Senate approves revisions to student discipline policy

By Craig Chamberlain

Efforts by the chancellor and his office apparently made the difference in
a vote by the Urbana-Champaign Senate on April 25 to approve a set of
revisions to campus policies related to student discipline.

By a vote of 109 to 2 - taken by a committee-of-the-whole - the senate
approved revisions to the Handbook of Policies and Regulations Applying to
All Students. Specifically, the changes cover two rules, or sections: One
outlines the bases for campus discipline; another defines rules of conduct
concerning disruptive and coercive action.

In approving the revisions, the senate also approved compromise language
outlined by Chancellor Michael Aiken in a letter distributed to senators at
the door. The new wording, Aiken explained, resulted from a previous senate
discussion and from conversations with individuals who had raised concerns.

Graduate student William Cork, probably the most vocal and persistent
critic in senate meetings on March 28 and April 4, said he now had no
objections and praised the effort at compromise. Other senators followed
with similar comments, including Kenneth Andersen, who chaired the ad hoc
committee that presented the revisions that raised the objections.

Ironically, the ad hoc committee was formed by Aiken last fall to deal
with objections to wording in a still earlier version of the proposal, one
presented at the Oct. 4 meeting by the Conference on Conduct Governance.

Many senators at that meeting criticized a measure - since eliminated -
that called for disciplining students for "verbal abuse." They said that
language would bring an unacceptable restriction of free speech.

At the core of the latest objections, by Cork and others, was wording in a
section on sexual misconduct. The main problem, critics said, was a phrase
that defined sexual misconduct as "any sexual activity that does not
involve the expressed and knowing consent of each individual."

Cork said the phrase about "expressed consent" would impose a "Victorian
standard" on students.

Noting that the senate's Equal Opportunity Committee felt strongly about
retaining the word "expressed," Aiken proposed the following alternative in
his letter: "Any sexual activity that does not involve the knowing consent
of each individual, expressed verbally or otherwise."

That and other minor changes in wording were accepted by the senate.  The
vote, even if conducted in regular session, would only have been an
advisory one, since the chancellor has the final say on these matters.

Efforts to pass the proposal, without the compromise language, had
failed on March 28 and again on April 4 when quorum calls failed. The
committee-of-the-whole arrangement was proposed by the Senate Council
in an effort to avoid a similar deadlock.

In other business, the senate received annual reports from its committees
and also received the combined and final report of the Task Force on
Productivity, titled "The Campus as Classroom."

Part one of the report, which outlined the range of faculty
responsibilities on the campus, was presented to the senate and
approved in the spring of 1993. Part two, on improving instructional
effectiveness, was presented to the Senate Council and approved at its
April meeting.

The combined report, which incorporated some changes, was presented to
senators as an informational item; the senate will be asked to approve
the report's recommendations at a meeting early in the fall semester.

The task force was appointed in 1992 by the Senate Council in response to
the Priorities, Quality and Productivity initiative of the Illinois Board
of Higher Education.