Ah, the power of a young person who believes that his cause is just. Baylor University’s Student Judicial Board may only preside over the small pond of Baptist college in Waco, Texas, but it still affects lives.
Baylor University’s student judicial board issued a no-contact order to members of the student newspaper on Thursday — an attempt to limit coverage of a student disciplinary case.
Junior Cody Coll, who was confirmed as the Baylor University Student Court court’s chief justice last week, said the order is within his jurisdiction, though he was “unsure” if prior chief justices have issued similar orders to student publications in the past.
“It’s within the purview of the chief justice to instruct the justices to not communicate with the media,” he said. “It’s also within the jurisdiction of the court to issue an order such as the one that was issued yesterday.”
That’s a remarkably pompous thing to say for a junior in college. In fairness, Cody Coll may be full of his “jurisdiction,” but he’s still just a junior in college.* Not even a 2L, with the concomitant belief that he’s almost a law-talking guy so he knows stuff. Indeed, it appears from the above that he doesn’t quite understand what he’s done.
The order disallows “contact with any member of the Court” regarding a recent student case except for procedural and substantive questions. According to the order, newspaper staffers’ violation “may result in the party being held in contempt of court” and referred to the dean for judicial affairs for further proceedings.
In other words, he didn’t order his fellow “justices” to shut up, but the press to have made no attempt to contact the justices upon pain of “contempt of court.” What that means in Baylor terms isn’t clear; maybe they can’t attend the Friday night sock hop? Whatever.
The Baylor student newspaper, The Lariat, condemned Coll’s order.
On Thursday, news editor Jonathan Platt wrote an opinion piece for The Lariat, condemning the student court’s “gag order.”
“Here’s my ‘intentional contact’ to all who attempt to silence journalists, at Baylor and abroad: My pursuit to report is constitutionally protected and intimidation will not stop me,” he wrote. “Try, but I’ll be dead before I stop this work.”
Yeah, dead might be taking things a bit too far. Then again, this is Waco, so you never know.
But the hyperbole, pomposity and general silliness of this order reflects a deeper issue, and one that isn’t silly at all. These student disciplinary boards are the groups deciding some very serious issues for their fellow students, issues that could have substantial impact on the rest of their lives.
Like what, you ask? How about like whether a student is branded a rapist, expelled from school, deprived of the possibility of being admitted to another school, loss of the monies spent on tuition, and relegated to a future where a determination by someone like Chief Justice Cody follows him through the rest of his life. Yes, the same Chief Justice Cody who thinks he has the “jurisdiction” to silence his student newspaper because . . . reasons.
There has been a great deal of discussion here and elsewhere as to the burdens of proof, the definitions (or, as I constantly note, lack thereof) of what constitutes a college disciplinary offense for rape and sexual assault in the Age of Feelings. Ultimately, the decision ends up in the hands of Chief Justice Skippy Cody.
Advocates of the use of internal college discipline to punish males trivialize the effect of these proceedings. It’s not like they go to prison, or have to pay a money judgment, right? Wrong. There are very serious consequences. There are the immediate consequences, being expelled from college and branded a rapist. This is disastrous, and the efforts to trivialize them belie the deceit of those advocates.
Then there are the long term consequences of a person whose future will be dictated by the decision. Let’s be slightly close to honest about this: if this was being done to women, they would be protesting in the streets. The claim that this is inconsequential is outrageously dishonest.
So the dirty little secret aspect is that decisions that have huge impacts on people’s lives are made by guys like Chief Justice Cody, no doubt very serious about his “jurisdiction,” but also utterly clueless as a college junior.
While lawyers and the feminist “experts” who are in the process of going to law school may debate the question of the appropriate burden of proof, such matters fail to take into account the more pedestrian issue of “weight and sufficiency” of the evidence. At its base, decisions of “guilt” (in quotes because the language varies from school to school, but it ultimately relates to whether some guy did it or not) are decided by college kids who view the evidence through their personal lens. For some, the “survivor’s” word is enough. For others, it’s more than enough, no matter when uttered or how “imperfect” a victim she may be.
When the questions put before a student judicial court are limited to academic matters, there is a greater tolerance for their ability to be fair. Questions like plagiarism don’t carry the political baggage of rape. It’s serious, but certainly not of the level of rape. For crying out loud, rape is a horrific crime. A big red “rape” stamp on a student’s transcript is no joke.
What is a joke is that a guy, who has yet to learn that his jurisdiction is not so great that he gets to silence newspapers because it seemed like a good idea to him, has the ability to destroy other people’s lives. Except it’s not the funny sort of joke. Not funny at all.
* When I was in college, I was appointed to the student disciplinary board. I took the responsibility very seriously, and did my best to be fair and thoughtful. In retrospect, I was utterly clueless, but very serious about it.
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Well, that’s why you’re the lawyer and he’s just the Chief rule-interpreting guy.
When I was in college, we didn’t have “disciplinary boards”,… none that I was aware of. Either (i) I’m dating myself, or (ii) I was simpley “unaware”. In any case, we didn’t really need them back then, because we were all such good boys, … and handsome as well. Plagiarism! What’s that? Rape! No Way, Jose.
Let’s hope this Cody fellow never becomes a real judge. Judges like that we don’t need; “justice” we need,… just us, not you bullies at Baylor. Now there’s a turn of phrase which might start something really big in wacky Waco.
