All posts below were published prior to March 2015.  Please see our general blog page for current postings. 

Creative Sanctioning:  Challenging Student Conduct Officers to Move Past the Prescribed Minimum Guidelines

As a conduct officer, many of us find ourselves with a wide variety of cases ranging in level of severity. With each incident, we often find ourselves asking similar questions.  Will this meeting have an impact?  What sanction can I use to help the student make meaning from this incident?  How can I provide this student with the tools they need to be successful?  While minimum sanctions are required to meet standards of consistency, there is often a need for creativity to allow each student to reflect based on their own learning style.  I have found it increasingly important to discuss and research creative forms of sanctioning as well as utilize these strategies to best fit the needs of my students and my institution.  Below, I have outlined a few ideas that both my colleagues and myself have found useful throughout the years. 

Reflection

Reflection is a basic strategy used by many conduct officers, but sometimes it can be easy to fall back on the same, unimaginative reflection prompts.  For our students’ sake, it is important to find fresh ways to allow them to reflect on their behavior in a manner that motivates them to stretch their understanding of a situation.  For example, while working at my current institution, I quickly came to learn that my strategies for talking about marijuana needed to change drastically to fit the student population living in my area.  Many of my students struggled to understand potential consequences of marijuana use. One strategy that many of my colleagues and myself used was to have them reflect on how their activity, and in this case illegal activity might be perceived by a future employer.  We often created prompts that included, hypothetical scenarios in which a potential employer became aware of the incident.  For example, “If you received your dream internship, how might you explain this situation to a supervisor who asked?” These types of questions as well as many others can push students to reflect in a way that they see impact and purpose.

Research

Some students do not always understand the context and reasoning behind specific policies and procedures on the college campus.  What is the impact of propping doors?  Why do I have to leave the building if it is just a drill?  As higher education professionals, we can discuss these situations at length with students, but how do we encourage them to make meaning and understanding on their own?  A favorite strategy in this case is to have them do research on the topic at hand;  ask  the student how this incident might have been different if it went through the state’s legal system rather than the college’s judicial affairs office.  Encourage students to explore similar incidents on other campuses that resulted in harm or injury to others.  For example, one of my colleagues ask the students who failed to evacuate during a fire alarm to research past campus fires, their impact, and the consequences of those who did not evacuate .  The key for this strategy is to refrain from giving the student the answers or lecturing about consequences, but to have them research and discover them on their own. 

Tap into Students’ Academic or Personal Interests

As we all know, we each have talents and interests in unique areas from one another.  Why not tap into a student’s passions and interests when sanctioning them as well?  When building rapport in a meeting, get to know the student beyond their class year, academic major, and hometown. Ask questions about their interests and passions.  By learning more about a student you are not only building a relationship and demonstrating a best practice in judicial meetings, but you then have the ability to customize a sanction. If you have a student that is passionate about film, for example, ask them to do a reflection piece using their video equipment rather than the typical paper.  Think about allowing students to use poetry, art, music, etc.  Some of the best results I have seen while working in conduct have come from students that are allowed to express their reflection in a form they are comfortable with.  As conduct officers, we often focus most on guidelines, contracts, and details; however, allowing room for creativity in sanctioning can help students make connections in much more memorable and meaningful ways. 

Community Service

Many professionals debate the use of community service as sanction for a code of conduct violation. Why turn community service into a punishment?  While some feel that true community service cannot be forced, others have shown examples of how community service activities have benefited both the student and community. Based on my experiences, community service sanctions can be successful if three components are present: (1) the sanction is given to the right student, (2) the sanction is given with purpose and, (3) the community service is followed up with reflection.  To meet these goals, find ways that the community service activity allows the student to see how their community will be impacted by their (positive) actions.  For example, a colleague of mine once met with students that were setting fire to bulletin boards in the halls as a prank. The students were having a hard time understanding the severity of their actions since no one had been directly hurt.  As a result, one of their sanctions included volunteering with the Red Cross… specifically with individuals who had been negatively impacted by fire. 

