Photos of the event can be found here.

The project is an initiative driven by the Seven Sisters colleges that remain single-sex in conjunction with the State Department to attract more women to careers “in public service and political leadership to forge global solutions to improve governance, expand civil rights, and combat corruption,” as the program’s mission statement explains.

The launch began with a morning Colloquium at the State Department building, in which attendees had the opportunity to hear accomplished women across numerous fields speak about the merits and challenges of female leadership.

Highlights included speeches from the 64th Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, President of Kosovo Atifete Jahjaga, 2011 Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde, feminist activist Gloria Steinem, and Chiedza Mufunde ’12.

President Jahjaga was a personal favorite of many Mount Holyoke attendees. “She was hopeful, accomplished and extremely modest. She’s achieved an enormous amount in a small amount of time. It was wonderful to see an international, little known leader who is making lasting change in her part of the world,” said Jenna Lempesis ’12.

Jenna Ruddock ’13 had a similar impression “[She] epitomized poise and eloquence, and as she spoke about her vision for her country’s future I found both her optimism and also her decidedly pragmatic outlook to be genuinely refreshing.”

After a morning full of panelists and speakers, the audience walked a little over a mile and a half to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

As students and representatives from the Seven Sisters dined, an afternoon program featured words from Claire Boyd ’12 and United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer to bring an end to the day.

To facilitate networking, attendees were asked to limit the number of students to three per table and include faculty representatives that the different colleges presented.

With providing networking opportunities as a major goal of the project’s launch, the administrations of the participating colleges took many efforts to increase the number of opportunities for the students to meet each other.

Such efforts included a dessert buffet the night before the Colloquium to allow students to socialize. Many students found this time helpful, such as Ruddock. “I actually reconnected with a Wellesley student who had been a high school classmate of mine before moving to Switzerland after our sophomore year,” she said.

Also featured at the dessert social was Farah Pandith, Special Representative to Muslim Communities at the State Department.

Pandith shared with the students her history as a Student Government President and how this ultimately led to her position within the office of First Lady Barbara Bush upon her graduation in 1990.

Many students favored Pandith’s relaxed and candid speaking style. Kirsten Therrien ’14, SGA Public Relations Officer, cited Pandith as her favorite speaker.

“I thoroughly enjoyed her story of how she made it to D.C., beginning with Mrs. Bush reading her address to Smith students as their Student Government President. Although I don’t currently see myself going into public service, or having her luck and eloquence, I could still relate to some of her story. The type of leadership she had at Smith is similar to my own-being on the SGA Executive Board at a sister school as well.”

Pandith’s speech came after a very long day, as Mount Holyoke students had left at 7:45 a.m. that morning for a long bus ride down to Washington, D.C.

“It was reading days so So Jin [Lee ’13], Kara [Matsuzawa’12] and I decided to stay up all night before the ride, working on our finals. Needless to say, the ride went by pretty quickly, having slept the whole time,” reflected Emily Bouvier ’13, former Chair of Senate for SGA.

The Women in Public Service Project will continue to unfold this summer, when Wellesley will host the first conference of over 50 up-and-coming female leaders from around the world. The conference will include workshops on topics pertaining to career advancement and networking in public service fields.

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The International Relations major is a 40-credit interdisciplinary major that requires intermediate proficiency in a language and draws a large number of students each year.

International Relations has also been among the top three or four most popular majors at Mount Holyoke in recent years.

“Given the large number of majors that IR has and the fact that it has dedicated faculty positions, the IR faculty felt that IR had outgrown the structure in place at the College for a program and should be recognized as a department,” said Sohail Hashmi, chair of the International Relations department.

Programs are generally interdisciplinary and tend to “draw from faculty whose primary appointment [is] in departments” as Hashmi said.  Departments often hire faculty of their own.

However, as Hashmi continued, “By the late 1980s, IR had one full-time faculty position and one half-time appointment shared with the other Five Colleges. It was a department in all but name.”

As a result, students will not notice much of a change.

However, students agree that the change, as small as it is, was needed.

