The Honor Committee on Sunday voted in a unanimous 9-0 decision to add a clause to the Honor Code Constitution that would give the body more discretion when ruling on student cases.
"In short the amendment would codify and thus require future Honor Committees to determine whether a student should have reasonably understood what he was doing was wrong," Honor Committee Chairman Eli Goldsmith '04 said.
The Honor Code Constitution currently stipulates that on a first offense the committee can either suspend a student, or when there are extenuating circumstances put him on probation.
The proposed amendment would define a student's unintentional violation of the Honor Code as an extenuating circumstance.
"As chairman, I've used the [extenuating circumstances] language before, but this change is to ensure that future committees will have to take intent into account," he said.
Students who did not know they were violating the code could be sentenced to probation rather than mandatory suspension. Probation goes on a student's permanent record like any other conviction.
Goldsmith said Jonathan Chavkin '05's undergraduate-wide referendum was the impetus for the amendment.
The referendum would have mandated that the Honor Committee consider intent during the penalty phase, but it failed to pass when only 73 percent of the student body approved of it instead of the required 75 percent.
Goldsmith noted that the proposed changes are not as extreme as those in Chavkin's referendum.
"However, we wanted students to be more comfortable with the Honor Code . . . but we didn't want to turn intent into a loophole," Goldsmith said.
To ensure that discussions of intent remain objective, Goldsmith said the committee will only look at facts and circumstantial evidence. Such evidence could include guidelines that a professor gives for an exam. The understanding of the rules by the majority of other students in the class would also be examined.
"We look at facts and action not people . . . We can't, and don't try, to get inside people's heads," he said.
The new plan would also grant the committee the power to censure, accompanied with one-year of probation.
Goldsmith described the censuring as a means of differentiating between students who "have been less than truthful from those who have fabricated evidence."
He explained that the committee wanted to have the option to punish students who had made the honor investigation difficult, but whose actions did not warrant a second year of probation.
Before becoming official, the proposal must be ratified by at least 75 percent of the USG Senate.
Goldsmith will present the amendment to the USG Senate on May 3. They are then expected to vote on the proposed changes.
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