To the Editor:
TheDaily Princetonian’s recent coverage of the Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline and its editorial of March 23 wereno doubt donewith the best of intentions for the Princeton community, but theyappear to be basedonincomplete information from biased sources. I wish to correct the record on three points.
First and foremost, the Editorial Board and others have suggested that the Committee on Discipline does not afford students the presumption of innocence. This is a weighty accusation—one that not only strikes at the heart of the Committee’s process, but also impugns the integrity of the students and faculty members who serve on it, and it is emphatically not true.
Students and faculty members are selected by their peers for service on the Committee for their judiciousness, reasonableness and regard for the University’s standards and policies. They undertake rigorous training and engage in exhaustive analysis of each case. Their decisions are firmly grounded in Princeton’s standard of evidence: that is, no student is found responsible for violating a University policy withoutclear and persuasive evidence.
To suggest that members of the Committee on Discipline play fast and loose with that standard is to imply that they do not appreciate the gravity of their decisions, and even to hint that they are morally deficient. The Princeton community should rest assured that nothing could be further from the truth.
Second, the Board and others have concluded that the penalties imposed by the Committee for violations of the University’s academic integrity policies are “too harsh given the level of guidance afforded to students.” Both aspects of this conclusion warrant a response.
The “harshness” of sanctions cannot be evaluated in a vacuum, and it is worth reiterating thatRights, Rules, Responsibilitiespermits the Committee to regard careless errors and reasonable misunderstandings as lesser offenses and respond with warnings and short terms of disciplinary probations. The Committee reserves suspension for those cases in which studentsought reasonably to have understood that their actions violated academic integrity rules—essentially, cases of academic fraud.
These criteria reflect the University’s core values and are consonant with our venerable Honor System. At the same time, the disciplinary system provides students with a robust level of guidance, including the assistance of an adviser of their choosing, ample notice and clearly-written documentation, and virtually unlimited opportunities to engage with the Committee and its representatives.
Finally,regardingconcerns about transparency, it is important to notethat the custodians of Committee records at the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students and the Office of the Dean of the Graduate School are as transparent as possible within the considerable constraints of University confidentiality policies and applicable laws. Those constraints categorically preclude commentary on any particular case or student, among other limitations. Therefore, mischaracterizations of cases must often go unanswered. (It is gratifying to note that even the Board concedes that its criticisms are undercut by the fact that it has no access to the full range of case materials and other evidence considered during a Committee hearing.)
At the same time, we regularly publish statistics — always in the aggregate, to protect student confidentiality — and I have readily accepted the suggestion to augment those statistics in the way that the Board describes. Likewise, “Rights, Rules, Responsibilities,”which all Princeton students are expected to read, provides a full description of Committee standards and procedures as well as clear guidance about what constitutes an academic infraction.
On behalf of the Committee on Discipline, I welcome informed and conscientious feedback.
Kathleen Deignan
Chair, Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline
Editor's note: The Daily Princetonian received this letter from the Office of Communications.
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