After nine months of meeting, the Honor System Review Committee will not have submitted a proposal for reform by the end of this academic year.

Created in October by College of William and Mary President Taylor Reveley, the committee has been working to identify problems in the Honor Code and to propose solutions.

“The committee has been working long and hard, and we are not at a point where we are going to produce anything, even preliminary findings, before the end of the semester,” committee chair and government professor Clay Clemens said. “It will be much later than we initially proposed, but [Reveley] is willing to accept it.”

Friday’s meeting included a discussion of Honor Code section five, which deals with infraction policies.

“Currently, the code calls for every alleged infraction to trigger a hearing,” Clemens said. “We have proposed a couple of means for making the process go faster.”

Accelerating the process was a major goal identified in the meetings, and while solutions have been proposed, the committee has not come to a consensus on how best to achieve it.

“There have been a couple of proposals so far, an expedited honor process is one,” John Pothen ’11, former chief justice of the Undergraduate Honor Council, said.

“There are a number of options available to essentially skip the process and allow for immediate or almost immediate resolution,” Pothen said.

Though most of the honor code has been examined, additional problems are still being addressed and evaluated.

“We have talked through the majority of the code at this point,” Pothen said. “There is no clear consensus for what should be done in most of those areas. The majority of them are contentious and will need a lot of discussion. They may even need to be submitted with a couple of ideas from the committee.”

The committee includes members of the Undergraduate Honor Council, members of the Student Assembly and members of the Student Conduct Council.

In its efforts to come to a plausible reform proposal, the committee has looked for outside guidance.

“We have gained valuable knowledge from the campus community through surveys to students, faculty, current and former council members and individuals on campus that have gone through the conduct system that has influenced our focus and level of priority,” committee member and Undersecretary for Student Rights Zann Isacson ’13 said. “The difficulty lies in building a system based on the current platform which prioritizes fairness to all parties involved, maintains the integrity on campus, and preserves our historical tradition.”

The Honor Council reform process comes in response to recent criticisms, and is also part of a frequently-occurring review process.

“The honor system gets reviewed regularly. There is not a set period of time. The last major changes were made in 1997,” Clemens said. “It is both a regular process and some expedited by the flaps of the last two or three years.”

The committee will hold one last meeting before the end of the year during finals to discuss sections six and seven of the code, and will reconvene in the fall to continue discussion.

In the fall, the committee hopes to submit a proposal of changes to the community at large for comment, and then to Reveley by the end of the semester.

“We had hoped initially that at this point we would be sending out proposals to the student body and college community at large,” Pothen said. “We found the task a little bit bigger than the plan originally sort of officiated.”

The College of William and Mary had reason to celebrate this Earth Day, as the Princeton Review included the College in its list of the nation’s most environmentally conscious universities. This year, the College received a score of 93, up three points from last year’s ranking.

Every year, the standardized test preparation and admissions consulting company releases its list of 311 Green Colleges, ranking schools on a scale from 60 to 99 points based on environmental initiatives and programs.

“A lot of that improvement came out of two areas,” Committee on Sustainability co-chair Dennis Taylor said. “One is food and dining services, and also in facilities. Both are in the lead ranking for the new School of Ed. and the new Green Fee projects, which have actually improved the green rankings of buildings on campus.”

In its report, the Princeton Review, in collaboration with the U.S. Green Building Council, cited the solar panels on the roof of Small Hall, the Eco-Hall housing program and the Sharpe Community Scholars’ research into green roofs as examples of the College’s eco-friendly initiatives.

“A green campus can transform the college experience for students through enhanced sustainability education and by creating healthy living and learning environments all while saving energy, water and money as part of an institution’s bottom line,” USGBC President, CEO and Founding Chair Rick Fedrizzi said in a press release.

The 220-page Princeton Review book also acknowledges the work of student interns in helping the College become more sustainable.

