Students and Tufts Community Union (TCU) senators are calling for reforms to the judicial affairs process after a freshman who was suspended this month for cheating on a chemistry quiz re-grade said he was denied a hearing during his case.
Judicial Affairs Officer Veronica Carter heard freshman Steven Li's case and decided to suspend him for one semester, Li told the Daily. She told him he did not have the right to a hearing because of the existence of "indisputable evidence" proving he had cheated, he said.
Li says Professor of Chemistry Robert Stolow accused Li of altering his original response to a quiz problem before submitting it for a re-grade. The indisputable evidence Carter mentioned consisted of a photocopy of the quiz Li had originally handed in, which showed discrepancy from the copy he turned in for a re-grade.
While Li claims that he did not alter the answer and that he did not specifically request a re-grade, he is most upset with the fact that he was denied a hearing when he was first accused, and he contends that Carter had too much influence in determining the outcome of his case.
"There are a lot of details that aren't being considered," Li told the Daily. "There's just no way to complain about it, because of the way the system's set up."
A disciplinary hearing consists of a five-person panel made up of two randomly selected members of the TCU Judiciary and three unbiased administrators or faculty members. Carter said that the hearings are not generally used "in an academic integrity case, because there is a very specific set of guidelines."
When Li sought to appeal the severity of his punishment with the Committee on Student Life (CSL), he says he was told that the case was too clear-cut to warrant a CSL review.
Carter declined to comment on Li's case out of "respect for the student's privacy." But she said that an accused party can only be denied a hearing if there is incontrovertible proof that he is guilty or if there is an admission of guilt.
Li's roommate, freshman Bruce Ratain, is now working with TCU senators to draft a resolution that would lobby for allowing a hearing to all students accused of academic dishonesty. Ratain spoke about Li's case at last Sunday's TCU Senate meeting.
Ratain told the Daily that he saw inherent problems with the current judicial system after speaking with Carter about Li's case.
"Throughout the conversation, it was clear she was fitting his case into her ... paradigm of kids who cheat," he said. "I think the problem there is, there's just too much latitude given to [her position.] There shouldn't be so much discretionary power instilled in one position."
TCU Senator Emerson Luke is spearheading the effort to write a resolution. Luke, a junior, is the co-chair of the Senate's Culture, Ethnicity and Community Affairs subcommittee. He said that five or six senators have already expressed interest in writing the resolution.
"Basically, what we want to do is [make sure] that everyone has the ability to have a hearing [and] to get an appeal," he said.
If passed, the resolution would not directly cause a policy change, but would serve as a recommendation to the administration. Luke said he hopes to have a draft of the resolution ready for voting at this Sunday's Senate meeting.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman, a former judicial affairs officer, reviewed the details of Li's case during a meeting with Carter and Li, the freshman says.
Reitman said that while an official definition of "irrefutable evidence" does not exist in university literature, there is a reasonable understanding of the term. It is this common understanding that is used to deal with cases such as Li's. "Irrefutable means that it is convincing, that there is no other explanation," he said. "You could literally use the dictionary definition of irrefutable and it would work."
Reitman added that a judicial affairs officer must always confirm that a piece of submitted evidence, such as a photocopy of an exam, is indisputable. Like Carter, he also declined to discuss Li's case specifically.
The details of the case
When Li took the quiz, he received a graded copy with what he considered a perplexingly low score around the end of September. He said that he showed the quiz to many of his friends, and they encouraged him to take it back to a teaching assistant, or T.A., for help on one specific problem that lost him a number of points.
The T.A., graduate student Zhao Liu, said that Li had put an extra line that was incorrect on a diagram in the original quiz.
"It's really a minor error, and generally for this kind of mistake all the points should not be taken off," Liu said. Liu then encouraged Li to take the graded quiz to the professor to ask why so many points were taken off.
"The final grading is decided by the professor, so I encouraged him to take it to the professor," Liu said. Liu added that the points in question were most likely a very small portion of Li's overall grade for the course.
But when Li turned the quiz back in to Stolow, the professor, the extra line on the diagram was missing. Li says that Stolow had made a photocopy of the quiz prior to handing it back the first time, and the professor compared the photocopied original to Li's returned copy. Stolow then accused Li of cheating.
"When he turned it in [the second time], the answer [was] totally correct," Liu said.
Li told the Daily that he is unsure of why the line was absent when he gave his quiz back to Professor Stolow. He said it might have been erased by one of the friends to whom he showed the quiz in the couple of weeks that elapsed between talking with his T.A. and handing it back. He has searched for a friend to come forward to corroborate his theory, but he could not find anyone to do so.
But Li feels strongly that it is irrelevant if the quiz was altered because he claims that he never asked for the quiz to be regraded in the first place.
He told the Daily that the note he attached to his quiz when he gave it back to Stolow does not ask for a re-grade. "I didn't really know what I was getting into with the whole re-grade thing," Li said. "I didn't know that it was a full-on re-grade [or that it] would get me suspended."
Stolow declined to comment on the case.
Li claims that several days after the quiz was handed back, Carter informed him that he had been accused of cheating. According to Reitman, Carter provides due process to students when informing them of such accusations, explaining the process to them and making sure they understand school policies.
Li says that after a number of meetings, Carter issued a "Dean's Decision," in which he was found guilty of cheating and was denied a hearing due to the existence of indisputable evidence.
Li says he appealed the suspension - not the guilty verdict - to the CSL. But he claims he was denied a hearing at that point because punishments for academic dishonesty cases are so clearly stated in university literature that the CSL is not permitted to hear them.
During this process, Li was assisted by a student who served as his judicial advocate. The advocate declined to comment on the case.
Where things stand
Reitman said that his office welcomes student feedback on the current judicial affairs system. Carter added that the TCU Senate, the judicial advocacy program and the CSL are all involved in examining and bettering the process.
"We're always open to talking about how the system works," Reitman said. "We're very open to talking about ... making it the best system it can be, always listening about how it can be made better."
Ratain said that he hopes a clearer definition of what falls into the category of irrefutable evidence will come out of his efforts to reform the process.
Li, at home since last Sunday, said that he hopes students will no longer have to see their cases decided by only one or two administrators.
"Allow everybody to state their case to an unbiased jury," he said, "so it's not just two-on-one or one-on-one."
