Potential Return of Judiciary Board
Emily Cobb | December 8, 2022
Many Warren Wilson College (WWC) students are unfamiliar with something called Judiciary Board (J-Board). It was a WWC program consisting of students and staff to decide punishments for violations of school policy. These cases could be anything from vandalizations to sexual misconduct.
WWC is not the only school to have a judicial board, many colleges across the country have them. At the University of North Carolina (UNC) Charlotte, it is part of their Student Government Association (SGA). “The SGA Judicial Branch works to ensure that student rights are upheld at all times through involvement in judicial hearings and reviews.”
When the program was running, there was always an odd number of members to avoid a split. Usually, the dean of students oversaw the proceedings to monitor the questions being asked, offer advice and watch over the cases. The students who were on the board were elected into their positions and student government used to be its own work crew. J-board — sometimes referred to as conduct board — required all of the volunteers to undergo training.
Cathy Kramer worked at WWC for 15 years, retiring in 2020, and was dean of students for several years before moving to a new position at WWC in 2010. During her time as dean of students, she worked closely with the conduct board and there was also a separate sexual misconduct board. The sexual misconduct board originally had students on it, but due to privacy issues, it moved to a faculty and staff board only. Kramer described the training the members had to undergo for J-board as mainly involving team building.
“They would get to know each other, and they would really have a chance to talk through what their values were and how they viewed the community so we knew kind of where people were coming from as they were hearing cases,” Kramer said.
The members also learned about school policy, J-board procedures, how to deliberate cases and about past cases that had set some form of precedent.
According to Kramer, there was a student chair on J-Board who fully ran the meetings, creating a peer-to-peer experience. Kramer said the dean could change the punishments or deliberations that were set, but rarely stepped in to do so. If students were unhappy with the result from J-board, they could also appeal to the school’s president.
“We really honored what the students came back with, and honestly, the students often came back with harsher sanctions than I probably would have done because it was their community,” Kramer said. “So, you know, if someone had violated their community in a pretty extreme way, it's like ‘that's us.’ That's everyday living here.”
Peter Connolly, an alumnus from 2001, majored in environmental studies with a concentration in environmental policy and served on J-Board for two years as a student. The cases Connolly and J-board looked at were usually things such as unsanctioned parties. However, there were heavier cases that came through where sometimes people were not happy with the end result. Those moments were rare. Despite that, Connolly said there was still a view of appreciation towards J-board and the fact that the decisions were not only being made by the school’s cabinet but by students as well.
Not all school policy violations had to be brought to J-board: students could choose to do so. For smaller cases or cases where there was nothing to debate, they would usually be handled by just the administration.
“We (the cabinet) were trying to move in the direction of doing more kinds of restorative justice pieces at that point rather than just focusing on violating sanctions,” Kramer said. “A lot of things were around education for students, and then how students could give back to the community they had violated.”
Connolly also noticed this, saying how on one instance after an unauthorized party occurred that damaged the farm, the responsibility for the ones at fault was to fix the damage. As well as being placed on probation.
“I don't think anyone then at least wanted there to be an equation that says the people who were caught at the age of 20 — with alcohol — had to receive a certain punishment, because they wanted there to be a chance for people to realize mistakes and the impact of them,” Connolly said.
Connolly enjoyed his time on the board and enjoyed how he was given the opportunity to be a part of something influential while in school that involved the whole community.
“J-board made me realize a lot more about how most things in our community are really dealt with on a very personal level,” Connolly said. “It requires community members to be involved.”
The program was shut down — some believe due to the program being too subjective with having students decide punishments for other students. This left the door open to bias and conflict of interest. Kramer was unsure of why it was disbanded but mainly chalked it up to the new dean having a different approach than her. However, Kramer thought that J-board was a great tool for the college to use at that time.
“Students are perceptive, they might pick up on something that I missed because it's their peers,” said Kramer. “It was really helpful for me, as an administrator, to have that. I think for students to just have an opportunity to be heard by their peers, is positive.”
Tacci Smith is the current Dean of Students and Title IX coordinator. For the past year, she has worked on reviving the J-Board. Though J-Board was shut down before she came to the school, she believes that the main reason it dissolved was a lack of cases. The lack of cases demonstrated a lack of necessity and interest for volunteers.
Due to a lot of turnover in the student and resident life departments at WWC — as well as factors influenced by COVID-19 — it has been hard to have any consistent programs running. Additionally, having interim positions here at WWC — including the president — has slowed down the process.
Smith also said that while there is a lot of student interest repeatedly shown, the same cannot be said for professors. The school does not have the budget to additionally compensate those who would volunteer to participate — making some hesitant to involve themselves — especially since all faculty are already required to be on a faculty body committee.
However, once students and faculty are found, they will undergo a training process similar to the one Kramer mentioned. In short, training would include running through practice scenarios, learning about school policy and building a sense of trust among the group. Smith stressed how when violations happen, they do not only want to reprimand: the reason behind the infraction is often more important than the punishment, especially among alcohol-related incidents.
Smith said that when bringing J-Board back, recontextualizing it and changing it to fit the present WWC is what she is after. Many schools have J-Board, but all schools are different. Faculty at WWC want to integrate it back into the school efficiently.
“I do love the interaction of faculty and staff with students,” Smith said. “We're a team. We're coming out of this together and students can share perspectives about how social life is on campus and faculty and staff can help this person get some resources. We get to play different roles and work together.”
Smith said she noticed the push for J-board to return last year after students brought up reviving the program for Title IX cases. Though the school is unable to effectively do that due to Title IX cases, they still want to provide support and give training and support to students.
A tricky thing about J-board, Smith said, was due to WWC’s approach to not just punishment but the why — making punishments equitable has complexity. Smith gave the example of someone doing a beautification project in response to a violation, but raised concerns about that response.
“Are those things equitable?” Smith asked. “They don't have to be equal. But are they equitable? So sometimes for judicial boards, the sanction is not whether or not the violation happened or did you take responsibility.”
A goal for Smith in reviving J-board is to increase trust between students and faculty. She does not want there to be an air of untrust between the two and hopes J-board will help to end this tension.
When Kramer and Connolly were asked about whether they think J-board should be revived, they were hesitant to give an exact answer. Both acknowledged that times had changed.
“I think the environment had changed over time, but, when I was doing it, it felt effective,” Kramer said. “I found them to be a really effective way of holding students accountable.”
Connolly elaborated, stressing how J-board helped to reflect the community and could be adapted as WWC and its community changed.
“In some ways, I think you could even say what a community is and what they find acceptable or unacceptable is contextual and for the judicial board, I think when it was functioning well, it was because it was allowing the people of that community to kind of set the tone,” Connolly said.
Though this program is currently not running, students can advocate for J-Board if they wish to see it return. Smith believes the program could be in effect as early as late in the spring semester. Students can reach Smith at tsmith@warren-wilson.edu.