Honor Council Minutes

Oct. 17, 2002  5:15 PM

Pendle Hill Room of the DC

"I think there are TWO Joe Tollivers." Liz B.

Present: Jesse Littlewood, Sharon Burdick, Carrie Black, Dave Snyder, Steve Spaulding (co-chair), Mary Green (co-chair), Laura Scorr, Sam Morgan, Khanh Le (co-secretary), Dan Lenehan (co-secretary), Miriam Achtenberg, Wen Li, Elizabeth Gruenstein, Evelyn Miles, Liz Bacon, Brooks Bond-Watts

I.               Moment of Silence

II.             Public Portion

Mary told HC that a student had asked her about putting up some sort of Honor Council comment board where community members could anonymously ask questions about the Code and about Council.  The idea was met with enthusiasm, although HC wants to emphasize that the comment board not be used for confrontation.  Evelyn suggested that HC also set up a question box where people could ask questions without broadcasting them to the school.  Again, HC liked the idea.

Evelyn said that the Faculty Relations Committee met before break and is planning a faculty Honor Code discussion panel in which three professors will talk about their experiences with the Code and students can ask them questions.  She also said that the committee wants to organize a faculty-Honor Council Q&A session at the end of the semester.  Mary polled the group about email solicitation for feedback from the professors involved in each trial.  Jesse asked why it shouldn't be a dialogue, to which Mary responded that the feedback wouldn't change the jury or panel's decision, but inform HC on how trials can operate better.  Jesse asked if the same could be done for students on trials, and the group responded enthusiastically.

Jesse asked any HC members interested in serving on the working group to draft dean's panel guidelines to email him (any community member interested should do the same).  Steve told HC that, according to the deans, dean's panel guidelines do exist, but they are not explicit in the student handbook.  Jesse and the chairs said they would speak further with Dean Tolliver about this. 

Carrie said that the Community Outreach Committee is working on resuming Lunt Time.

Mary again polled the group about establishing an abstract filing system in which the abstracts involving students still at Haverford who have not completed their resolutions will indicate (with a post-it note) the date of the trial and the parties involved.  Only the abstracts filed in the HC office would have this information, and only the chairs would have access to them.   The reason would be so that someone keeps track of which resolutions get completed.  As of now, no one keeps track of this information.  Jesse and Dave raised questions about confidentiality, to which Mary said that the deans are supposed to keep the chairs informed of this information anyway.  HC decided to discuss the matter further at the next meeting.

III.           Confidential Portion

IV.           Moment of Silence

Disclaimer: These minutes reflect the views of Dan Lenehan and Khanh Le and not those of Haverford College.  We'd like to give a shout out to all those people reading this from the toilet.  It's you guys who make all this minute writing worthwhile.