Honor Code finally approved by senate
After months of work, revamping and deliberation, the Faculty Senate passed the Academic Council’s changes to the student code.
Changes to the code include a student pledge of academic integrity and an honor board made up of students and faculty where cases of academic dishonesty could be sent to if a faculty member was seeking harder sanctions against the student than they could give.
Andy Haws, academic vice president made revisions to the code changes such as focusing more solely on academic integrity than moral behavior and changed some wording to make the code more clear as requested by the Faculty Senate.
Some faculty members still had concerns however.
Bonnie Glass-Coffin, anthropology professor, presented alternate revisions to the code including changes in the wording of the pledge to only include a reference to academic integrity and not honor as well as the Honor Board only being advisory and cases of academic honesty continuing to go up the academic arm of the institution.
Vice Provost Joyce Kinkead said the deans of the colleges are happy to welcome the opportunity for the judicial system on campus to be more centralized.
The code will next go before the Associated Students of Utah State University Executive Council. Sometime around March 19, an open forum will be held on the issue for students to attend, ask questions and voice concerns, Haws said.
“I think concurrently we’ll continue to run an educational campaign so that the students understand the code and I think they’ll completely endorse it,” he said.
If the code is passed by the Executive Council, it will then be presented to Vice President Patricia Terrell and President Kermit L. Hall and if passed again will go to the Board of Trustees on April 12.
The code will go into effect if passed by the Board of Trustees Haws said
Members of the ASUSU Executive Council Jenn Putnam, Preston Frischknect, Michelle Larson and Rachel Von Neiderhauser also presented a report identifying student’s perspectives of Utah State University’s reputation, customer service, affordability, courses and diversity. The council interviewed different students and classes on the various subjects to come up with concerns students might have in the hopes of being able to fix some of those things and better USU.
Students identified the overall college experience at USU as good, but listed USU’s lack of prestige and low number of undergraduate research opportunities as concerns. In the area of service, students polled said they were impressed with the time professors made available to them for additional help as well as being impressed with the services for international and multicultural students.
However, many students reported not enough assistance from their advisers, unfriendly cashiers, problems at the Registrar’s Office and a lack of recreational activities.
Cost-wise, most students said they understood and appreciated USU’s tuition being very low comparably to other universities nationwide. A main cost concern of students was the lack of on- and off-campus work opportunities. Students interviewed also reported being happy USU has nationally-ranked programs and Carnegie professors but are worried about how hard it is to get into certain general education courses.
The presentation also addressed diversity issues such as social activities for international students’ and married students’ needs. Married students make up half of the population at Utah State, President Hall said. The council also gave out a handout to the Faculty Senate listing all the student perspectives they identified as well as university initiatives to help solve the problems.
President Hall also responded to rumors that he was leaving Utah State.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I didn’t come to leave.”