Today’s boyz will be girls if they keep this up.
Don’t be a hater, Bill. Boyz are just more sensitive these days. And being girls isn’t a bad thing.
You need to get out there and play the field, bro.
I had to read this a couple of times – can it be true that in US colleges other students can form a “court” and judge a fellow student guilty or innocent of something as serious as rape?
It sounds like something out of “Lord of the flies”. How can that possibly be allowed to happen?
I’m guessing if there was actual evidence such as a rape kit the student would be in front of a real court.
You clearly haven’t been paying attention. No, this isn’t the “rape kit” sort of rape. This is the “we were both drinking and had consensual sex, but a few months later, I decided I didn’t really want to have sex, so he raped me” sort of rape.
Schools can pursue disciplinary actions for code of conduct violations. At the last institution I worked for, most of these were for cheating or plagiarism and most of the rest were for serving alcohol to minors at parties (not underage, which was normally given a blind eye – minors). All of these are handled the same way. If you were expelled (which is rare), your transcript had F’s for the semester with a note of expulsion for either academic (plagiarism or cheating) or non-academic code of conduct violations. After however many years it was, these could be changed to incompletes. The need to explain to any other schools why you were expelled for X number of years was considered part of the punishment.
Schools can expel you, businesses can fire you, landlords can evict you and professional organizations can terminate your membership. You don’t need law enforcement to make your life difficult. All of these groups have their own rules for doing so and it comes down to the judgement of a few high ups and maybe some peers. Which brings me to what I find most interesting here…
SHG: “decisions of “guilt” (in quotes because the language varies from school to school, but it ultimately relates to whether some guy did it or not) are decided by college kids who view the evidence through their personal lens”
How different is this from law enforcement? Police, prosecutors, judges and jurors all do this through their personal and (I am perfectly comfortable saying) often deeply biased lens. Law enforcement technically has a higher standard of proof but, let’s face it, proof is proof. If someone has a photograph of you breaking the rules, you will be disciplined by the college committee under preponderance of evidence or whatever and found guilty beyond reasonable doubt in court. If the evidence is crap such as a confession by trickery after extended interrogation, you will be disciplined or convicted just the same.
“guessing if there was actual evidence such as a rape kit the student would be in front of a real court”
Speaking as someone who worked at a company that developed assays used on rape kits and a personal friend of the lead researchers who told me the stories of their interactions with police, prosecutors, defense attorneys and attorneys for accusers… Having a rape kit only means anything if the police are actually willing to collect the evidence/use the kit, the police don’t botch up the evidence, the hospital actually follows rape kit directions (don’t even get me started on the examples of sheer incompetence), the prosecutor actually understands it (less of a problem now than in the early days), law enforcement is interested in the case and the victim does not decide to “improve” the story to the point the case can no longer be prosecuted for lack of a credible witness. Customer service in that area is an absolute nightmare. “Oh, we kept the vaginal swab in a room temperature locker for 7 weeks. If this guy gets away with it it is on your consciences!”
Good points, but too much in one comment. Brevity has its virtues.
True. It is 3 comments and I could not decide which two to delete (and I got interrupted before deciding). I figured if i wrote enough there will be at least one statement in it for everyone to hate.
You may have missed the mark on that hate thing.
What is a lariot?
Uh, a typo? My turn. What is a dickwad?
Me , of course, typing on a smaller device than usual without glasses, and trying to limit punctuation.
I put my glasses on, and that seemed to fix the spelling somehow, but I still see a dickwad in the mirror. What should I…
Hey, wait a minute, that seems kinda rude — exactly what sort of advice columnist are you, anyway?
Depends. Are you as good as Barleycorn?
No one is as good as Barleycorn.
I might prefer to take my chances with Chief Justice Cody than with college administrators. But either is a good argument that universities should get out of the business of this kind of discipline.
CJ Coll has already rescinded the order. https://twitter.com/bulariat/status/565401742914105344/photo/1
I’m flabbergasted. Like a real court opinion. I can’t even.
I had thought that college juniors are often pompous or otherwise anxious to show how “grown up” they are. One can hope that they, like you, will grow out of it. Besides, better on Baylor’s student court than on, oh, just for a silly example, Alabama’s Supreme Court.
Having read the various links, it appears that this is essentially Baylor’s constitutional court; it deals with cases involving the student government and student groups, but does not have anything to do with students accused of violating the honor code (which is where I assume rape allegations are covered). The larger point still holds, but CJ Cody won’t be ruling on any sexual assaults.
Just between us: It’s really not about this CJ Cody, but all the CJ Cody’s out there.
Oh, sure, it’s just that this type is a little different. I went to to grad school at UNC, and there was an honor court and supreme court there as well. Those on the supreme court were either in law school or looking to get in to law school. Their motivations seemed somewhat different from the honor court types. The fact that the supreme court heard less than one case on average also made them nearly irrelevant.
These are some very scary words. Very, very scary.
We half-expect college kids to screw up. This part is not news.
But where is the supervisor for the program? In this case it must, of course, be a lawyer. If there was no proper oversight it would be an extraordinary act of recklessness by the university.
So what you’re trying to say is that you weren’t on a judicial board in college.
If we had a student judicial board, I was completely unaware of it. We did have a student council that I was on, however, and I think we had the authority to order paper clips.
Good times.