The College has failed to uphold justice — not just over the course of its history, but in the past year. The College prides itself on its honor code, describing it as a “critical component of our academic community” on its website.
A key aspect of the honor code is that it is written, ratified, and enforced exclusively by students. Despite student involvement in the Honor and Discipline Committee, unilateral decision-making by the administration is changing the lives of students at the College.
We, the Gargoyle Society — a group of upperclass students focused on representing the student body and improving student experience at the College — strongly believe that the administration should reconsider its decision to maintain the sanctions handed down to students under incorrect voting procedures, as detailed in a Sept. 25 Record article.
For over a year, the Honor and Discipline Committee, which hears cases of academic misconduct at the College, used a simple majority rather than a three-quarters majority as the threshold to find a student responsible for an honor code violation and to recommend a sanction. This practice breaks the policies outlined in the honor code.
As a result of this error, one student was improperly found responsible for violating the honor code, and several students were given harsher sanctions than they would have been if the committee had used a simple majority. In addition to these errors, several other students’ cases were not properly documented, and they may have been recommended harsher sanctions through a simple majority vote.
Before the fall semester draws to a close, we strongly urge the administration to reconsider the sanctions that it has handed down to students under incorrect voting procedures. In addition to those who we know were impacted by the errors, we ask the administration to notify the 15 students whose cases lack proper documentation and thus who may have had harsher sanctions recommended for their cases.
We specifically encourage the administration to offer students whose cases were or may have been decided under the erroneous voting a rehearing of their cases.
Alternatively, in cases where the error did or may have resulted in a harsher sanction, we recommend that the Honor and Discipline Committee reduce the given sanction by one on the scale used to adjudicate cases.
In the Sept. 25 article, Dean of the College Gretchen Long told the Record that she “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.”
We think it is unfair that students received sanctions based on different procedures than the ones they were told the system was employing. Additionally, a dean rarely alters the sanction recommended by the Honor and Discipline Committee, and thus sustaining erroneous sanctions represents a major deviation from precedent. And even though Long now may see the sanctions as appropriate, the decision not to alter any of them should not be hers alone — students should be included in the decision-making process.
Although the administration has no technical obligation to reconsider these cases, we believe that it has a moral obligation to do so. We urge it to correct the committee’s mistakes in order to retain students’ trust in disciplinary processes at the College and show that it values student voices in matters of academic misconduct.
A reevaulation of Long’s decision is necessary to maintain the power of the honor code at the College.
Adelaide Herman ’25 is an American studies and biology double major from The Woodlands, Texas.
Levi Hughes ’25 is an American studies major and Asian American studies concentrator from Crestline, Calif.
The Gargoyle Society is an organization of student leaders from diverse backgrounds on campus, who discuss and coordinate on college issues.
In addition to Hughes and Herman, all of the other members of The Gargoyle Society cosigned this op-ed.
