When students return to campus this Fall, the Office of Judicial Affairs and the Undergraduate and Greek Judicial Boards will be different-but mostly in name.
Effective July 1, these organizations will be renamed the Office of Student Conduct, the Undergraduate Conduct Board and the Greek Conduct Board, repectively. The new names more accurately reflect the mission of the office, said Stephen Bryan, associate dean of students and director of judicial affairs.
"This is a national trend reflective that campus discipline procedures are not akin to what would happen downtown... when you hear terms like judicial... it seems adversarial from the get-go, and we're not about that," Bryan said. "We wanted the name to reflect what we do, which is help students learn from their mistakes and poor choices."
On a national level, the name change has been in discussion for two years, said Tamara King, president of the Association for Student Conduct Administration. King said the ASCA did not initiate the name change trend across the nation, but campuses like Duke's have adopted names they feel better encompass the goals of judicial affairs administrators.
"[The name change] kind of recognizes that there are a variety of ways to address student conduct, not just the strict 'us versus them' dualistic approach," King said. "There are often times when we as judicial officials are asked to adjudicate models that are not necessarily a criminal offense.... So having the ability to address student conduct in other venues is probably a good idea, it allows you to shape your system according to the situation."
Although the office does try to encourage behavior in accordance with the Duke Community Standard, it also carries out all disciplinary action. This year, for example, it is changing the policy for those who discharge fire extinguishers, Bryan said.
Bryan said many fire extinguishers-about one a week-were discharged last year. He added that Residence Life and Housing Services wanted to charge students a $1,000 fine for discharging a fire extinguisher, but the Office of Judicial Affairs decided the fine would unfairly be more of a burden to some students.
Instead, the office decided to revoke students' on-campus housing privileges in response to setting off an extinguisher.
"Once the [disciplinary] process concludes and the student loses their residence privileges, they will be asked to leave [their dormitory] within a certain time period, which is typically 48 hours," Bryan said.
Bryan said RLHS and the Office of Judicial Affairs will inform students of the change with e-mail reminders, move-in packets and posters. Still, he expected some students to be unaware of the new consequence.
"My experience has been you can dangle it in front of students' faces and they won't pay any attention to it until it's on their personal radar," Bryan said. "The Residence Life staff will be working to get the message out and I send an e-mail out to students at the beginning of the year... but undoubtedly a student will discharge a fire extinguisher and say, 'I didn't know.'"
Bryan said last year, 18 students were suspended and one student was expelled for academic dishonesty. These numbers are on-par with the 19 suspensions and zero expulsions in the 2007-08 academic year, but are down from the five-year average of 29 suspensions.
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