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Reactions: USG considers eliminating referenda

The USG Reform Project has proposed a change to the USG referendum process. While most student petitions that gather enough signatures would formerly be put to the student body, the proposed reform suggests instead that issues go to a USG hearing, and the USG alone would decide which issues should be put to the student body.

We asked our columnists for their Reactions to this proposed change.

This move would defeat the purpose of a referendum Christofer Robles Contributing Columnist

In abolishing the referenda process and proposing oligarchical hearings in their place, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) misunderstands the purpose of a referendum and the purpose of the USG.

Referenda exist as one of few democratic vehicles for collective action that the student body has. The very definition of a referendum is “the principle or practice of submitting to popular vote a measure passed on or proposed by a legislative body or by popular initiative.” Referenda are the solution to a, at times, greatly inaccessible and cryptic USG.

Referenda engage and distribute power. Moving to a system where the USG has discretion whether to hear the student body seems to both dissuade engagement with the USG and consolidate power to a few students. The USG plays an important role in elevating students’ concerns, but it should not seek to overarbitrate and filter out student perspectives. In the event of a truly unreasonable or destructive proposition, the USG already has a republican solution: determining frivolous referenda by a fivesixths vote and preventing their passage. Blocking anything with less than this would be tyranny.

If the USG wishes to fulfill its purported preamble dedication to “the proposition that students must be included in the making of decisions that affect them,” they should leave referenda as they are.

Christofer Robles is a sophomore contributing columnist from Trenton, N.J. Christofer can be reached at cdrobles@princeton.edu or on Instagram @christofer_robles

We need opportunities for discourse beyond a USG referendum

Abigail Rabieh Columnist

Referenda are valuable forms of discourse; currently, they are one of the only ways to encourage widespread controversial political discussion. The Caterpillar referendum of Spring 2022 sparked vigorous and intense debate throughout the student body — demonstrated vividly in the Opinions section of the The Daily Princetonian. Though its end was unsatisfactory, a hard-fought referendum should not be perceived as an undesirable campus event or an unwelcome aberration on an otherwise calm campus. President Eisgruber states that “universities should foster rigorous, constructive, truth-seeking discussions about questions of consequence.” I agree; the University should be a place where students explore their opinions and become galvanized to fight for what they believe in. Princeton should not exemplify apathy, but motivation.

We need to maintain this opportunity for discourse. But perhaps USG is not the best place to arbitrate these essential debates.

It is generally acknowledged that student referenda have little to no effect on the administration. Thus, the USG has no productive role to play — the point of a referendum is to start conversations, not enact a policy. Students should take advantage of the fact that they live in a small community where we have other ways to engage with each other. If USG wants to step back, WhigClio — the “nation’s oldest collegiate political, literary, and debate society” — should take over the campus space for rigorous political discourse by starting these conversations at a campus-wide scale. This move could be for the better — students could focus less on political rhetoric poised to win votes and learn more about deeply engaging in discussion and, maybe, coming to a solution.

Abigail Rabieh is a sophomore columnist and prospective history concentrator from Cambridge, Mass. She serves as co-captain of the Princeton Model United Nations team which is affiliated with Whig-Clio. She can be reached by email at arabieh@princeton.edu, on Instagram at @a.rabs03, or on Twitter at @AbigailRabieh.

USG should fight for students. Instead, this proposal reflects its cowardice.

Nate Howard Contributing Columnist

In November 2020, there were two referenda considered by the student body: one to divest from fossil fuels and one to cancel classes on election day. Both of these referenda passed overwhelmingly, garnering 82 percent and 89 percent support, respectively. To this day, the University has not implemented either of these policies. So, as Divest Princeton continues to organize, garnering thousands of student signatures and over 160 faculty and staff members’ signatures for our petition, one would expect the USG to fight alongside student activists.

Unfortunately, the USG parrots administration talking points, aiding the University’s efforts to greenwash its reputation. For example, on their Instagram account, the USG said that the release of the report by the faculty panel on fossil fuel dissociation “marks a substantive step towards divestment.” But it doesn’t. It is yet another exercise in delay and denial, intentionally designed to waste a year and have no impact on Princeton’s $1.7 billion of fossil fuel investments.