The key to creative sanctioning is to understand both the student and the incident. When all else fails, try partnering with the student and ask them how they can give back to the community; together, you are sure to think more creatively and challenge yourself to think outside the box. 

Maggie Wetter is the Community Director in the Office of Residential Life and Judicial Affairs at Ithaca College.  She is currently a directorate body member of the Commission for Student Conduct and Legal Issues.

Title IX: Sexual Violence, the Disciplinary Process, and Supporting Our Students

My colleagues and I have spent more time over the past several months discussing Title IX (specifically in regard to sexual violence) and what our campus practices and policies are. I believe that similar conversations have been happening at institutions all around the country since President Obama created the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.  Personally this has provided me an opportunity for reflection and learning.

I would suggest that up until this summer when people heard Title IX mentioned they quickly thought about college and university sports and gender equality—not about sexual violence. While I was aware there was more to the Title IX policy than this, I discovered how little I knew about it. While I am just beginning to dive into those learning experiences (an all-day seminar in a week) I realize this will be an ongoing journey as our institutions, students, and interpretations of the law change through the years.

This fall Title IX has been on my mind not only because of the Presidential Task Force but also due to a handful of cases that have impacted students on our campus. When I have a personal relationship with the students this makes it particularly challenging. My training through the years has taught me to validate the survivor’s story and empower them—allowing them to take some control back. In many college and university judicial processes students are instructed to keep all information pertaining to the incident confidential. This is particularly important when the alleged violation involves two or more students on the same campus. The dilemma I have been processing is how can I honor the survivor’s story and support the confidentiality of all those involved in the college judicial system? A survivor’s journey to healing looks different for each individual. For some, choosing when and with whom they share their story with is empowering and an important step towards healing. My question to those of reading this—how do you navigate what can be seen as opposing needs?

For me, what has resonated the most in incidents of sexual violence is remembering the humanity in each situation. Hearing students’ stories and responding appropriately is so important in supporting the students and the community impacted by these incidents. Yes, Title IX and the policies and procedures surrounding this law are important and essential, but let us not forget that we are working with students for whom we care deeply about.

Hannah Durrant is the Associate Director of Residence Life at Smith College. She is also a Directorate Body member of the commission. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Allegheny College and her Master’s degree from Michigan State University.

Collaboration Across Commissions: Enhancing One's Practice Through Interaction With Others

It started with a conversation at the 2014 Annual Convention. "We are interested in putting a resource together about the intersection between our Commissions. Want to do something?" This quick exchange launched a process that led to our webinar "Rethinking Student Conduct at the Two-Year College," which has been one of the best experiences that ACPA has offered me as a practitioner and new professional.

At last year's Convention closing, Brené Brown invoked Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech that "the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena" rather than the critics on the sidelines. She charged all individuals in ACPA to dare greatly to make our voices heard. As a unified Association, we strive consistently to engage in meaningful discourse on contemporary higher education in all its forms. Each Commission must harness its member voices and the mantle of the Association to act as standard-bearers of professional expertise within the realm of student affairs. It is in accordance with this vision that we host programs for our membership and the profession. We find gaps in our knowledge, opportunities for professional development, and participants eager to take stances on issues for which there may no extant best practices.

I do not and have not worked at a two-year institution, yet I have spent the last few months working on a webinar about two-year college conduct systems. It has been an honor to be a fly on the wall in the conversations with three professionals vigorously discussing how their student conduct work differs from colleagues at other types of institutions. They discussed how they recognize and meet the particular needs of their students, for whom this may be their only chance at higher education. I heard about what kinds of diversity they see in their classrooms, as it is common to see 16- and 61-year-olds enrolled in the same courses. Most poignantly, they explored the nuances inherent in the access mission of community colleges and how they are reflected in empathetic sanctioning, student-faculty interaction, and practitioner career transition. A colleague of mine once said, "We know what we know by contrast." I wholeheartedly attest that spending months learning a paradigm of student conduct, built from unfamiliar values and culture, has sharpened my own tools as a practitioner. Without a doubt, anyone who works in student conduct - no matter the institution - can take lessons from this panel.