Lucy Cummings ’12, an International Relations major, said, “Before, everyone was required to have a focus but nothing was specifically laid out, so you had to come up with your own focus and get it approved by your advisor.” She explained that with the new department, now there are four “tracks.” Each track has classes listed under it so that things are more well-defined.

Anarkalee Parera ‘14 also agreed. “This is much better,” she said. “International Relations as a major has become more popular so it makes sense to put more resources into the department. Instead of treating IR as branch of politics they’re making it a different field of study which is important, since not many people were even sure of what IR is.”

“There’s a lot more structure,” said Cummings.

There will also be some changes made to the curriculum. For example, a required Research Methods course will be added for sophomores. Cummings said, “This is really helpful. I wish I had it when I was a sophomore because I think it helps in gaining some crucial skills.”

Despite the new changes, students can expect the department to run just as smoothly as it did when it was a program.

“We want to make the IR major as strong as possible,” said Hashmi. “This is the same goal we’ve always had.”

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For the past 50 years, Campus Police worked out of the Central Services building behind Blanchard Campus Center. It wasn’t until recently that a new building was discussed.

“The design and construction of our new department building started approximately four to five years ago when it became clear we had outgrown our present space at Central Services,” explained Campus Police Associate Director Barbara Arrighi.

“We did not have enough space for a full time professional law enforcement and emergency operations center,” she said.

The 3,234 square foot structure is indeed spacious, with  rooms for Central Dispatch, interviews, breaks and patrols. It also has a personal locker room for the officers at work.

According to Administrative Operations Manager Jeanne Tripp, this is a sharp break from what the previous building accommodated.

“Previously, the interview room and break room were the same and if someone was there to report a traumatic experience, officers would have no choice but to pass through to their locker room as well,” she elaborated.

According to Tripp, the former chief had to give up his office to Central Dispatch and share his workspace with another administrative officer.

“It always used to be stuffy and hot in the Central Dispatch Room and you would see their windows open even in the winter,” explained Tripp.

The new space is roomier and the battery back-up and CPU (Central Processing Unit) have been re-located to the data room in the basement. The basement, which is yet to be painted, houses the building’s heating and air-conditioning systems, along with all previous records. The records are accessible to only three people.

“At Central Services, all these files were in the Patrol Room and officers had a hard time moving around,” said Tripp. “Now they are much more accessible and secure.”

The new building is in the same area as many other campus services such as the Health Center and the Career Development Center. The decision was deliberate.

“It was decided that, given what was needed, a new stand-alone building in the same area as the Colleges Health Center, Risk Management Office and Environmental Health and Safety office would be highly recommended,” explained Arrighi. “During a campus emergency, these offices could meet and respond as needed in the Campus Police building Emergency Operations Center.”

However, some students are not entirely happy with the change.

Zaidat Ibrahim ‘14 said, “I feel like it’s kind of far away now. For instance, last semester I was working in the library and at the end of each day I had to take the lost and found items to Campus Police. It was much easier to do then.”

Other students expressed similar sentiments, but were overall in favour of the decision.

“It is just that it seems to everyone that where Blanchard  is, that is where everything is,” said Marta Checko ‘14. “But it is good that they have a better space now,” she added.

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John Stomberg, director of the art museum, said that faculty exhibitions are a healthy part of most academic museums and that it is important to celebrate studio art teachers as productive and professional artists. “The thinking behind the show is to highlight new work by the faculty,” he said, explaining that it would demonstrate to the students what working artists do.

The theme, Stomberg continued, was to emphasize that these nine artists are important as both artists and educators.

“What is not always obvious is the contribution to liberal education made by art professors,” he explained, as they are involved in “creativity training.”

Stomberg said that regardless of whether a person in an art class goes on to become an artist or not, the training they receive prepares them to be problem-solvers, non-routine thinkers and innovators.

“So with this show we celebrate nine artists who make terrific art and who both teach students the technical specifics of different art media and train them in the process of creativity,” he said.

