Skylar Koon was caught twice drinking as a minor and once stealing from the Fire ‘n Spice Grill in the residence halls, he said.
As punishment, he paid hundreds of dollars in fines and was required to take a diversion class designed to teach him why underage drinking is dangerous.
But his punishment didn’t stop at the Eugene Municipal Court.
The University freshman also violated the Student Conduct Code, a list of rules that all University students must follow. For violating the code, Koon estimates he has paid the University approximately $105 and attended the University’s version of diversion, a class called Choices.
The conduct code, which has been around for at least 80 years, has undergone significant revisions during the past 12 years. The University Senate will vote on the newest draft of the document Wednesday.
The code is a set of rules aimed at instilling values in students beyond the basic standards set by criminal law. It also spells out the processes for dealing with and punishing offending students.
Some students have questioned the need for a conduct code punishing students for violations off campus when city, state and federal justice systems already exist for people who break the law.
But people in favor of conduct codes say attending a university is voluntary and that a university is a community of people who should be held to a higher standard.
Courts have consistently favored having a conduct code but do not define what a conduct code entails. Most of the nation’s universities and colleges base their code on the Model Student Conduct Code, which includes punishments for students’ violations committed off campus.
Institutions in the Oregon University System have the discretion to write their own conduct codes, an authority granted by the state. These institutions don’t have to follow many of the laws that other state agencies must follow when revoking rights or privileges.
That discretion underlies much of the current debate on campus surrounding the revisions to the University’s current conduct code.
Debating the need for codes
Students approached on campus and judicial affairs experts disagree on whether the code should apply to off-campus crimes.
University student Karl Gunther believes students should be accountable to the law, not necessarily the University’s code, if they break the law off campus. But in some off-campus incidents, such as instances of rape or assault with a deadly weapon, the University could step in and punish students, he said.
“What you do in your own time is your own responsibility,”
Gunther said. “I mean, you’re accountable for your own actions on your own time … That’d almost be kind of like Big Brother trying to dictate what you do, or what you can and can’t do.”
University student Jongwon Kim isn’t completely familiar with U.S. standards and laws, he said, but he believes an off-campus incident should be judged by society’s standards, not necessarily a university’s.
A student’s personal life isn’t related to their academic life, and a university should govern the behavior of students on campus, he said.
Federal and state courts around the country have repeatedly upheld universities’ right to administer student conduct codes. The updated Model Student Conduct Code, published in 2004, contains many of the legal cases supporting a university’s right to have a conduct code.
Eight in 10 of the country’s universities and colleges use the Model Student Conduct Code as the basis of their conduct codes, said attorney Edward Stoner, who wrote the code in 1990 and specializes in higher education judicial affairs.
“It’d be a shame if a university had no rules and was trying to still create an educational environment conducive to learning,” Stoner said. “Can you imagine a university only having the ability to call police when a student misbehaves?”
“What a conduct code is attempting to do is say, as a member of our community, we have higher standards than maybe society as a whole,” said Chris Loschiavo, director of Student Judicial Affairs.
“If the University’s mission is to create sort of global citizens, responsible citizens, then we need to hold students responsible and have a community that has higher standards,” Loschiavo said.
Oregon University System universities are considered government agencies but are exempt from the Administrative Procedures Act, a law regulating state procedures for taking away a citizen’s right or privilege.
Instead, universities and colleges have the ability to create their own procedures for disciplining students.
Changes to the code
The current debate over changes to the code centers on three main issues: if and when the University can punish students for certain off-campus incidents, when legal representation is allowed, and how to define mediators’ roles in enforcing the code.
The revised code reflects a shift away from the legalistic philosophy in the current code – a contentious one modeled after the criminal justice system – to an educational one that aims to develop a student’s character.
Even the name of the Office of Student Judicial Affairs will change to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards if the revised code passes.
Many of the revisions are based on the Model Student Conduct Code, Loschiavo said.
The process of revising the current code began more than a decade ago in response to a student-led initiative to expand the University’s jurisdiction to cover incidents of sexual violence, said Lisa Freinkel, chairwoman of an ad hoc faculty committee in charge of finishing the revised code.
“The current code felt like it was simply taking the criminal or civil law code and plumping it down in the middle of the University environment,” Freinkel said. “That seemed counterproductive and also seemed just at odds with what a university should be.
“That made a lot of people think about other ways in which the code was not responsive to community needs,” Freinkel said. “So we started talking about issues of violence, not just sexual violence, but violence itself.”
The University Senate, an advisory body made up of faculty members, will vote on the changes Wednesday when its ad hoc committee presents the latest draft. Originally, the Senate sub-committee in charge of revising the code comprised four faculty and four students. At the end of last school year, the sub-committee had failed to produce a final version for the full Senate to vote on because it couldn’t reach consensus on certain changes.