The USG should stand up for students. Instead, the USG Reform Project seeks to silence students by stopping further referenda, because the culture of USG is to be more interested in cozying up to the administration than representing the student body.

Nate Howard is a sophomore contributing columnist from Princeton, NJ. He is a prospective sociology concentrator and co-coordinator of Divest Princeton. He can be reached at natehoward@princeton.edu.

Oh, great, USG is going to hold a “hearing” Mohan Setty-Charity Senior Columnist

Aside from the change to the referendum process, referring student petitions to USG “hearings” is a rather impotent bureaucratic solution. Not every problem will be solved by the creation of another committee or a new process for considering complaints. We have to remember USG’s limitations. While the Caterpillar referendum in the Spring was very contentious, much of the controversy was derived from a simple miscommunication, rather than the referendum itself. Adding layers of procedure creates more room for confusion.

It’s true the referenda rarely convince the University to make a change, no matter what their result is. But the solution to particularly contentious referenda that won’t really make an impact is an attitude shift and a better understanding of the University processes from referendum sponsors. Eliminating referenda entirely means we can never gauge student sentiment. And it doesn’t solve the problem of contentious issues: by eliminating referenda and keeping the opportunity for a highly politicized and bureaucratized USG hearing, we may be getting the worst of both worlds.

I think that USG has been doing some really impressive things recently. I was excited to see the work on the new mental health initiative, along with other initiatives on community dining and free box fans. The USG should focus on these productive initiatives rather than holding what would surely be both an ineffective and deeply political hearing.

Mohan Setty-Charity is a junior from Amherst, Mass., concentrating in economics. He can be reached at ms99@princeton.edu.

Student leadership matters in the disciplinary process

Dylan Shapiro

Guest Contributor

As the Chair of the Honor Committee, I want to address a recent guest contribution in The Daily Princetonian by Benjamin Gelman ’23, which argues that students should exercise solidarity by refusing to join the Honor Committee. I initially joined the Committee because of horror stories I heard from a professor about pleading with members of the Committee for leniency for accused students, so I understand the argument that the whole system is illegitimate. However, despite the claims made in Gelman’s article, student involvement in the Honor Committee has significantly changed the way the Committee approaches every aspect of its work. I am confident that if students who are skeptical of the Committee chose to apply, it would make the Honor Committee process fairer for students who go through it.

To start, I want to address some misrepresentations of the facts in the guest contribution. The ‘Prince’ did not seek comment from or verify Gelman’s claims with the Honor Committee prior to publication. To suggest, as the article does, that “students who are on financial aid and found guilty of Honor Code and COD infractions are not eligible for grants for the semester they must repeat” is misleading. Most students are found guilty of Honor Code violations at the end of the term — the Honor Committee deals most frequently with final exams — and are allowed to complete the term; thus, they would not have to repeat a semester. Gelman may be referring to this small minority of cases resulting in suspension that occur early in the semester, or where students voluntarily withdraw rather than finish the semester and would therefore have to repeat the semester and have their aid prorated against what they have already used in the semester they are suspended. The Honor Committee is actively engaged with the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) Ad-Hoc Committee on the Disciplinary Process and University administrators to ensure these cases do not result in a financial penalty, but even so, this allegation does not reflect the majority of cases.

Additionally, Gelman portrays the Committee as an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy muzzled by a “University-sanctioned screening process.” Members of the Honor Committee are not “screened” by perspective, and University administrators have no role whatsoever in selecting appointed members of the Honor Committee. Members of the Honor Committee are also not “unelected”: they are either elected class government members, chosen by elected USG members, or chosen by the Honor Committee itself. While the issue of accountability is subjective, the manner of Honor Committee members’ elections and appointments is not. By publishing Gelman’s article, the ‘Prince’ did a disservice to students by failing to provide accurate context for such misleading claims.