“I am looking forward to Mount Holyoke students seeing what we art teachers do in our own studios,” said Matt Phillips, one of the artists in the exhibition and a visiting professor of Art and Art History at Mount Holyoke.

Each artist has a designated space on which, according to Stomberg, “[one] can really feel each individual’s vision clearly articulated.”

The spaces have been used in different ways: Art Professor Rie Hachiyanagi’s paper installation in the library’s atrium towers all the way to the ceiling while Tatiana Greenberg’s projection is up in the greenhouse, along with stickers on the window panes completing the effect.

The artists’ work spans across a variety of mediums including photography, painting, collage, assemblage, drawing and installation.

Each artist also has a different process, as explained Joe Smith, who works with wood and glass. “I chose glass because it is there but not there, transparent and rigid,” he said. “It is also resistant to my attempts at making. Wood is warm and this wood has already been shaped by water. My process is one of selection and arrangement in this work.”

Upon entering the museum, the first thing one sees is Smith’s “Bookshelf” – a piece made out of rearview-mirrors and scraps of metal. Some of the works also use more traditional mediums, such as Nancy Friese’s landscapes in watercolor on linen stretches and Marion Miller’s assortment of oil on canvas pieces from her “Arena Series.”
Matt Phillips work consists of selected pieces rom his series “Letters from Erie Basin.”

“These pieces explore the territory between my drawing and painting practices,” explained Phillips, creator of “Letters from Erie Basin.” He said that, by using a visual vocabulary of geometric forms, shapes and patterns, he was attempting to create quirky, accessible works that defy a single read.

“The show is a true inspiration,” said Stomberg. He felt that all the artists were particularly engaged and enthusiastic for the exhibition.

The artists had to spend a lot of time on their work. Greenberg’s video projection in the greenhouse is a film of the snails she found there. She initially went to the greenhouse looking for slugs but then noticed trails on the windowpanes that indicated the presence of snails. After foraging them out, she filmed the snails using an SLR camera and a macro lens with focus in all places except one. “It’s kind of how the snails look at the world,” she explained.

Other works include screenprints by Nancy Campbell and oil and encaustic collages on canvas by Nathan Margalit. Kane Stewart’s “Partial Disclosure in Three Measures” is a photograph and homosote installation that consists of three parts making up a single piece.

The show will open this Friday at 4.30 pm and will be on till May 27. There will be a brochure available on all the different artists and their works. In addition, the museum will also host gallery talks every Thursday in February with some of the artists.

Stomberg said that faculty exhibitions are typically scheduled when the “time seems right,” such as now. He elaborated on this, saying that as Professor Miller and Professor Campbell are retiring this year, it is an important moment in the department.

The artists themselves are impressed by the quality of the show. Phillips said that he had great respect for his colleagues and their work and was “excited to be showing alongside them.”

Smith also agreed. “This is one of the most sophisticated shows that I have been in,” he said.

Stomberg shared their sentiments. “As a Museum we remind our visitors that as important as it is for us to search to search the world for great art to bring to South Hadley, the truth is, great art happens right here in our backyard,” he said.

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Smith College students pose outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

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Changes have been made to fill in for her previous roles. “Christine Overstreet, the Assistant Coordinator of SAW, will assume Interim Coordinator responsibilities for the rest of the academic year,” said Packard. Christine Overstreet FP ’06 has worked for the SAW program since 2008 and will take over Greenfield’s peer-mentoring class.

Greenfield became coordinator in 2007 and is a member of the International Writing Centers Association and a state representative for the North East Writing Centers Association, according to her Mount Holyoke faculty profile. Her past research has focused on minority writers and language, including “explorations of the relationships among language, identity, and citizenship in the interdisciplinary fields of American literature, composition studies, and writing center studies.”

The SAW program is affiliated with the Weissman Center and is often known for the peer-mentoring program, among others. “SAW…offers workshops in support of other campus departments and programs, and offers a course in public speaking,” said Overstreet, who will be filling in for Greenfield’s past roles.

Many of the peer sessions take place in the SAW Center. “The SAW Center— located on the South Mezzanine of the Williston Library Reading Room— is a part of what the SAW Program does,” continued Overstreet.