The current ad hoc committee was created by then-Senate President Andrew Marcus and comprised four faculty and one student. The ad hoc committee’s job was to finalize the changes for a full
Senate vote by the end of this school year, current Senate President Peter Keyes said. Over the past seven months, the ad hoc committee has met with student government leaders and their adviser, Hilary Berkman, the seven-year director of the Office of Student Advocacy, faculty and students to elicit feedback on the revisions.
Under the current code, the University can prosecute off-campus incidents of sexual violence and incidents of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism or cheating. The revised code broadens the University’s ability to discipline students’ off-campus violations when the alleged misconduct “involved violence or produced a reasonable fear of physical harm,” the revised code says.
The ad hoc committee removed the requirement that the alleged victim be a member of the campus community in order to punish the accused student.
Definitions of sexual misconduct have also been revised. Instead of “rape” and “sexual assault,” sexual misconduct is defined as “unwanted penetration” and “nonconsensual personal contact,” according to the revised code.
Giving consent for sex has also been more explicitly defined under the revised code, which states that a person under “the influence of a c
ontrolled or other intoxicating substance” may be incapable of giving consent.
That means that under the revised code, a student can be found responsible of sexual misconduct if the partner shows that he or she was too drunk to give consent.
Tony Rosta, a personal defense attorney in Eugene who has represented students in conduct hearings before, said that if you define sexual misconduct as sex between two drunken people, that includes a lot of people.
“If one of them chooses to regret the incident, that person is now deemed to be a victim of violence,” he said.
Under the current conduct code, students are allowed to have a lawyer or adviser represent them at both formal and informal conduct hearings, and the lawyer or adviser may cross-examine the other party.
Under the revised code, the only oral comment a lawyer or adviser may make during a hearing is a closing statement. He or she may also answer questions posed by the mediator or hearings board. The revised code requires the permission of the accuser and accused for a lawyer or adviser to question the other party.
Those changes, and the changes to the definition of sex crimes, make it easier for students to falsely accuse other students, Rosta said.
Berkman represents students during conduct hearings and advises student government on policy changes at the University.
She is also concerned about the lessening of legal representation at hearings.
“An accused student should always have the opportunity to question his or her accuser,” Berkman wrote in an e-mail to members of the ASUO. “Fear of cross-examination has been overwhelmingly addressed by eliminating cross-examination. Eliminating the presence or questioning of a material witness is too accommodating.”
“(The revisions are) silencing them in a way that truncates their (lawyers’) ability to be an effective advocate,” Berkman said in an interview.
Lessening lawyers’ presence in the process was one of the main goals of the revisions, Loschiavo said.
“I think it’s really important that students have to speak for themselves and say, you know, ‘here’s what I was thinking on the night in question, or the day in question, here’s what happened from my perspective,’” Loschiavo said. “Then allow the hearing body to decide.
“And the more often we can use peers, I also think that’s more educational for students,” he said. “It’s not just me telling the student what you did is wrong and here’s why, here’s how it impacted the community, but instead the community itself is saying that.
“In our current process, the committee doesn’t – especially with an attorney involved – doesn’t get to do a whole lot of that,” he said. “They’re mostly conversing with an attorney.”
“It’s very rare the University suspends or expels a student,”
Loschiavo said. “And that always is what people focus on. Most of the time, the focuses (in hearings) are on more educational kinds of sanctions, and when students have to speak for themselves and explain what they were thinking and doing at the time, that allows whoever is deciding the case to have a better ability to figure out what does the student need to still learn more from this situation. When you’re talking to an attorney, you don’t have that kind of impact.”
Berkman and ASUO leaders are also concerned about how long the University retains disciplinary records, which can affect how graduate schools and employers consider a student’s application.
The current code doesn’t directly say anything about the length of time the University retains disciplinary records; instead, an administrative rule defines how long the University is required to keep them.
The University retains records of expulsions for 75 years. If suspended, a student’s record is kept 10 years, and for all other sanctions records are kept five years.
Under the revised code, those records may be erased by the director of Conduct and Community Standards after a written petition. The director will consider the student’s post-offense behavior and the harm resulting from the violation, according to the revised draft.
ASUO leaders are concerned by the amount of discretion afforded the director under the revised code.
“Now it’s up to one person, Chris Loschiavo, and only upon written petition,” ASUO President-elect Jared Axelrod said.
“They’re centralizing power and they’re really pushing students out of the cause,” Axelrod said.
Loschiavo and Freinkel disagree.The expanded language in the definition of the director’s duty simply reflects what the director already does, Freinkel said.
The clause “not inconsistent with provisions of the Student Code” at the end of the provision about the director’s discretion ensures that the director cannot make procedural or administrative changes that contradict the code, Loschiavo said.

Contact the crime, health and safety reporter at [email protected]