LETTER: More Honor Council members will help speed up trials

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To the editor:

The Honor Council is proposing two constitutional changes during general elections: adding college representatives to the council and creating the position of an advisor to the accused.

The first proposal aims to enlarge the council by a total of nine members. Each college and the Graduate House would elect one representative to the council.

Currently, the council consists of 16 members elected by the undergraduate student body and the Graduate Student Association Council and two appointed freshmen representatives.

The idea of Honor Council college representatives is not a new one; last year's version of this idea narrowly failed during the general election. This idea was first proposed as far back as April 1973.

Nine additional members would greatly benefit the honor system in a variety of ways.

During the past two years, it has become increasingly difficult to secure the necessary voting members for a hearing or trial.

At times, an accused student has been forced to prolong his or her case because of a lack of eligible members available to serve.

These new members would provide a greater pool of potential serving members, improving the council's ability to have a timely trial.

New members would be bound to the same level of confidentiality as the rest of the council, and any member who betrayed this confidentiality would be subject to removal from the council.

With a larger pool of council members to draw from, several people have expressed concern that trials could theoretically be "stacked" to ensure a certain decision. In reality, the secretary who schedules the trials rarely knows what the accusation is about, thus making it virtually impossible to predict the consensus of any given combination of members.

The college representatives would not be eligible to serve on the trials of students from their college. This restriction would hopefully eliminate any conflict of interest or potential discomfort between the accused and the council member.

Currently, council members do not generally serve on a trial if they know the accused or if they are from the same college.

However, due to the small number of members, at times a council member must serve on a trial of an accused from the same college.

With a larger pool to draw from, this uncomfortable situation could hopefully be eliminated.

The Rice community would benefit from having at least one council member in each college and the Graduate House. Having one representative at each college would raise the visibility and accessibility of the council and of the honor system.

This increase in student body contact with council members would enable students to be more aware of council proceedings, notices and policy. More members would also help facilitate faculty and new student orientation, provide new ideas during meetings and generate suggestions among the colleges.

In the next issue of the Thresher , we will fully delineate the second proposal of creating a pool of advisors to the accused.

Currently, each accused is assigned an ombudsman who explains council procedure and is present with the accused through each step in their case.

However, an ombuds cannot offer any advice to an accused or influence his or her decisions in any way.

The proposed advisors would be a member of the administration who would be thoroughly oriented to the honor system and who could offer advice and support to the accused in preparing his or her case.

An accused could seek the advice of an advisor from this pool of trained administrators, but the decisions made about the accused's case would ultimately be his or her own.

This Sunday at 7 p.m. in the Kelley Lounge in the Student Center, the council will hold an open forum to discuss these proposals and to answer any questions. Please come by and offer your suggestions. Thank you.

Constitutional Revisions Committee

Honor Council

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the February 16, 1996 issue.

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