For the most part, many aspects of the SAW program will remain unchanged. “To be honest, I’m not worried because I believe in SAW, and because of Dr. Greenfield SAW can run as a machine,” said SAW Program Fellow Imani Strong ’12. “I don’t know that they will be able to find anyone better for this job than Dr. Greenfield.”

Before Thanksgiving break, there were some disruptions in the SAW center. “There was a workshop canceled right before Thanksgiving on commas, correct comma usage,” said SAW Mentor Emmy Bouvier ’13. However, as a whole, SAW peer mentors were unaware of Greenfield’s departure before Monday, Nov 28.

“They sent an email the Sunday before class were going to start, after break, that we had to have a meeting. I don’t know if the term emergency, but we had to have a meeting to discuss something,” said Bouvier. “We got to the meeting, there was tension. So Becky just sat us down, and told us I wish I didn’t have to be telling you this, but Dr. Greenfield is no longer with the program, effective immediately. I think she could tell we were shocked. She went on to say it was a differing in philosophies, and we were told this because we are considered employees and staff members of the Weissman Center and the SAW Program.”

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Students submit course evaluations at the end of each semester, commenting on the structure of the class, the instructor’s teaching methods, how much the student learned and the material used.

“At Mount Holyoke, teachers evaluate students and students evaluate teachers. Both kinds of evaluation are key to making sure that classes at Mount Holyoke meet a very high standard,” explained Christopher Benfey, Professor of English and Acting Dean of Faculty.

The evaluations are then used in planning future classes and reviewing faculty. “They are the most powerful source of input that students have in shaping the College’s offerings, faculty, and classroom experience,” said Berube in the e-mail.

Previously, time was alotted during classes at the end of the semester to do the evaluations. With the shift to electronic-based evaluations, students will now be required to log on to ISIS and fill out the evaluations online. This change will apply to all classes except for PE courses and labs, and confidentiality of the forms will be maintained as before, unless the student chooses to sign their name at the end.

One added advantage of the shift which did not previously exist, will be the ability to revise the evaluations until the final date of submission Dec. 20.

The change from the Dean’s office came in an attempt to move towards greater efficacy. Benfey elaborated, “We are confident that moving the evaluation process online will mean improvements over hard-copy evaluations in significant ways.” He cited these as the following: evaluations won’t be lost, confidentiality can better be ensured; less money and staff time will go into copying and distributing evaluations.

There has been some concern about the shift affecting both the quality and the quantity of the evaluations, given that students are busy during the exam period and will just think of it as an additional task. “They will just do it to get done with it because it coincides with the busiest part of the semester… at least with it being scheduled in class it had its designated time and place in the student mind,” said Natasha Ansari ’13.

Nell Maynard ’14 agreed. “I think they’ve overestimated people’s sense of obligation to give feedback on the professors,” she said, adding that it was a pity because “the feedback is important.”

On the flip side of that, the shift also implies several advantages. “I think that the quality will improve since students will have more time to write,” said Robin Blaetz, Professor of Film Studies. Another positive is the ability go revise the evaluations.

Berube’s e-mail emphasized the need for students to fill out the evaluations. Although the evaluations contain an option of “declining to participate,” Berube urged students to use that “sparingly, if at all.”

The evaluations students provide are taken seriously in planning future courses and for faculty review, promotion, and tenure.” she said.

While Benfey admitted that questions have been raised about whether the quality and care that students are accustomed to giving to evaluations will remain undiminished with the online process, he expressed his confidence in the students’ understanding of how important the evaluations are.

Blatez agreed. “I think that our students are aware of the responsibilities that the students and faculty have toward each other,” she said.

Students have until Dec. 20 to fill out the evaluations. Those who fail to do so will be unable to access their degree audit, unofficial transcript and grades. Similarly, professors will gain access to the submitted evaluations only after they have submitted their final grades.

