The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 80, No. 9, Ed. 1 Friday, October 23, 1992 Page: 3 of 26
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OPINION
Honor Council revises penalty structure]
seeks consistent punishment of offenses
THE RICE THRESHER FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1992 3
To the editors,
The Honor Council established
consensus (standard) penalties sev-
eral years ago in an attempt to make
the penalties it handed out more con-
sistent. Though these penalties have
served the Rice community well, ex-
perience has shown some inherent
and consistent shortcomings. Hope-
fully, changing the basic framework
of the consensus penalties will reduce
some of these problems. The new
penalties are based upon a three tiered
system:
Repeat or Heinous violations:
Indefinite suspension
Major violations: F in the course and
1 year suspension
Minor violations: F in the course.
Heinous violations are extreme and
rare cases that may include but are not
limited to the following examples:
stealing a test, breaking into an office
or computer system with the intention
of changing grades or obtaining infor-
mation, or being a member of a large
scale conspiracy.
Cheating on any assignment that
must be completed without outside
resources is a major violation; the per-
centage of the total grade is inconse-
quential. Cheating on any assignment
worth more than 5 percent of the total
grade, regardless of whether or not
outside help is allowed, is also consid-
ered a major violation. Naturally, ma-
jor violations include all tests and qu i2-
zes.
Minor violations — the word mi-
nor does NOT indicate that these are
not serious — include only those as-
signments which are worth less than 5
percent of the grade AND permit out-
side assistance (i.e. texts, notes, other
students, etc.).
Although these changes to the con-
sensus penalties might appear to sig-
nificantly raise the punishments for
most offenses, they are actually more
a reflection of a change in procedure.
In the past, the consensus penalties
have been a starting point in the pun-
ishment deliberation process once an
accused's guilt was determined. The
Council could choose to go above or
below this consensus penalty. Under
the new system, however, the con-
sensus penalties will still be the start-
ing point in the punishment delibera-
tion, but they now represent the maxi-
mum penalty the Council will assess
for that particular violation (i.e. major,
minor, or heinous). If a mitigating
circumstance exists (like an uninten-
tional violation), the penalty will be
lowered accordingly. However, if no
mitigating circumstances exist, the
consensus penalty will not be less-
ened.
By establishing this new frame-
work for consensus penalties, the
Honor Council feels it will be able to
assess more aptly penalties that suit
the fundamental nature of the viola-
tions, thereby increasing overall con-
sistency.
Any questions or comments about
these penalties can be directed to the
Honor Council, c/o Dean Sarah
Burnett's Office - Campus Mail or to
any Honor Council member.
The Honor Council
Rice should put student-athletes first,
decisively leave the Southwest Conference
I am concerned with what happens
to some of the athletes once they are
admitted to Rice. How are they
academically constrained?
only two (myself included) had any
reservations about maintaining Divi-
sion I-A status. The report, it seemed,
could have been written in one after-
noon at the Pub. We knew what the
answers to our questions would be,
before anything had been done.
Progress on the issues was conspicu-
ously slow. A report, never seen by
the committee as a whole, was retro-
by Benjamin Hippen
"I come to bury Caesar, not to
praise him." So said Mark Antony.
While the Athletic Review Committee
(ARC) was not of the stature of Julius
himself, the demise of its labors is, I
think, something to be mourned. The
ARC was formed in an effort to review
the status of athletics here at Rice, and
deliver a report of recommendations
on a variety
of issues,
ranging
from ath-
letic admis-
sions poli-
cies and
perfor-
mance, to
finances.
Last spring,
it released
its 150-page report, with data on high
school transcripts of athletes, SAT
scores, HUMAandNSQ performance,
admissions data, and more. The finan-
cial section of the report detailed an
accumulated $4.6 million annual defi-
cit that the athletic department runs on
and painted a bleak and unlikely sce-
nario for alleviating, or even lowering
this operating deficit.
After the report was released, the
faculty made an initial statement and
formed a committee to put out a for-
mal response to the report's findings.
Meanwhile, athletics became a hot
topic among students, and the
Thresher had numerous weekly ar-
ticles on the ARC report, Division I
athletics, and the infamous Honor
Council case #6. Soon afterwards, the
Board of Governors met and voted to
maintain our status in Division I, and
in the Southwest Conference, making
any recommendation either the stu-
dents or faculty had to make essen-
tially moot. I-A was here, and here to
stay, end of discussion.
It wasn't the end of the discussion,
though. The faculty committee,
chaired by Thomas Haskell, is still
working on a faculty poll to gauge
opinion on this subject. The student
committee, on which I served, was
mandated to do much the same thing.
It did not. The results of a slapped-
together student poll were published
at the end of last year in a non-descr ipt
article in the Thresher. The results
showed a deep division among the
students as to whether or not Rice
should stay in I-A. Even those respon-
dents who supported staying in I-A
expressed reservations about the sta-
tus quo, and the added comments
were enlightening as to how deep
loyalties to our present athletic pro-
gram ran. Unfortunately, these poll
results are now nowhere to be found.
The student committee to review
the ARC report and provide a student
response was instrumental not in kill-
ing this issue, but certainly providing
for it a peaceful euthanasia. As the
publicity, local and national, began to
fade, so too did the interest of the
committee in pursuing its mandated
goal. Several committee members have
now graduated, and all but two or
three members were on the Student
Association (SA). A preliminary infor-
mal poll of the members showed that
Rice is touted as having the best
academic reputation in the SWC,
but that's like being the nicest
murderer in the cell block.
actively written by the committee chair,
and submitted to the SA for approval.
Maybe it was written one afternoon at
the Pub.
Perhaps I am too personally in-
volved with this issue to be objective
about it anymore. I am certain to get a
few personal and formal responses to
this article. However, I want to make
one thing particularly clear. This is not
an endeavor to punish, degrade, or in
any way defame Rice athletes them-
The Rice Forum.
selves. It may appear that way, but to
accept it in this vein is patently false.
Some students have expressed their
concern to me that their diploma is
being devalued by the presence of
athletes at this university. That is ri-
diculous. Your diploma is what you
make it and how you attain it. If any-
one can demonstrate to me how a B . A.
in political science affects the credibil-
ity or substance of a B.S. in electrical
engineering, I would be most eager to
listen. Athletes, like the rest of us, are
making their way towards a degree in
their own way, and we ought to re-
spect their choices, as we expect them
to respect our choices.
My interest is not to lay blame on
the athletes for the problems the ath-
letic department has created. Rather, I
am concerned with what happens to
some of the athletes once they are
admitted to Rice. How are they aca-
demically constrained' Is it reason-
able to suggest that a student entering
with an 850 SAT and 15 core courses
from high school might not be ready
to meet the standards set by the Rice
curriculum? Is it elitist to suggest that
some of these students will have their
self-esteem crushed in the classroom?
Is it fair to assume that being placed on
a track of less demanding courses
might translate, for some, into a nega-
tive self-worth?
Is this univer-
sity, therefore,
doing a service
to these ath-
letes?
Last year, I
spoketoafresh-
man athlete,
whose name
and sport 1
won't mention, who had decided to
transfer. I quickly liked him after he
told the student committee he had
discovered philosophy in much the
same way I had. He expressed regret
that the constraints of his sport and his
inadequate high school preparation
left him unprepared, but not unwill-
ing, to learn more about what he had
discovered. He considered his first
See Athletics, page 5
The Clinton - Bush
Debate... a final look
at the issues.
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Kim, Leezie & Carson, Chad. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 80, No. 9, Ed. 1 Friday, October 23, 1992, newspaper, October 23, 1992; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245822/m1/3/: accessed June 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.