When you don’t honor the code, there will be consequences for you and the surrounding community. However, do the traditional student conduct procedures offer students the opportunity to learn about their violations? Most of the time, they don’t. The Restorative Justice (RJ) Program at DU does. DU should expand this program to give students the opportunity to grow from their experiences and provide a high-impact practice for the university.
The program is an alternative to the traditional student conduct procedures at DU. Eligible students are those who “take active responsibility for their actions” and “exhibit a desire to learn about and address the impact of their actions, and to move forward positively from the incident by addressing a community need,” according to the RJ Program website. Students can choose to utilize the program by participating in a Restorative Justice Conference (RJC).
The RJC has three phases: The first phase is Pre-Conference Preparation, in which the student meets with an RJ Program advisor to reflect on the incident and gather a list of affected parties to engage in the discussion.
The second phase, the RJC itself, is an approximately 2-hour round-table discussion where the student discusses his or her perspective with 6-8 participants — typically affected parties, community members and student conduct representatives. The student is allowed to bring a support person (perhaps another student) to speak on character. All participants voluntarily participate. In the RJC, the student develops an appropriate outcome given the community’s consequences.
The final stage, Outcome Implementation Follow-up, includes a meeting between the student and RJ Program representative to ensure the student has the necessary support to complete the decided outcome.
“The student is involved in taking ownership and learning,” said RJ Program Coordinator Maggie Lea.
Clearly, the program is beneficial. Rather than assigning a pre-determined outcome, students engage in how their actions have affected the greater community, especially in ways they might not have otherwise recognized. It is a learning process, rather than simply a disciplinary process.
In addition, students who complete the program will have their violation kept confidentially from their academic records, so it will not affect future admissions or employment.
“[We are] trying to reinvest in the community,” said Lea, regarding the selected outcomes of the programs. These student-selected outcomes are designed specifically to “address and repair harm, rebuild relationships, and repair community trust,” according to Lea. Community involvement throughout the process helps to increase understanding of student issues to the surrounding community.
As a result of the student and community engagement, the RJ Program is incredibly successful. Through traditional student conduct procedures at DU, recidivism (the percentage of students who violate the honor code after undergoing student conduct at least once already) lies at 33 percent, while through the RJ Program, it is a much lower 6 percent. Although this could be partially due to the nature of eligible students, the difference is great enough to suggest that this program has very positive effects on the students involved so far.
The program is considered a “high-impact practice” in higher education a cohort of learning practices including study abroad, living and learning communities and undergraduate research. These are proven to provide students with multi-faceted learning opportunities not offered through typical classes, essential to productive higher education because prices of higher education demand greater opportunities within programs.
According to Lea, the RJ Program is currently funded through the Undergraduate Student Government. It has been a pilot program for the past 2 and a half years, serving a total of 36 cases. However, the program has been proven effective at DU and should expand in the coming years. In order to expand, DU administration should provide direct funds to the program. This will demonstrate support of high-impact practices and ensure the program will have permanent funding (and success) within the university.
