This Fall, the Office of Student Conduct met with righteous opposition when it tried to introduce a new student group leader accountability policy—a policy that held group leaders accountable for group members’ violations of student conduct policies. The policy was vague and incomplete—it included statements without verbs—and got placed on moratorium for failing to specify what it intended to hold students accountable for.
Since then, a coalition of student leaders from Duke Student Government and the Council for Collaborative Action has worked with the Office of Student Conduct to revise the troubled policy for clarity. This partnership excited us—student leaders ought to have a hand in crafting the policies that apply to them, and student leaders and the OSC should continue to work together in the future.
But the revision fails on its own terms. It does not clarify the scope of the policy beyond information already available. And it does not narrow the policy’s scope beyond what it was. In fact, if anything, the scope has expanded.
Let’s examine the specific clauses.
First, student leaders can be held accountable in two circumstances: when they act “as an accomplice” either “through action” or through “negligence” to “the commission of prohibited acts at a group-identified event.” Both of these criteria are unnecessary. According to page 51 of the 2011-2012 Duke Community Standard in Practice, Duke students can already be held responsible for “acting as an accomplice through action or negligence to the commission of prohibited acts.” The “revised” student conduct policy adds no clarification beyond what is already available.
What is more, both of these criteria only create more problems. The first circumstance—when a leader actively contributes to a violation—is not so bad, but we do not need a fancy rule for it. If a student leader acts as an accomplice to a violation, then they have violated a student conduct policy as an individual—they have been caught red-handed, and there is no reason to bring in these new group leader rules.
But the second circumstance—when a leader contributes to a violation through negligence—is eerily vague. The DCS guide offers no guidance on criterion for negligence, and the word itself is too vague to ground a disciplinary policy. Does a leader have to know about and ignore a policy violation? Or does a mere failure to investigate constitute negligence? Even the old group leader accountability policy was better than this: Its criteria for negligence was “whether... leaders had reasonable opportunity for prevention of/intervention in the alleged activity.”
Finally, the revised policy applies to “student leaders most directly responsible” for conduct violations. This assumes that some leader will always be partially responsible for a violation. This is because the language measures a leader’s contribution to a violation only relative to other leaders’ contributions, which means that, for any given violation, there will always be a student leader who contributed more than other leaders and who can be held responsible. And remember, they cannot be saved by their lack of participation—“negligence” alone is enough.
A more generous reading—and the right one—would apply the policy to student leaders directly responsible for the violations. But the policy should just say this; there is no need for “most.”
If the policy’s reviewers want to make it as clear as possible, then we suggest that they make another attempt.
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