Honor Council Minutes

October 1, 2000

“Big Honor Council orgy . . .WooHoo!!!” - Ethan

Present: Ben Huebner (secretary), Randy Ko, Lucy Lyon (co-chair), Sarah Waring, Caitlin Costello, Jenn Louie (co-chair), Tyson Oberndorfer, Ari Worthman, Hannah Dickinson, Celeste Moore, Ethan Sorrelgreen, Amelia Winchester, Andrew Peterson, Elizabeth Sullivan, Rachel Werner

Absent: Gayathri Ramabadran

I. Moment of Silence.

II. Committees - As the contact-person for the Student Outreach Committee, Hannah informed Council that assignments pairing up Honor Council members with Customs groups would be out within the week. Council gave out, and I quote, “mad props” to Hannah and Celeste for their work on the Honor Council bulletin board. Rumor has it that Students’ Council is very jealous, which is of course what it is all about.

III. Faculty Relations Committee - Jenn talked about some of the ideas that the Faculty Relations Committee is throwing around, among them a Faculty Guide to the Honor Code and a faculty “sounding board”. Lucy explained that the “sounding board” faculty member would act as an intermediary between Council and the faculty. Honor Council could bounce ideas off the faculty member and the faculty member could answer other faculty members questions about the Code. Any member of the faculty interested, please contact code@haverford.edu . Caitlin noted that she thought this was a good idea, especially because she has seen many faculty members who seem to only pay attention to the Honor Code when they are involved in an Academic Trial. Ari brought a concern to the Faculty Relations Committee, asking that the faculty not assign papers with due dates the day after Plenary, and thus either diminishing Plenary attendance (not that that is ever a problem) or causing undue hardship (like that of a certain HC Secretary writing the minutes at 3 AM, not that anyone is bitter).

IV. Academic Integreity Week - A few members of Honor Council will be attending the culmination of Upenn’s Academic Integrity Week on Oct. 24th to see how to do integrity Wharton style (10 bonus points for anyone who understands that joke).

V. Rape and Sexual Assault Video Seminar - Last Tuesday, Lucy, Jenn, Caitlin, Rachel, and Ben all participated in a video seminar with Brett Soklow and the deans. Broadcast from the Campus Center to representatives of over 200 colleges, the seminar talked about campus judicial procedures and policies for dealing with rape and sexual assaults. No, keep reading, it really wasn’t that boring. Caitlin found the training to be generally good, but felt that it didn’t entirely fit at Haverford because of the focus of policy over community. Both Ben and Lucy noted that it was interesting to look at how the issue is dealt with beyond the Haverbubble. Jucy found the segment about what kinds of evidence are relavent and/or credible in these kinds of hearings to be particularly interesting.

VI. Honor Council Retreat - . . .will be this coming Saturday and Sunday, so if you are looking for your local HC rep.next weekend, we are not here, we’re in the Bahamas.

VII. Rerelease of Abstracts - Jenn suggested that to spark community discussion, Honor Council should consider rereleasing controversial/influential abstracts in Haverford’s history, such as the Charlie abstract (about race, respect, and free speech), Star Wars abstracts (about Honor Council breaking the Honor Code), and Mike and John abstract (a failed SFP that ended in a Joint Panel). Celeste suggested that if these abstracts were rereleased, they should be sent as attachments to a campus-wide e-mail, thus saving both money and trees. Council remembered why they keep Celeste around :)

IX. Confidential Portion, Moment of Silence

Surprise, surprise, surprise even though these minutes have been proclaimed from upon high, they do not necessarily represent the views of Haverford College or its Administration. So hey, I just got back from Plenary, and I have to say that after a million Plenary’s with more confusion than your average flatlander trying to milk a cow, that was the smoothest thing I’ve seen in my life. For all you non-Vermonters out there a flatlander is city slicker who leaves NYC or Jersey and moves to Vermont thinking they will find tranquility by running a bed and breakfast in the mountains, but instead find out that a) cooking breakfast 7 days a week for 20 people is hard work, b) there is no Evian, c) -20° F is damn cold and d) real people don’t have expense accounts. Allright, I’ll stop being a hick now.