To be clear, I appreciate those who challenge us not to accept the current Honor System as perfect. It is not, by any means. The investigation done by the ‘Prince’ was an important effort to highlight where we continue to fall short and the consequences of those shortcomings. Reasonable minds can also disagree on whether the penalties recommended by the Committee are appropriate. However, I would note that over the past five years, the Committee has overwhelmingly declined to impose suspensions, much less expulsions, except in severe cases or repeat violations.

I serve as a member on the newly-formed USG Ad-Hoc Committee on the Student Disciplinary Process. Among other priorities, the committee is focused on improving the transparency of all disciplinary bodies at the University, including the Honor Committee, Committee on Discipline, and Residential College Disciplinary Boards. It aims to make disciplinary processes more navigable to students accused of violations, eliminate the minority of cases in which a finding of responsibility inadvertently imposes financial aid consequences on students, and assess the appropriateness of the current penalty system.

Student leadership is one of the unambiguously beneficial parts of the Honor System at the University. Findings of responsibility and decisions about penalties can hinge on the votes of individual members of the Committee, so it matters who those Committee members are. The type of student who may read the recent opinion piece and waver on whether or not they ought to join the Committee is exactly the type of student it is essential to have as a member. As Chair of the Honor Committee, I have seen that members who are entirely uncritical of the Honor System are more likely to have a lower, and in my view insufficient, threshold for being “overwhelmingly convinced” of a student’s responsibility for a violation — the Committee’s standard for finding a student responsible. Instead, we need students who believe that the system is imperfect, or who are committed to the system but are wary of whether the Committee always gets it right in practice.

It is essential that Committee members approach each case with a commitment to academic integrity. Any shortcomings of the Honor System do not diminish the importance of a fair exam environment. But an effective Honor Committee member should always balance that commitment with the possibility that our impressions of the case could be wrong. As alluring as it may be to imagine that refusing to join the Honor Committee allows us to cleanse our hands of its potential imperfections, the reality is that this makes it more likely that control of the Committee will pass to students who are far too confident in the righteousness of their decisions.

The Honor Committee also has significant flexibility in determining the pace and intensity of investigations. Committee members bring a student perspective to the process and can accommodate the needs of a student in question more appropriately than a member of the faculty or an administrator could.

I understand the disillusionment many students have regarding the potential to reform the Honor Committee in the wake of the failed 2018 referenda, which understandably remains a touchstone for the seeming impossibility of improving the Honor Committee.

However, despite the failure of these referenda, I want to emphasize that the Committee does not operate in the abusive manner that past iterations of the Committee have; I am confident that the findings of responsibility and penalties assessed by the Committee reflect that change. These changes are a result of both the students who have stepped up to serve on the Committee and those who have advocated for changes to our Constitution. Even regarding the referenda that formally failed, much of their substance have been incorporated into the Honor Committee Constitution and our best practices. This includes the more appropriate penalty of a reprimand for overtime violations and a provision barring reliance on only one student’s testimony. Beyond referenda, the Peer Representatives, as student advocates for students accused of Honor Code violations, play a crucial role in improving the fairness of the Committee’s work.

Some students may want to replace the Honor Code with a new system entirely. Some may question whether exams should be unproctored in the first place. Students’ roles in evaluating allegations of academic integrity, however, is more appropriate than an administrative process. In every hearing, the Committee must evaluate whether a student should reasonably have known their actions were in violation of the Honor Code or Rights, Rules, Responsibilities. With all due respect towards faculty and administrators, those who adopted the Honor Code in 1893 were correct in their novel contention that students are best fit to evaluate this question.

Ceding the unique place that students have in the academic integrity process at Princeton would only serve to reduce student control. In fact, the 2018 final report of the Honor System Review Committee recommended transferring all responsibilities of the Honor Committee to a student-faculty committee mirroring the Committee on Discipline. This would weaken the core idea of the Honor System — that students set our own standards — within the context of past disciplinary precedent.

The Honor Committee is not a perfect institution, but we should believe in the idea that only our peers can assess what we should have reasonably known. We should vigorously defend this core idea against attempts to diminish it, even as I hope we will all work to improve the system in the ways that suit us best. I urge you to include applying to join the Honor Committee in that effort.