Watch the webinar to see for yourself how a group of passionate professionals from across the country, who have never met in person, can come together to generate a resource that helps student affairs educators be more intentional, caring, and inclusive in our work. When you do, please think about the opportunities you have to share your stories, knowledge, and perspectives with colleagues doing similar work. The way you routinely conduct yourself in a professional setting could be revolutionary to a colleague from a different campus culture; Dr. Brown would encourage you to share and defend that perspective with your colleagues. If you are so inspired, this Commission is a welcome platform for you. Write a blog, propose a conference program, host a podcast, comment in a webinar, or even just blow up @ACPA_CSCLI on Twitter. Your presence is powerful and the arena is waiting for you.

Nick Stroup is the Vice Chair for Membership of CSCLI.  He serves as Assistant Director of Student Services at George Mason University’s School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs.  He received his BA in Classics: Latin and Comparative Literature from the University of Virginia and his MA in College Student Personnel from Bowling Green State University.

"So, You're Like the Principal's Office?": A Conduct Officer's Perspective on Our Work

August is always an exciting at colleges and universities. Student leaders are returning, and we are so excited to hear about their summers and start planning for the fall semester. The campus is buzzing with the anticipation of first years and transfer students to welcome on campus. Everything seems slightly more fresh and new. The energy is contagious. I love this time of year, and I often try to volunteer to help other offices with things like residence hall check-in and orientation. When I introduce myself and title, I’m often met with something like the following:

“So you’re like the principal’s office?” “Oh, so I go to you when I’m in trouble.” “I hope I’m never in your office.”

As student conduct administrators, we’ve all heard these words from students, colleagues, and even from some of our friends and family. In the ever-exciting, ice-breaker-playing, colored-paper-flyers and glitter-loving field of student affairs, conduct offices can often be seen as the place “where fun goes to die (true story, I overheard a student describe my office this way).” And yet, I think very few of us would want our work or offices to be viewed this way. We also have fun, care about our students, and, for the most part, love our jobs (or at least I hope we do).

The reality of student conduct, however, is that our work is often unappreciated. It happens, but it’s rare to have a student you’ve placed on probation or suspension come back to say “thank you.” Our days are often riddled with code revisions, subpoenas, and ever-changing legal and legislative issues. “FERPA”, “Campus SaVE”, and “Clery” all start sounding like curse words by the end of the day. The work can sometimes be overwhelming, exhausting, and it can burn us out. While I share the enthusiasm for students to be back on campus, I know I’m not the only one who is bracing themselves for the incident reports that are about to come in by the dozens.

In anticipation for the coming semester, it’s important for us to remember why we do what we do. I love student conduct because I believe conduct officer hearings are a place where students are most primed for learning and development. While we may see students at some of their lowest points, we are able to help them understand the importance of their decision-making and the impact their choices have on themselves and others. Through our conversations and sanctions, we help students clarify their values, pointing out the in congruencies between their beliefs and actions. We help students create goals, and we and encourage them to become more positive, successful, and contributing members of our community.

Let’s take care of ourselves this year. Let’s avoid the burnout and remember why our work is important and rewarding. Let’s show our students that we aren’t “fun suckers,” and can be valuable resources. Here’s to a wonderful year!

Megan Schaedel is the Assistant Director of Student Conduct & Community Standards at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. She is also a Directorate Body member of the commission. She received her Bachelor’s of Arts from the University of Mary Washington and a Master’s of Education from UCLA.

Tales from the Field: Absolutely True Stories from the Office of Student Conduct

Our summers have been jam-packed as we look to legislation and guidance from Congress and the Department of Education on colleges and universities' new expectations for dealing with gender-based violence on campus. Such a heavy, important topic has often made me reflect on the lighter side of my job and remember some of the funnier, you-can't-make-this-up moments from my work in student conduct over the last seven years here at Duke University. For protection of the students involved, the names and details have been altered, but the basic stories are completely real. 

