Nicole Wilkinson (3L)
The academic offense process basically goes something like this:
First, a university staff member (usually a professor, TA or an exam proctor) becomes suspicious that a student might have committed an academic offense. This might be because a paper seems like it might have been plagiarized or because an exam proctor caught a student with a cell phone during a closed book exam. Typically the staff member will then speak with the student–the professor might call the student in for a meeting to have them try to explain the suspicious activity, or the exam proctor will confiscate the cell phone and then have the student sign an Acknowledgment form confirming that they had a cell phone during the exam.
Then, if the staff still thinks an academic offense has been committed, they report it to the Dean of the Faculty, who follows up by calling the student in for something called a Dean’s Meeting. At a Dean’s Meeting, the student can either plead guilty or not guilty (or not plead at all). If the student pleads guilty the Dean has the option of recommending a sanction to resolve the matter at this level – the Dean is only allowed to recommend a maximum sanction of one year’s suspension. This recommendation goes to the Provost, who either confirms the Dean’s recommendation, in which case the matter’s done with, or declines it and charges the student, in which case the matter moves on to the next step. If the student doesn’t plead guilty, the Dean will recommend to the Provost either that the matter be dropped (if the Dean doesn’t think an offense occurred) or will recommend that charges be laid and the matter move on to the next level.
If charges are laid against a student, they move on to the Tribunal level. They’ll be notified that the Provost has decided to lay charges against them, and they’ll receive a disclosure packet from a very skilled and highly paid lawyer at Paliare Roland that the University has hired to prosecute them. The student will then appear before a 3-person panel at Tribunal, where what is essentially a full trial will be conducted, complete with witnesses who are examined and cross-examined, and exhibits that are presented before the panel. The panel then deliberates on the student’s guilt (you’ll be unsurprised to hear that the vast majority of students are convicted if they get to the Tribunal stage). Then the student and the Paliare Roland lawyer will have the opportunity to make sanctioning submissions, after which the panel will again deliberate before imposing the final sanction against the student.
While the process itself might seem straightforward, it’s full of pitfalls for the poor students that get caught up in it.
First, the email requesting the student attend a Dean’s Meeting makes it seem very casual and informal, which lulls many a student into a false sense regarding how serious this meeting should be taken. Many students don’t even think to bring a legal representative with them to these meetings, and oftentimes end up saying far more than they should because they think it will help their case. And since everything they say can be used against them at Tribunal, the Dean’s Meeting often comes back to bite them.
Second, consider for a moment the vast inequality of power between the prosecutors in this situation – highly paid Paliare Roland lawyers that can include a named partner at this top-notch litigation firm – and students, many of whom are self-represent at Tribunal. Most students can’t afford to hire a lawyer, and even if they could, there aren’t many lawyers that practice in university affairs. While DLS has a division for these kinds of offenses and take on all University of Toronto students, the University Affairs division is the smallest department at DLS and there frequently aren’t enough caseworkers for the number of students calling in. Which means that most of the time, you’ve got a scared student representing themselves at Tribunal against a top-notch litigator. (Consider also the amount of money that U of T is blowing to pay for these Paliare Roland lawyers–you can be sure they’re getting paid a pretty penny to prosecute these cases!).
Third, there needs to be some serious examination of the kinds of students that are most frequently caught up in the academic offense process. The vast majority of the students who are accused of academic offenses are visible-minority students. They are also typically international students or students who are recent immigrants to Canada. This acts as a further disadvantage because English often isn’t their native language and they’re unfamiliar with our legal proceedings. It also raises serious questions about why such a gross disproportion of students accused of offenses are minorities. This is something that U of T seriously needs to look into – international students either aren’t being made properly aware of the rules for academic conduct at U of T, or they’re being unfairly targeted for academic offenses, whether purposefully or unconsciously.
Finally, there are serious procedural concerns regarding the increase in sanctions from the Dean’s level to the Tribunal level. If a student accused of having a cell phone during an exam is sanctioned at the Dean’s level, s/he’d probably get a decrease in grade, for the exam or maybe for the course itself. At worst, the student is probably looking at a failing grade for the class. If that same student went to Tribunal though, s/he is probably looking at a minimum 1 to 2 year suspension on top of a failing grade in the course, even if s/he pleads guilty at the Tribunal level. This automatic increase in the severity of sanction from Dean’s level to Tribunal level exerts a lot of pressure on students to plead guilty at the Dean’s level even if they are innocent, just to avoid the possibility of some extremely severe punishments if they try to protest their innocence. There’s no good rationale for this increase in sanction severity, except maybe that the University wants to discourage students from getting to the Tribunal level in order to save the University time and money. In my opinion, this isn’t nearly good enough of a reason for compromising the fairness of the process.
While I’m sure none of us protest the need to have some way of ensuring that academic offenses are investigated and punished, there are some problematic features of the current process that U of T really needs to address.
