the burden on them to make a showing as to why none of the dates work and delay is justified. The other attempts to mitigate the incentive to delay in dishonest pursuit of credit accrual by giving the Honor Committee’s Executive Committee the ability to, with a unanimous finding of system-gaming, request that the Faculty Senate deprive delaying students of the credit they acquired post-accusation.

Animating these two proposals is an impulse to minimize the breadth of the moral hazard by making the “reward” of continued dishonesty post-accusation less certain.

My firm belief is that these proposals individually will not have a material capacity to address the moral hazard complications. But, passed together, I do think they would represent a substantial contribution.

Honor Psychological Evaluations Meet Modern Science

This post represents the thoughts and opinions of Sam Leven only.

In the 1970’s and 80’s, when the Honor Committee recognized that psychological factors needed to be considered when judging Honor Offenses, it identified two possible areas of concern. First would be mental or medical conditions that prevent a student from being able to know that the act they were committing could be considered an Honor Offense. This was called a Contributory Mental Disorder (CMD). The second area of concern was students who, by reason of some mental or medical condition, lacked the capacity to mount a proper defense, and as a result should not be forced to stand trial. This was called a Lack of Capacity (LC).

The Honor Committee also recognized that most University students were not capable of making the judgment as to whether or not these psychological conditions were legitimate, and so the modern psychological procedures were born. Instead of going to trial and making an “insanity” defense there, students claiming a CMD or LC take themselves out of the Honor System altogether, and instead have their psychological claims evaluated by an expert panel appointed by the Vice-President for Student Affairs. These panels usually consist of some combination of faculty members, trained psychologists, and staff members. If a student is found to have a CMD, the Honor charges are dropped, and the student must complete certain requirements (usually therapy, and often a short-term time away from school) or else face the re-filing of the Honor charges.

Additionally, the panel must decide if the student poses a “significant risk” of committing more Honor Offenses. If the panel finds that the student does pose such a risk, the student is suspended until the panel finds that the student no longer poses such a risk. The idea of this assessment is recognizing the purpose of our Honor System to begin with is to keep our community free of Honor Offenses.

Similarly, if a student is found to have an LC, the student is not required to go to Trial. Instead, the student’s case is suspended until the student regains the capacity to defend him or herself.

When these procedures were established, however, the Honor Committee recognized that they could easily be abused. Savvy and dishonest students could try to make up claims of a CMD to prolong their case while hoping that many of the witnesses of their offense might forget important information during the months that a psychological evaluation for a CMD often takes. Similarly, a student with a condition that would qualify as an LC had no deterrent whatsoever from committing as many Honor Offenses as he or she wanted to. As a result, the Honor Committee adopted two caveats to the psychological claims. First, to claim a CMD, the student must admit that he or she committed the act in question. As a result, if a CMD is denied, the student may only defend him or herself on the grounds of intent or triviality at Trial, as the jury will be informed that act has been confessed. Second, a student found to have an LC is automatically found to be a “significant risk,” and is suspended until the LC ends.

The system above, however, assumes that there are no disorders that could be both a CMD and qualify as an LC as well. Since that time, psychological study has shown otherwise. The most obvious example of this is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. If a student was in the middle of a traumatic event or period at the time of the alleged offense, and the student suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder afterwards, the traumatic event would very likely be a CMD, but Post-Traumatic Stress often destroys or damages an individual’s memories of the trauma and everything going on at the time of the trauma. As a result, the student likely will not remember the alleged offense at all.

In this situation, a student has a legitimate claim to both a CMD and an LC, but both frivolous claim deterrents seem unfair. If a student cannot remember any of the events surrounding a trauma, and the student feels that he or she is generally extremely honest, the student probably will not believe that he or she actually committed the alleged act. As a result, the student would probably be unwilling to admit act, and unfairly be deprived of a CMD hearing. Similarly, if the student is generally honest, and there’s strong evidence that, if an offense occurred at all, it was just due to that trauma, it also seems improper to declare the student a “significant risk.”

This situation comes up more often than most realize. I, myself, have served on a case where an issue similar to this one arose, and I have heard stories to lead me to believe that I am not alone. While these situations are rare, this is nonetheless a hole in our current system. So, what’s the best way to patch up this hole?

What Would You Do?

There are several possibilities. We could eliminate the automatic finding of “significant risk” for lack of capacity and leave that up to the same panel that decide if the LC actually exists. However, in such a case, what should the deterrent for frivolous LC claims be? Similarly, we could eliminate the admission of act requirement for CMD claims, but again, how do we then deter frivolous claims? We could create a third category of psychological evaluations specially for combined CMD/LC claims, but what would the procedures, findings, results, and deterrents be? We could also eliminate the deterrents for both CMD and LC and just accept that some frivolous claims will occur, so some cases will take a long period of time. Finally, we could end the prohibition on using psychological evidence at trial and give students the choice between pursuing the certified psychological panel route or trying to make a psychological argument to get off at trial.

All of these ideas have positives and pitfalls, but it seems unfair to keep putting students in these challenging situations through yet another challenge. What would you recommend?

Benefits: The Honor System and Flexible Exams

By Catherine Anne Daley and Sophie Staples

The concept of flexible exams is a simple one. Basically, students take unproctored exams at a location and time of their own choosing. Or, professors have control over timing and retain flexibility in location in order to mitigate logistical problems. The benefits for students of flexible examinations are obvious. A personalized exam schedule with exams spaced for optimum study time means that students’ grades will be determined by something other than the randomness of UREG. The benefits for faculty are also important. Under a flexible exam system, the burden on faculty of grading deadlines would be ameliorated by receiving exams on a rolling basis or within a window determined by the preference of each instructor. Computer based exams would also eliminate the hassle associated with administering, collecting, and grading regular paper exams.

The Honor Committee’s interest in flexible exams stems from its focus on benefits. Honor sees flexible exams as a benefit students should have given the unique community in which we live. Because we have an Honor Code, we as students should be trusted by our professors and our peers. The basic manifestation of that trust in the academic sphere would be unproctored and flexible examinations. The opposition surrounding the leap to unproctored exams stems from the unsettling fact about any Honor Code: It will never work unless you trust it.

Honor took on the project of flexible exams and explored the possibilities for logistics, support, and faculty participation. The new course management system Collab provides instructors with all the same options they have for the form and content of their exams while at the same time making it easy for them to administer their exam on a flexible basis. While we realize that there are some courses for which flexible exams will never be feasible, a pilot program using Collab is in place and is being used by several professors this semester to administer flexible exams and quizzes, and to handle paper submission. This is the first step in the right direction, and it is the hope of the Honor Committee that more professors will see the benefits for themselves and for their students of giving a flexible exam as the use of Collab becomes widespread over the next three semesters. Honor is also confident that when students begin to feel tangible benefits of living in this unique environment, these benefits will remind them of their continuing commitment to uphold the ideals of the Community of Trust.

Whether or not you think that widespread implementation of flexible exams is a realistic proposition, the idea gets at the heart of what the Honor System is all about: trust. The fact that many professors already give take home and open book finals outside their designated time slots indicates that the idea of trust between students and faculty is still alive at the University. A continuing dialogue among students, faculty, and administrators should serve to cultivate and support these practices.

As high school students visiting grounds, many of us heard U-Guides gush about taking an exam on the Lawn. Students should arrive at UVA to find that these visions are the reality, not just a recruiting technique. In choosing to attend this school, every single student here at the University embraced the Community of Trust. Is it too much to ask that our professors do the same?