A few years ago, a student was accused of plagiarizing a significant part of his paper for a class assignment. The faculty member found the passages and texts from the original resources and correlated the parts from the student's paper accordingly. The student denied responsibility for academic dishonesty and appeared before a panel of the conduct board, which ultimately found him responsible for the charge. In addition to disciplinary probation and a period of separation from the university, the student was assigned to read a book about plagiarism in scholarly writing and write a reflection paper detailing how one can avoid academic dishonesty in one's own work. The student left the institution and used his time away to volunteer with a charitable organization. In his readmission package, he submitted the paper required by the conduct board. The paper was received by staff in the Office of Student Conduct, who read the assignment and found the quality of writing to be quite high, and markedly different from the voice of writing the student had previously submitted. On a hunch, a staff member entered in a few phrases from the student's assignment into Google to see what would come up. The very first suggestion from the search engine directed to a page at Amazon.com; specifically, the page was for the exact book that the student was to have read. That's right: the student had plagiarized from the reviews on Amazon for a book about plagiarism. 

Shortly before that, my colleague received a referral from a faculty member about a paper submitted by a student that was wildly off-topic from the one she had proposed, but extremely well-written, detailed, cited, and persuasive. The faculty had suspected the student had purchased the assignment from a paper mill, but he really had no way of determining if that was true. The faculty emailed the paper to our office. After some Internet investigating, we discovered the paper, in its entirely, on another college's website. A master's student at that institution had published this exact paper some time earlier. In fact, it appeared as though our own student download the paper and merely changed the name and class title on each page of the paper. My colleague called in the student to meet to review this information, to share that he had discovered that she had taken, word-for-word, the master's thesis of another person and submitted it as her own work. The conduct staff member was prepared for tears or other similar reactions, but certainly not the one this student presented: "Dean Jones, oh my goodness, can you believe this? What a remarkable coincidence that this student, 2000 miles away, and mysel have written the exact same paper on the same topic, with the same words, same resources, and same arguments! Isn't this completely unbelieveable? What are the chances?!" Indeed, what were the chances? We never got the opportunity to find out. After the student was charged with academic dishonesty, she withdrew from school before her pending disciplinary action could be resolved. 

Valerie Glassman is an Assistant Dean of Students in the Office of Student Conduct at Duke University. She received a bachelor of arts from Brandeis University and a masters of science in education from Indiana University - Bloomington.

Welcome to the Commission for Student Conduct and Legal Issues’ newest addition, our blog!

We are thrilled that you are interested in our commission and we want you to know that we are equally interested in YOU!  Our commission exists to provide knowledge and resources to our members who practice or are generally intrigued by the field of student conduct and legal issues within higher education.  Over the years, we have been able to provide sponsored programs at convention, webinars and dial-a-dialogues, and our Student Conduct Board Manual and Reference.

More recently, we have begun the process of collaborating with ASCA to produce a Creative Sanctioning manual and with the Commission for Spirituality, Faith, Religion, and Meaning to produce a white paper on the intersections of our two entities.  We have worked to increase our social media presence and would be thrilled if you liked us on Facebook or followed us on Twitter @ACPA_CSCLI.  We are also beginning to speak out on legal issues that affect our profession and advocate for our membership to legislatures and policy makers. 

We are also interested in getting you involved in our work!  We currently have opportunities to help with our collaborations, our social media and other up and coming projects.  Of course, we are also interested in hearing your ideas for projects, professional development opportunities, and issues in need of advocacy.  Please do not hesitate to contact myself or any directorate body member with any and all ideas that you may have!  We hope that you will enjoy this blog over the coming year!  And thank you, for all that you do for our communities and our students! 

Ardy Gonyer
Chair, Commission for Student Conduct and Legal Issues

Ardy Gonyer is the Chair for the Commission for Student Conduct and Legal Issues. Ardy is currently pursuing a PhD in Higher Education Administration. Previously Ardy worked full-time in student conduct at Ohio University, most recently as Acting Director of Community Standards and Student Responsibility.