There has been mounting concern that Residential College Disciplinary Board (RCDB) procedures are imbued with a Kafkaesque quality that needlessly intimidates students and ultimately perverts the course of justice. Though it is infeasible for the RCDB to adopt the due process found in the U.S. legal system, the University should do a far better job of approaching the problem.
Before the law sits a gatekeeper. In many cases of University disciplinary procedures, this gatekeeper is the residential college director of studies. Numerous anecdotal reports made to USG officers have indicated that disciplinary proceedings before such directors often fall short of due process. The student often meets with the director informally, without the benefit of any prior arraignment and without formal record being made of his or her answers. Students should have the right from the outset to know the charges made against them, to avoid self-incrimination and to receive copies of the notes from these meetings.
Other difficulties arise during the disciplinary proceedings themselves. Following their meeting with the student, residential college directors then present their findings to the full RCDB without any student testimony. Students may submit written statements but have no guarantee that they will be read, just as they have no reason to expect fair treatment from their directors. The secrecy inherent in this system make effecting even reasonable changes unduly difficult.
Students should have the right to briefly address the committees that hear their cases, and they have demanded it for long enough. The University's rebuttal to this argument has been that these cases arise so frequently that inviting students would be impractical. Since when has efficiency been a substitute for justice? If a student has something to say and is given a date, time and location, chances are he or she will be there. That the University sees these cases as minor does not make them so.
Finally, the system has to be standardized across all colleges. It is unconscionable that two University students might receive unequal treatment based on who their directors are and how those directors are personally inclined to view the situation. Cross-college standardization of procedures should be included in next year's "Rights, Rules, Responsibilities." Students, read your Kafka, read your constitutions and read The Daily Princetonian. Demand change.
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