Dissecting discipline

Inside the third floor conference room in West College, students, faculty and administrators meet at a wooden oval table. Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan sits at one end, and the chair at the other end is left open. The group gathered here decides the disciplinary fate of a student, who will soon enter the room and fill the empty chair across from Deignan.

"It [is] very difficult for students who are accused to defend themselves properly," said Wilson School professor Stanley Katz, who said he represented about five students potentially facing disciplinary action in the 1980s. "There's a burden of assumption of guilt."

The Faculty-Student Committee on Discipline, which is a separate entity from the student-run Honor Committee, adjudicates all behavioral breaches and most academic violations. The only violation under the Honor Committee's jurisdiction is cheating on an in-class exam.

Unlike the Honor Committee, the COD includes faculty in addition to students.

Charles Nabrit '02, a student-member of the committee, never envisioned himself enforcing University regulations. But after he was thrust into the limelight of the disciplinary process when his twin brother was called before the committee last spring, Nabrit became increasingly interested in University discipline.

"The whole incident got me interested in the administrative side, particularly about discipline because I have a unique perspective," he said.

Nabrit decided to apply for a position on the COD. He was accepted, and since that time has participated in five hearings. Though disciplinary violations usually amount to 250 to 300 cases per year, fewer than 20 ever come before the COD. Most violations, except academic misdeeds and egregious acts, are adjudicated by directors of studies in the residential colleges.

The number of cases reported to the COD or Residential College Disciplinary Board dropped to the lowest levels in more than a decade last year, according to the annual discipline report, compiled last October by Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students and COD secretary Marianne Waterbury. And the total has fallen steadily in the past four years from 323 to 278 to 246 and finally to 195 last year.

One reason why the total number of cases has reached this nadir is that the number of alcohol violations has decreased significantly from 1999 to 2000, explained Deignan, who chairs the committee and was its secretary for 17 years. The current secretary is Waterbury. According to the annual reports, the sum of all alcohol violations was sliced in half from 112 to 56 in 1999. This was the first time this total fell below 100 in more than a decade.

This drop comes in the wake of a new University alcohol policy that boasts stricter penalties for repeat offenders.

"I am optimistic that the increase in penalties has impacted at least some kinds of behavior," Deignan said. "It could be that students don't want to absorb more serious penalties. One could speculate that people are not drinking as abusively."

She noted that the Discipline Committee is seeing a similar decrease in alcohol violations this year. "We've seen fewer infractions as of January 1 this year than last year," Deignan said, adding that the coinciding drop in disorderly conduct infractions — from 57 in 1998-1999 to 32 last year — has influenced her belief that the stricter alcohol policy has been successful in curbing on-campus drinking.

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Despite last year's comparatively low total, however, the number of severe penalties the committee dealt out — such as suspension, required withdrawal and expulsion — was the highest since 1993. In 1993 the committee issued those severe penalties for 4 percent of the cases it heard. Last year, it issued such penalties for 6 percent.

The COD suspended 11 students last year — all for academic violations — and required one to withdraw for drug possession. Deignan explained that because these serious penalties are issued so infrequently, variation from year to year is common because a few cases involving several students can easily inflate the total.

"Eighteen months does not a trend make," she said. "I think the number of suspensions has been fairly steady."

Expulsions are extremely rare for the University. The discipline committee has expelled just three students since Deignan became secretary in 1984. During that same time, however, no students were expelled by the Honor Committee.

According to an article in The Daily Princetonian, the sophomore was suspended for the 1996-1997 academic year for plagiarizing a paper. After returning to the University, he received a disorderly conduct violation for allegedly yelling derogatory remarks at a faculty member, according to Deignan. And soon after that incident, the student allegedly attempted to shoplift a bottle from a local liquor store.

The last student the COD expelled received the penalty in the early spring of 1998.

Penalties are one difference in the University's bifurcated discipline system where some academic violations go to a student-run Honor Committee and others to a faculty-student Discipline Committee.

"It's one of those quirks of history that we have two separate discipline systems for similar violations," USG academics chair Jeff Gelfand '01 said.

In addition to different compositions and penalties, these committees run under different procedures and traditions.

For example, accused students before the Honor Committee can choose only a Princeton undergraduate to represent them. But those who go before the COD can have graduate students, coaches or even professors advise them.

"It was very well-known that I was legally trained," said Katz, who was frequently asked by students to provide counsel when he was master of Rockefeller College.

Like the Honor Committee, the COD has not been immune to change. Amendments regarding more flexible penalties and altering the appeals process have occurred in the past decade.

Perhaps the most significant difference between the committees is their compositions. Whereas the Honor Committee consists only of undergraduate students, the COD comprises students, faculty and administrators.

Deignan emphasized the need for long-term members of the committee to make such serious decisions. "The experience one develops over the years is very helpful in making sound judgements about things that aren't written in Rights, Rules, Responsibilities," she said, adding that Waterbury acts as a "procedural watchdog" for the committee, sitting on the committee without a vote.

Though most Honor Committee decisions are appealed to President Shapiro, Deignan said students rarely appeal discipline committee decisions. And only one student ever has sued the University for a decision made by the COD.

Gabrielle Napolitano '82, a recruited basketball player and Rhodes Scholar nominee with a 3.7 GPA, was accused of plagiarizing a term paper that she had to write for her SPA 341 class about Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "Cien Años de Soledad," according to court records of the case. After Napolitano's professor Sylvia Molloy approached the COD, the committee unanimously ruled that Napolitano had included sections verbatim from "Cien Años de Soledad: Una Interpretación" by Josefina Ludmer.

According to court records, Napolitano appealed to President Bowen for clemency. Bowen upheld the decision, and she sued the University Board of Trustees on 14 counts including procedural violations by the committee, and, under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, defamation and invasion of privacy.

The trial judge ordered a rehearing by the COD, and again Napolitano was found guilty. Finding that the committee had proven evidence of plagiarism, the judge upheld the suspension, invoking Princeton's right as an academic institution to enforce disciplinary regulations on its students — a similar ruling to another case, Robert Clayton v. the Trustees of Princeton University, which stemmed from a contested Honor Committee decision.

The differences between the two committees, which adjudicate similar violations, have been a concern for many students. Some see the benefits of having an all-student judicial body while others believe faculty members are necessary for such critical decisions.

"Some students find it disconcerting to have a panel of students passing judgement on another fellow student," Gelfand said. But, he added, "There's something appealing about peers judging their peers."