The Honor and Discipline Committee, which hears allegations of academic misconduct at the College, used an incorrect voting procedure in its hearings for more than a year, a Record investigation found. Rather than using a three-quarters majority vote as the threshold to find a student responsible for violating the honor code and recommending a sanction, it used a simple majority — breaking policies outlined in the honor code and the dean of the College’s website.
As a result of the error, which persisted from the start of the fall 2022 semester through November 2023, one student was improperly found responsible for violating the honor code, a finding that the committee later reversed. In several additional cases, the committee recommended harsher penalties than it would have under its proper procedures.
Dean of the College Gretchen Long, who reviews and can alter the sanctions voted on by the committee, told the Record that she would notify affected students of the error but would not amend any of their sanctions, as she believes that the harsher penalties the committee recommended due to the error remain appropriate in those cases.
The College’s honor code and the procedures outlined on the dean of the College’s website stipulate that the committee will decide by a three-quarters majority vote whether to find an accused student responsible for violating the honor code. If a student is found responsible, the committee also votes by a three-quarters majority on which sanction should be imposed. Typical sanctions include failure in the assignment, often with an added reduction in the overall course grade, failure in the course, and disciplinary probation for serious offenses.
Following a hearing, the dean of the College either approves or adjusts the committee’s choice of sanction at her discretion. While the committee’s choice of sanction is technically a recommendation to the dean, in practice, it is “very rare” for the dean to alter the sanction, Professor of Philosophy Justin Shaddock, the committee’s faculty chair, told the Record.
Sam Sidders ’25, now a student co-chair of the committee, who previously served on the committee but was studying away when it began to use simple majorities, said that the shift in practice occurred unintentionally. “There was just an incredible rate of turnover,” she said. “And so there was just no recollection as to how things were done in previous years… I think fall 2022 was especially bad because I think just about everyone was new.”
“It looks like the shift to majority voting happened after [former] Dean [of the College Marlene] Sandstrom’s departure,” which occurred in spring 2022, Long and Senior Associate Dean of Students Rachel Bukanc wrote in a joint statement to the Record.
“When I came back in the spring [2023], stuff had shifted procedurally,” Sidders said. “I remember being like, ‘I feel like it was never a simple majority.’”
At the end of the 2022–2023 academic year, the committee sought to clarify its processes by adopting a set of bylaws. The bylaws were not intended to establish any new rules, according to Sidders and Simon Kent ’23, members of the sub-committee that led the effort to adopt them.
“I feel that there’s nothing in there that’s significantly controversial,” Kent, who wrote the bylaws, told the Record after the committee approved the bylaws in May 2023. “It’s just making our process clearer and more streamlined.”
But the erroneous simple majority voting practice found its way into those bylaws as well — a clear discrepancy with the policy of three-quarters voting outlined in the honor code.
“I am upset that a mistake was made and that it is causing the committee problems now,” Kent told the Record in December after he was informed of the error.
In November 2023, Associate General Counsel Laura Gura ’06 discovered as part of a review of an unrelated matter that the bylaws were inconsistent with the honor code and the dean of the College’s website, Shaddock told the Record.
Gura declined to comment on the committee’s procedures and the discovery of the error.
In the wake of this discovery, Long and Bukanc reviewed their notes from hearings in the prior year and identified one case where the committee had found a student responsible for violating the honor code by less than the requisite three-quarters majority. Long and Bukanc then moved to address the error. “When Dean Long discovered the error, she reconvened the committee, the outcome was adjusted, and the student(s) and professor involved were informed of the change within that same semester,” Long and Bukanc wrote in a joint email to the Record.
According to Sidders, it is rare for a student to be found responsible for violating the honor code by a narrow margin such as this one, where the distinction between a three-quarters majority and a simple majority would alter the vote’s outcome. “We don’t usually have cases where not everyone is on board [with a finding of responsibility],” she said. “In a lot of cases, it’s pretty cut and dry.”
However, votes to determine the severity of recommended sanctions are frequently decided by more narrow margins, said Harper Treschuk ’26, another student co-chair. When voting on sanctions, the committee uses a step-voting system, in which members vote on sanctions of increasing severity until they no longer pass, according to Sidders and Treschuk.
Sidders said that documents shared with her by the deans revealed that there were five cases — some involving more than one student — in which the committee passed sanctions by only a simple majority, short of the requisite three-quarters. She added that there were 15 additional cases where gaps in the recorded notes meant that the sanctions might have passed by less than a three-quarters majority.
Long also acknowledged that the committee passed sanctions by only a simple majority in several cases, but she said she believes the affected sanctions are appropriate and will not adjust them. “While I was open to the possibility that I might want to adjust a sanction, I ultimately decided that wasn’t necessary because I continue to believe that the appropriate sanctions were imposed in those cases,” she wrote in an email to the Record.
Shaddock noted that this action is within Long’s power. “In principle, she could decide to base her decisions on the simple majority of the student votes rather than on the three-quarters majority without breaking any procedural rules,” he wrote to the Record.
“That would mean that [the] sanctions were, in fact, based more on the Dean’s discretion than on the actual recommendations the student panel passed by a three-quarters majority, although no one knew it at the time,” he continued. “This raises questions about the students’ autonomy, in theory and in practice.”
In response, Long wrote that her authority to adjust sanctions ensures fairness. “The dean’s authority to determine the final sanction helps ensure that the process remains equitable, with similarly situated students receiving comparable sanctions, and that the process results in sanctions that are neither too lenient nor overly punitive,” she wrote.
Sidders told the Record that she has pressed Long to notify the students whose sanctions were affected by the committee’s use of the incorrect voting standard. “These students were wronged — that’s the bottom line,” Sidders said. “They should not have been given the sanctions that they were given… The least we can do is to tell them that their sanction is being … changed, so that they can have a chance to speak out against that if they want.”
In response, Long committed to notifying the students involved. “Following conversation with [Sidders] and Professor Shaddock, we are reaching out to the handful of students whose sanction was imposed by me after a recommendation by a simple majority so that they’re aware of that fact,” she wrote to the Record on Friday.
Following the discovery of the errors, the committee returned to taking its votes using a three-quarters majority. In April 2024, it adopted a new set of procedural bylaws, which affirm that a three-quarters majority is necessary to find a student responsible and recommend a sanction to the dean.
Going forward, Sidders said that she is confident that the new bylaws will prevent future errors. “I want people to know that we’ve learned a ton from this,” she said.
