A vote by the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) on the Standard of Proof Proposal has been postponed by WSA representative Joe O’Donnell ’13 from this Sunday to a later date in an effort to gain more student support for the proposal, which he and WSA representatives Teddy Newmeyer ’11 and Dina Moussa ’12 have been working on since September. The proposal, which would increase the degree of certainty used by the Student Judicial Board (SJB) to convict a student for a violation of the Code of Non-Academic Conduct (CNAC) from 50 percent to 75 percent, has raised objections from students on the SJB as well as administrators.

“Rather than honestly telling us what the facts of a specific event were, my concern is that raising the standard will encourage students to be less forthcoming about the incident and their involvement with the incident in an effort to challenge the board to meet the new ‘clear and convincing’ standards,” wrote SJB member Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver ’11 in an e-mail to The Argus. “Not only will this make it harder for the Board to do our job, but it will take away the opportunity for an honest conversation with the student.”

SJB member Ross Firestone ’12 added that a change in the standard of proof would negatively affect the process as a whole.

“I think it will disturb the hearing process by one, making hearings more adversarial as opposed to conversational, and two, by blurring what students are to expect from the hearing procedure,” Firestone said.

Currently, the CNAC stipulates that students may be convicted under a “preponderance” of evidence, but the proposal would alter the language to require “clear and convincing evidence” for conviction.

“I don’t believe there has been a compelling case made that the current standard of proof isn’t working and needs to be ‘fixed’,” wrote Dean of Students Richard Culliton in an e-mail to The Argus.

Moussa, however, said she hopes that a change to the current standard of proof would decrease unjust rulings and increase confidence in the process, while still holding students who are in violation responsible for their actions.

“We’ve been talking to some students who have had certain circumstances where they were found responsible for something that they really did not do, sometimes even being penalized for following the rules,” Moussa said.

O’Donnell said that according to the Winter WSA Survey, there is student support to pass the proposal. Out of the 400 students who responded to the survey, which constitutes about 14 percent of the undergraduate student body, 233 said they were in favor of raising the standard of proof, 45 did not know or fully understand the proposal, and 30 voiced opposition.

O’Donnell, who said the vote will be postponed for several weeks as he endeavors to gather support for it, asked that students look at what he described as potential long term implications of the results of the hearings.

“We’re talking about graduate school prospects, job prospects, students’ reputations, and feeling of connectedness to the University,” O’Donnell said. “If students feel like the University didn’t give them a fair shake, I can easily see them deciding not to donate money, return to campus after graduation, or support the University in other ways in the future.”

Culliton said that he feels the system is already evenhanded, especially because students play such a large role in the process.

“Unlike many peer institutions which have hearing panels that include faculty and staff as voting members, Wesleyan judicial boards are comprised of students,” he wrote. “I believe that the students who serve on the board give great consideration to their peers who come before the board and that makes for a fair process.”

MacLeod-Bluver added that raising the standard of proof could interfere with the dialogue that is currently promoted through the existing standard of proof.

“I do not think that raising the standard of proof is necessary for the University,” MacLeod-Bluver wrote. “The standard of proof that the Board currently operates under is most conducive to arriving at the optimal result for all parties involved. The current standard of proof promotes a unique opportunity for dialogue between students and board members. It allows board members to evaluate all the facts of a specific incident and to come to the best conclusion after evaluating all the materials provided.”