House Bill 843 is a well-intentioned, albeit misguided, bill with potential ramifications that could destroy the UNC honor system.
This bill intends to bolster the rights that students have during disciplinary proceedings at institutions across the UNC system by giving students or student organizations the right to be represented by an attorney at any point during a university disciplinary proceeding.
In its current form, the bill’s effects at this University would be highly ambiguous. At best, it would leave the honor system intact, but at worst it could be used to inject attorneys into a student-run honor system.
At UNC-CH, accused students receive counsel from members of the student attorney general’s staff and are tried by other students. But this isn’t the case at other schools across the system where the judicial system isn’t student-run.
This could lead to discrepancies between those students who could afford to hire attorneys and those who could not. It could also create a situation where a full-time attorney is arguing a case against an undergraduate member of the attorney general’s staff — a disconcerting power dynamic.
This bill tries to treat a symptom of a larger issue. Accused students might feel university proceedings trample on their due process, and due to a lack of transparency many students are uncertain about how university proceedings operate.
Writing a single bill that will create the desired effects at each member institution will be extremely difficult. The best way of providing students appropriate due process is through a discourse with the administrators and students leaders of each UNC-system campus in order to determine the best solutions for that campus.
A catch-all bill would have dramatically different effects on each campus.