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Associate Dean of Students for Diversity and Inclusion, Tanya Williams, credited cultural house fellows, Tamar Westphal ’12 and Divya Chandramouli ’14 for developing the awareness week. “It is an opportunity for people to better be connected and to know the cultural houses because we run into so many people who don’t have any conscious of what they are.”

Westphal and Chandramouli held a Taboo Dialogue on Tuesday afternoon, entitled “Culturally Connected: Are cultural houses needed at MHC?” The cultural house team also organized tabling in Blanchard throughout the week along with visual material and a bulletin board introducing the staff.

“The Cultural House Team’s main focus this year is raising awareness of the houses, as so many people don’t know about them, where they are, what’s there. The houses are terrific resources, but they’re under-utilized. At the same time, we need to make sure that more people start using these spaces, as we’re encouraging them to do, we educate everyone about the importance of these houses as cultural spaces, so that everyone who enters them does so respectfully,” said Westphal.

Westphal also suggested that tension could arise if the cultural houses were not treated respectfully and appropriately. “The houses are all available as programmable venues… so there are many groups/offices who use the houses for meetings that are unrelated to the

use cultures. This is causing some tension. Since the houses are available to everyone, we really need to ensure that people are aware of how to treat them appropriately.”

The cultural houses are OneCard accessible to all students every Monday and Tuesday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Wednesday through Friday 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Board members of the organizations affiliated with each cultural house are granted access from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day. Students are also able to access the houses by requesting a specific time and date for an event. Students have raised concern around the open hours policy. When asked about the campus-wide OneCard access, APAU board member Elizabeth Laguerre ’13 stated, “Just the fact that the betty is open to the public and is being reserved without members of the orgs it is affiliated with being notified have disrupted its sense of space and place. I feel like the Betty, my home away from home, is now being taken away from me because I can no longer go there and feel one hundred percent comfortable.”

Previously the cultural houses had house-sitters who were assigned specific hours to sit in the house during open hours. “It didn’t make sense to me to not have a house that was accessible to all of campus in the sense.” Williams made the decision to get rid of the house-sitters and instead make the houses OneCard accessible for students to come during designated open hours. There are two cultural house fellows who oversee the houses and two programming assistants who manage programs and related events for each house. Cultural Housing Programming Assistant, Jasmine Yepa ’13 remarked, “The main purpose of the houses is to serve as an open and safe space for the entire MHC community to socialize with the identities and orgs affiliated with the houses. The houses should also be seen as an educational space to learn more about a specific culture or identity that is connected to a house.”

The cultural house team plans on furthering this awareness campaign into the coming spring semester including an information night in Blanchard scheduled for February. According to Westphal, the evening will serve as an informal introduction to the houses, during which attendees will learn about the Cultural House Team staff, open hours, and how to take advantage of the resources in the houses.

“I think that there is a power in cultural houses because I see it from a perspective that the house can be a place where people feel stronger to confront the racism that exists on the larger campus,” said Williams. “I’m just trying to understand the program aspects and programming space and how do we balance all of this.”

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The conference “will seek to promote the next generation of women leaders who will invest in their countries and communities, provide leadership for their governments and societies, and help change the way global solutions are developed,” stated Clinton during the Women in the World Stories and Solutions Summit last March.

While the twenty-five student representatives attending do not have to travel down until next week, they have been preparing for “the opportunity to be inspired by and network with other Seven Sister students and women,” according to Janet Lansberry, assistant director of the Weismann Center.

Lansberry, who is attending the conference as well, scheduled a mandatory meeting on Nov. 14 to help the students review the finer points of business etiquette and networking. “It is important that everyone is one the same page,” said Lansberry. “We wanted them to start to grasp their distinct role in moving forward women’s leadership.”

The November meeting trained the student representatives to be alert, to take good notes, and how to network. Lansberry said that the meeting was “to cover things like having a firm handshake, smiling when you enter a room, and making a good impression.”

Lansberry also said that she wanted to make sure that the student representatives have a chance to shine at the conference, and begin to gain confidence in themselves to one day potentially run for a political office. “Some students in that room might end up running for office. Some might be governors, one might even be the president.”

