We live in the age of the “Jena 6” and Mike Nifong. Anytime an injustice is committed anywhere in the world, the viral nature of our generation springs to action to protest the slight. Today as students and as a generation, we are more informed, more connected and more in tune with the world. We know our rights and we have an expectation that we be afforded our rights consistently across the board.
The irony of it all is here at N.C. State we don’t receive the same rights regular citizens receive in the real world. The Office of Student Conduct runs unlike anything anyone would ever see in public and the methods used to determine guilt and innocence are open to abuse and conflicts of interest are evidenced by the hundreds of anecdotal stories that float around every semester. As terribly misconstrued as the justice system is here at NCSU, it can be salvaged and here are my ideas.
Chief Justice Lock Whiteside’s attempt to change the “burden of proof” is an important first step for reform. It’s abominable to think that if I was to ever walk into the Office of Student Conduct with some form of charge that my guilt would be determined with a standard of proof reasonably close to what grand juries use to determine probable cause. That must be changed. The standard of proof used by any judicial system for criminal guilt must be “beyond a reasonable doubt” or else it lacks any kind of professional credibility.
Second, our University needs to create an autonomous organization made up of appropriately trained students that is responsible for hearing cases. There is a huge conflict of interest when the sole person in these disciplinary hearings serves as the judge, jury and prosecution. Each individual element of the process needs to be independent in order to ensure the integrity of the system. Regardless of the logistics of the project, with 30,000 plus students, NCSU can facilitate such a program with as many aspiring lawyers that live on this campus.
Finally, the administration needs to be openly receptive to a Public Defender organization on our campus organized within Student Government. As much as students need to have an independent prosecution and independent judge, students even more so need to have a capable advocate as well during these cases. Students going before the Office of Student Conduct need an independent student to help them understand their rights, their potential consequences and an expert whom will help them piece together a case to prove innocence.
These three changes if implemented would be a revolution in the way that North Carolina State University goes about disciplining students. It would reduce the administrator’s role to a supervisor and place the power and responsibility in the hands of the student’s peers where it should have been all along. The changes will make the student disciplinary process transparent, accountable, fair, and closely related to the system we’ll have to deal with in a few short years when we transition into a world that college is supposed to be preparing us for.
What do you think about changing the way student conduct cases are dealt with? E-mail your opinion to [email protected].
