2013-2014 Year Sees Half as Many DC Cases
This past academic year, the Academy’s discipline committee (DC) reviewed 56 cases, of which eight were major cases and 48 were minor cases. The committee experienced a sharp decrease in disciplinary charges from the previous school year’s record of 101 cases.
According to Dean of Residential Life AJ Cosgrove, the eight major cases this year were related to plagiarism, harassment, possession of marijuana, academic dishonesty and unsatisfactory conduct. Of the eight, five of the major cases resulted in probations and three concluded in RTWs (Requirement to Withdraw). Similar to previous years, the majority of the 48 minor cases resulted from illegal visitations, but other charges included lying, failure to follow faculty instructions and inappropriate behavior. Of the 48, 11 cases resulted in restrictions with review.
Whereas 43 percent of the discipline committee’s meetings for major cases pertained to the issue of drug use in the 2012-13 school year, drug use became a less frequent topic in the major-case deliberations this year. Cosgrove believed that this was due to a decrease in drug usage within the student body. “It was a quiet year for the Discipline Committee, and I attribute that to the decrease in the number of kids who are using drugs and alcohol on campus,” he said.
Cosgrove attributed this to a change in culture in dorms which previously used alcohol and drugs more frequently. “Still there are people who use it, but it seems like the culture that tolerated use in dormitories has shifted a little bit,” he said. Some students, however, did not attribute the drop in discipline cases purely to a decrease in drug usage on campus but also to students being more careful about getting caught. Upper Max Rerkpattanapipat said that losing a friend through a disciplinary case last year may have spurred students to either use drugs less or be more careful about their use. “Some of the people here saw a lot of their good friends go through the stressful process of a discipline cases. It probably made people look at things differently. For some people it might have been doing less drugs and for others it might be being smarter about it. ”
Upper Yusuke Agata added that he felt it was the administration’s stricter investigation of drug uses caused the drop in the cases. “I don’t think the number of drug users have dramatically changed compared to last year. I think the difference lies in the fact that faculty members are trying to eliminate drug usage on campus; faculty members are stricter and far more willing to investigate deeply and pull out the very roots of drug usage in Exeter,” Agata said.
Lower Tierra McClain, one of the four new student members of the committee, said that the newly elected student members have only witnessed a few cases thus far and will begin to actively contribute to the cases starting next school year. “I haven't exactly served for the DC yet, since the four new members have only been observing cases,” McClain said.
This year, Student Council (StuCo) began efforts to make the DC process more transparent, drawing mixed reactions from students and faculty. Secondi noted that the current process is functional, and since more transparency threatens the privacy of individual students involved in cases, no measures should be taken to change the current system. “I think the process we have works well: a lot of time is spent gathering information about the student and making sure that we see the whole picture instead of just looking at one moment when a student may have made a poor decision,” Secondi said. “I see no need for more ‘transparency’—it’s more important to preserve confidentiality out of respect for the student charged in the case.”
Other faculty members, however, supported the ideas prompted in previous years that called for the increase in transparency, such as StuCo’s cooperation with the Discipline Committee to inform the student population and the broader Academy community of the basics and specifics of discipline cases. DC Member Erik Wade said that though confidentiality is the priority, increase in transparency will benefit the entire Academy community. He emphasized that the current process should be more open to the public and said that besides working with StuCo, holding mock discipline cases may be helpful in increasing transparency. “There is a need for more transparency,” Wade said. “If students would like to know how the DC works, I also agree with an idea I heard from Dean Cosgrove that we should hold a Mock DC case, just like Mock Trial does theirs.”