While Lansberry is preparing the student representatives for the social and business aspects of the conference, the student representatives have been preparing intellectually for the conference. “I need to know about international current events,” said Jenna Lempesis ’12, one of  Mount Holyoke’s student representatives. “I really want to be well-informed about the speakers.” Lempesis is a senior graduating with a politics major and anthropology minor. She first found out about the conference when she “originally got an e-mail from the State Department and then administration.”

The schedule for the event hasn’t been finalized yet, according to Politics professor Vincent Ferraro, who is helping to develop the next phase of the conference’s program. There will be many activities and workshops for the student representatives to participate in. According to him the conference will consist of  “a lot of panel discussions. A lot of mentoring as well.”

Alumnae from Mount Holyoke and the other Seven Sisters will attend the conference to give advice to the next generation of women leaders. “There are a very limited number of women in decision-making roles. We want to make it more possible for women to be in those leadership positions,” Ferraro said. According to him, the panels, mentors and networking sessions at the conference hope to show the student representatives “what’s needed to succeed and how to get there.”

Ferraro also revealed that after the December conference, the State Department and the Seven Sisters are planning on holding a Summer Institute for Women’s Leadership at Wellesley College. The Institute will select sixty non-American women from across the globe to be trained in leadership skills, like organization, public speaking, networking and policy writing for four weeks. “There will be two more summer institutes, but we don’t know where. One of the summer institutes will be at Mount Holyoke but we don’t know if it will be 2013 or 2014,” said Ferraro.

For those American students ineligible for the institute or international students who want to return home over the summer break, the Weissman Center is holding a series of leadership workshops called “Cultivating the Leader Within: Women’s Power and Purpose” with other sister schools during the spring semester. Lansberry stated that, “On Feb. 10, the kick-off begins at Smith College with a networking brunch. The other Seven Sisters are invited and the brunch is open to any student.”

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“The Committee came about because Dean Davis and Dean Banks both had some questions about current processes related to student conduct at Mount Holyoke,” Castanza said.

Dean of Students Rene Davis elaborated on these concerns. She said that students have questioned the campus judicial process for several years. “Areas of confusion often highlighted included transparency, role and use of the Honor Code Council, and differences in the way in which the alcohol policy is charted versus other outcomes. Students also ask why academic dishonesty cases are handled separately. As I map that against a growing concern on the effectiveness of the Honor Code, I began to ponder the effectiveness of our conduct systems,” Davis said.

The work group will look into these various procedures in order to first “ask questions,” according to Castanza and Davis. Davis said that some of these questions will include: “What do students know and understand about the adjudication of  conduct violation? How much of that understanding comes from handbook and policy versus anecdotal sources? Does and should the conduct process impact the environment and culture of inclusion? How does our process compare to best practices within higher education? Is our practice effective?”

There has been a lot of con-fusion concerning the nature of change and the policy revision committee,” said Davis. “That is not correct,” she continued. “This is a committee set to review our process to determine what works well and the effectiveness of our model.”

Castanza agreed. “We are not looking at revisions to the student code per se,” she said. “Should the committee feel that is important we would make that recommendation to Dean Banks and Dean Davis, but the student code isn’t in the scope of this work group. We are looking at process, not policy.” She gave the example of the policy that candles are not allowed inside residence halls. “There is a process that happens if you are found to have a candle burning in your room. That process is the student conduct process, which is what this group is looking at,” she said.

Allie Berger ’13, hall president of Porter Hall and one of the Residential Life representatives on the committee, agreed with the intentions of the work group. “Personally, I think that the conduct review process (and even that wording is confusing) isn’t well coordinated or understood on campus,” she said.

Berger explained that it was not clear what consequences existed for specific infractions, whether social or academic. “I think the process as a whole needs to be looked at so that there can be more consistent and cohesive decisions made by students, staff and faculty together,” she said.

