The following speech was delivered by Professor Lisa Freinkel during the debate in the UO Senate 10 May 2006 concerning the student conduct code
5/10/06
Times change. I'll be as brief as I can today, but I have a number of important points to make, and I hope you'll bear with me.
In 1996, I joined a Student Conduct Committee that was already in year two of the process of revising the student conduct code. That process had begun in 1994 with a very vibrant student-led initiative to revise the language in the code pertaining to sexuality. The students leading that initiative were concerned about what we would today call campus "climate" -- but that word wasn't much in circulation a decade ago. In those days there wasn't much of a sexual misconduct code, and there were no provisions enabling the university to address sexual misconduct off campus. And yet, as now, some 80% of students lived off campus. The students leading this initiative interpreted the University's inability to address almost all reported incidents of sexual assault as a lack of willingness to do so. As a lack of concern.
Let me pause here to make my first important point: the question of jurisdiction is first and foremost a question of paying attention. What conduct do we think that we, as a University -- as a community committed to the pursuit of knowledge -- ought to notice, to pay attention to? In the case of academic dishonesty we and every university and college in the country recognize that location does not matter. Wherever plagiarism is thought to occur, the University pays attention. Now, paying attention doesn't necessarily mean pursuing action -- it certainly doesn't mean imposing specific or indeed any sanctions in any given case. It just means that we as a community affirm that we ought to care.
And so in 1994, a large and committed group of students made the case that we ought to care about alleged acts of sexual misconduct involving our students even when they occur off campus. They argued that not to do so is itself a decision -- a form of action -- that has a deeply chilling affect not just on alleged victims of such misconduct, but on the University community overall. It was a political argument; it was in many respects a feminist argument. And in certain ways, the UO was a trailblazer. We got national press, we got lots of local attention, and we got some people really mad. At the same time, the code revision passed unanimously in the University Senate.
Times change. Now, a decade later, different students are
suggesting not only that we resist finishing what we started in the 90s, but
that we revisit even the logic of the sexual misconduct code. Let me make my
second big point here: by extending jursidiction in the question of violent
offenses, we are simply completing the work begun more than a decade ago. We are also keeping with national best practices.
In the existing code, we read that sexual misconduct
is "an offense the University of Oregon recognizes as an act of
violence." Back in the mid-90s, the students and faculty of the Student
Conduct Committee were already arguing that other serious acts of violence
warrant the University's attention off campus. That these acts can also have a
deep impact on campus climate, particularly because acts of violence often
dovetail with social intolerance -- with forms of discrimination be they
sexual, racial or class-oriented.
Jared Axelrod on behalf of the
ASUO executive, the Office of Student Advocacy and the student members of the
Student Conduct Committee has argued that the Conduct Code should be remanded
to the SCC [stud cond com] for further consideration. I'm going to talk about
this suggestion in closing, but as it comes to jurisdiction, where's the real
point of contention here? It isn't the issue of violence itself; instead the
problem lies in the ad hoc committee's deletion of a single phrase: "and
the alleged victim is a member of the campus community." We've argued that the sexual misconduct code itself
is not currently limited in this way -- to impact on campus community members
only -- and that other acts of violence should be treated similarly. Again jurisdiction doesn't necessitate action; what it
opens the door for is accountability -- attentiveness. Picture, for instance, a
racially motivated attack. An attack of a white student on a non-student person
of color. Jurisdiction is about accountability. It's about community standards.
Okay let me make two more points
and then close. In the past few weeks you may have heard the phrase
"double jeopardy" bandied about. Even the Office of Student Advocacy
has agreed that double jeopardy is not what's involved in administering either
the current or the proposed student conduct code. But, a key philosophic point
is hidden under this misnomer and we need to address it. In the name of
avoiding "double jeopardy" the suggestion has been made that we back
away from any apparent overlap between the conduct code and criminal or civil
law. It has been implied that it is unfair for a student to have to "pay
twice" for a single action.
To heed this kind of objection would be absolutely disastrous -- not only reversing the Code as it has stood for more than 40 years, but utterly challenging the way that we think of ourselves as a campus community. A university is not a service-institution. It's not -- at least not yet -- an institution where we educators deliver our service, where students receive our goods, and where everybody lives their lives elsewhere. If that were our institution, then we wouldn't really need a code of conduct any more than a supermarket needs a code of conduct. We could just deliver our service and be done with it, referring all misconduct to the courts and to the police.
But that's not my picture of a University -- and, for what it's worth, I am not alone here. The overwhelming majority of campuses nationwide have codes like the one we're proposing. OSU and Portland State do; our comparator institutions do. And why? Because a university is not a supermarket -- it's a community dedicated to the advance of knowledge... to the furtherance of society and of civilization. And at the heart of its mission is the need to maintain an environment where the rights, dignity, welfare and freedom of all members are protected -- is held sacred. Only then can true learning flourish. It's because of the preciousness of this sense of community that arguments about campus climate get made to begin with.
So I ask you to consider this discussion of the conduct code as part and parcel of our collective charge of nurturing a healthy community by defining our essential values. Respect. Responsibility. Freedom of thought.
These are not values that we should or even can leave up to an external community to define and maintain.
My last point: this proposed language needs to be voted on today. We've spent twelve years -- and by we, I mean students, staff and faculty -- hashing out the terms of the Code. The most contentious issue -- the so-called question of representation -- was voted on and decided by the SCC. This is perhaps the most discussed piece of legislation that has ever come before the University Senate. These revisions spent years in committee before they came to the Senate. The Ad Hoc Committee spent 2 months soliciting feedback and responding point-by-point to all feedback solicited. We conceded major issues, revised more than 30 provisions in the Code. The document you have before you today is indeed the result of many years of discussion among many many stakeholders and it represents a serious spirit of compromise and conversation. The problem has been that there exists a fundamental difference of opinion here: the Office of Student Advocacy, the ASUO executive that it advises, and the students appointed by the ASUO to the Student Conduct Committee, these bodies fundamentally disagree with the philosophy behind the revision process itself. These differences are irreconcilable. These are the differences that deadlocked the SCC for years. It's because of this deadlock that the code was taken out of the SCC and put in the hands of a Senate ad hoc committee. To send the Code back to the SCC would mean the death of this revision process.
And so the decision is yours -- is ours to make... As it should be, according to the University charter.