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Gender imbalance on disciplinary committees divides student opinions

The current 2014-2015 Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline has six male and two female undergraduate members. Over the past decade, there has only been one year in which more female students than male students were represented on the committee.

A related group, the Undergraduate Honor Committee, does not keep such records of past rosters, but currently has ten male and two female members.

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“I definitely had this criticism going in. I noted that there is a very obvious gender disparity and I brought these concerns to Jesse [Fleck ’15, the Honor Committee chair] directly and in conversation,” said Ella Cheng ’16, Undergraduate Student Government president and member of the Honor Committee’s selection committee. “He gave some honest and great feedback in response to what they’ve been trying to do to address that.”

Cheng is a former staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.

Fleck declined to comment.

The Committee on Discipline has consisted of five undergraduate students during each of the academic years encompassing 2005-2014. Throughout this period, only one or two undergraduate members have been female, with the exception of 2011-12, when there werefour female members on the committee.

Cheng said the Honor Committee has not been idle in encouraging female applicants. She explained that efforts have included additional publicity efforts to reach out to women’s groups specifically, such as the Women’s Center and the Women’s Mentorship Program.

However, she added that even with the extra recruiting effort, more women are not necessarily applying.

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“I think to some extent women are less inclined to want to apply to that. I think it requires you to be able to potentially have to make a decision that might mean that one of your classmates will have to leave school for a year,” said Cheng. “I have to be careful to what extent this is stereotyping, and to what extent this is what I’ve actually observed, but I think at least from what I’ve observed, a lot of women are really hesitant to take on that role, and so they kind of self-select out of that process.”

She added that the main issue behind lower numbers of women on the Honor Committee specifically is that fewer women apply, leading to a smaller pool of women that have a chance of being appointed to the committee.

Cheng stated that gender alone is not a determining factor, and the selection committee considers diversity and how the member would fit in with the committee.

“There are many different factors to evaluate, right? And it’s also a discredit to women to evaluate solely based on gender,” Cheng said.

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She added that she thinks the selection process itself is very fair.

“The people on the panel are actually very unbiased, very considerate and thoughtful over the entire process and every applicant,” she said

Sarah Lossing ’17 said the committee should strive to have an equal gender ratio, and notedthat the committees should represent the student body.

“Everyone should have a fair say, and so I think both demographic-wise and gender-wise, [the committees] should be as close to the University population as possible,” she said.

According to Nathan Wong ’18, equality would help protect against male committee members favoring male students accused of infractions.

“In my experience with an all-guys school, people were very quick to help their friends out and bail them out,” he said, adding that the University community would have more confidence in the committees if they had a 50-50 gender split.

“I think we’re probably losing out on interesting and meaningful perspectives if we don’t keep it balanced,” Ankit Buddhiraju ’15said.

He added that increasing the representation of women would not necessarily affect the rigor of disciplinary proceedings, which probably are fine as they are.

“But just in terms of being empathetic with a student or understanding a student’s particular circumstances better, I would assume it’s more helpful if when there’s a girl, there are girls who can understand, and if there’s a guy, there are guys who can understand,” Buddhiraju explained.

He said he supports targeting more women in recruitment efforts, but would not want to give special consideration to female applicants, since the goal is to maintain or increase the quality of the committees by getting more women.

Denise Chan ’18 said she sees no issue with mostly male disciplinary bodies.

“Maybe there are going to be more males who apply. But if that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to do special things just to recruit females, you know, because what if we’re going to recruit someone who may not be as dedicated as someone who applied by themselves? What would that mean in our final hearing, or when we’re debating about the student’s future?”

Chan works on the business section of The Daily Princetonian.

Charlotte McIntosh ’18suggested that the committees balance their gender ratios by reaching out to individuals.

“People don’t really think about the Honor Committee and the Committee on Discipline all that much as far as student government or elected positions,” she said. “If you think of someone, your friend, who you think would be really good at that position, you should tell them.”

Lossing recommended publicizing the various roles of the committees, so that students begin seeing them as more than mysterious sentencing bodies.

“Increasing transparency, I think, would make women more interested in making changes to the Honor Committee and being a part of it,” Lossing said.

Dean of Undergraduate Students and Chair of the Committee on Discipline Kathleen Deignan did not respond to request for comment.

Staff writer Pooja Patel contributed reporting.