The work group will focus on “policies and protocols surrounding the Honor Code and violations of social conduct that are referred to the Honor Code Council, Residential Life policy violations and violations and inappropriate behaviors referred to the dean of students,” said Davis. “There is also an important intersection with the manner in which we respond to bias related incidents, reports of discrimination, and sexual assault/sexual harassment. Each of the later categories has a separate and distinct process for reporting and follow up.”

Davis also said that as the dean of students, it was her responsibility to address gender discrimination, sexual assault and disability. “It is my role to make the campus grievance process accessible to students so the College can proactively address these issues. I am concerned that students may not understand in intersections between the judicial process and the grievance process,” she said, citing this concern as a motivating factor in the decision to launch a review of the current conduct systems under the Residential Life director. “I asked the director of Residential Life to lead this review committee based on her experience with a variety of conduct systems and her fresh perspective to campus,” said Davis.

There is no specific outline for what this means for the Honor Code council. “The committee hasn’t yet met so we haven’t talked about existing processes and structures on campus,” said Castanza. “The current chair of the Honor Code Council is a member of the committee and I am confident she will bring that voice to the work of this group.”

However, there has been some concern about the effectiveness of the Honor Code Council. The recent billboard in Blanchard, asking students to write out their opinions on it suggests that there is interest in understanding the varying concerns regarding the Honor Code and the HCC.
“There have been issues with the Honor Code in the past few years, and I’m hoping that a part of what this committee can address will help to bring new ideas on how to revamp our Honor Code to make it effective again,” said Berger.

Berger said that she had some insight into the inconsistency of social and academic Honor Code violations, and therefore wanted to be involved in the conversation. She felt that joining the committee meant that she could participate in a forum to address the way student violations were dealt with on campus, an issue she cared about.

This does not necessarily translate to major changes. Berger added, “Personally, I value the Honor Code very highly and think that it needs to be addressed and potentially revamped so that it can work more effectively for students’ needs, but most definitely not done away with entirely.”

She continued, “The committee will be doing further outreach to gather information and opinions from the students and rest of campus community, but I also want to stress that any students who have opinions on this process should feel free to get in touch with me.”

The chair of the HCC, Kristen Koepsell ’12, and other Residential Life staff will also be a part of the committee. Davis emphasized that “student feedback sits at the core of this committee.”

Davis also said that the workgroup will include staff from Athletics, Student Programs, the Dean of Students office and the Academic Deans office. However, the final list of the committee’s members has yet to be made. Banks and Davis will not be on the committee, but will will rather serve as the sponsors who have oversight of the group. “I have no set agenda for change or plan to steer the questions of the committee,” said Davis, “My goal with this review is to receive feedback on what we currently have in place.”

“I hope the workgroup will continue to receive direction from Dean Banks and Dean Davis as we proceed,” said Castanza.

According to Davis, the process will look something like this: once the committee is finalized, it will work on developing a list of questions and focus areas to gather feedback. After coming up with a list of recommended changes as a result of thoroughly examining current policies, the committee will present and discuss these recommendations to the community before a final summary of their review.

“We will be developing a project plan which outlines our timeline and deadlines for the various tasks we see associated with this work,” added Castanza. Although there is no contingent deadline, Castanza said that she hoped to have the commmittee’s work completed by the end of the academic year so that any changes to the student conduct process can be implemented for Fall 2012.

Although a project plan has yet to be developed, Castanza said that it will include several opportunities for input and feedback.

Berger expressed an appreciation for the committee. “I think that when a new president comes in, and new staff come with her, that it’s a natural time to address policies and procedures,” said Berger. “We can get very stuck in tradition here, and ‘the way things have always been,’ and forget to critically analyze if we are going about things as well as we could be.”

Castanza continued the discussion. “We are starting from a place of asking questions,” she said. “What is working now, and what do people want us to consider as we engage in learning about other ways student conduct might be considered on our campus.”

Davis agreed. “Our work begins with a simply question, what is working with the current judicial process?” Castanza posed this question to SGA last week, and the process will continue into more discussions and focus groups.

Related posts:

1. Residential Life poses questions for SGA
2. SGA develops new commitee application process
3. Dean of College to leave office