“There are three [interns] each semester, and they work on independent projects, and largely what they were able to achieve in the last year was to reduce the waste stream in the college,” Taylor said. “Currently we’re composting 100 percent of the green waste that comes out of the Commons and the Sadler Center.”

The report mentions the College’s recent requirement all new campus buildings that receive a ranking of silver or gold on the USGBC’s LEED certification program, and specifically mentions Miller Hall’s new gold certification.

Students say they aren’t too surprised by the College’s ranking.

“I feel like a lot of people on this campus care about sustainability and environmental issues,” Justin Poston ’13 said. Despite the high level of student involvement, though, Poston said he didn’t notice many visible improvements.

Taylor believes that the College is making significant environmental improvements on many fronts, especially in dining services, which has experienced a rise in local produce use. Still, the Committee on Sustainability is looking for additional ways to be more “green.”

“I think dining services is going to continue to improve, and they’ve already begun to include a greater number of local farms to provide produce,” Taylor said. “We’ll eventually be able to have a majority of produce come from local sources.”

The executive branch of the Student Assembly is consolidating, offering applicants just 30 positions instead of the 50 offered last year under the direction of the new president Kaveh Sadeghian ’12 and vice president Molly Bulman ’12. The positions and applications for those positions were posted on the SA website last week.

The executive branch, responsible for student advocacy on campus, is an extension of the president’s and vice president’s offices. It is composed of seven different departments, including the Department of Diversity Initiatives, the Department of Finance, the Department of Health and Safety, the Department of Public Engagement, the Department of Student Life, the Department of Student Rights and the Department of College Policy.

“Last year, we consolidated the executive [branch] from 87 people to 50 people, but 50 people was still a lot to manage,” Sadeghian said. “By reducing numbers, I hope to make SA members more accessible to students on campus.”

Sadeghian also expressed a desire to increase efficiency and improve coordination and teamwork among the different departments as a reason for the consolidation.

“The downside of having a large number of students in the executive is that it can be hard to manage that many people effectively,” former senator Ryan Ruzic J.D. ’11 said. “The president and vice president this year believe that they can get results with a smaller group of students.”

Ruzic and Sadeghian also mentioned that in past years the executive branch has struggled to maintain accountability from the numerous undersecretaries.

“Undersecretary retention was very difficult,” Sadeghian said.

Consolidation will take place in numerous departments. Bulman explained that the two biggest changes would be the merging of the Outreach and Student Life Departments, as well as the re-designing of the Public Affairs Department, which has now become the Department of Public Engagement.

“Kaveh and I spent about two weeks going through each executive position, evaluated its role in the overall organization, and spoke to former secretaries and undersecretaries about their experiences. Now, each position has a purpose and a place in the overall organization,” Bulman said of the streamlining process.

The new application offers students more of an opportunity to get creative.

“We included an optional submission form that accepted anything. We’ve been getting everything from resumes to funny photos,” Sadeghian said.

Another change in the application was the creation of a “write-in” category. Applicants were given the opportunity to write in undersecretary positions they felt the SA was missing. Sadeghian and Bulman were so impressed with one of the write-ins that they offered the applicant the position she had created.
Ruzic supported the decision to consolidate.

“Kaveh and Molly believe that a smaller executive will help them better advocate for the many issues and needs of the students here at William and Mary,” Ruzic said. “We won’t ever really know the degree to which this decision affects the job they do, but if at the end of next year they’ve done a lot of good for the students, I think we can safely say they made the right choice.”

Parents of students at the College of William and Mary have embraced the connection of the internet with the first post on a new parent’s blog.

The new blog at parents.blogs.wm.edu entered the internet world with its first post by Anne Sharp ’82 on April 11. A product of the Office of Creative Services, Sharp, Director of Parent and Family Giving Dyer Ridley and Associate Director of Development Communications John Wallace, the new blog aims to create conversation among parents of students.

“The idea of the blog is to communicate better and establish lifelong relationships with various groups here,” Wallace said. “Parents are a very unique group in the William and Mary community. It’s important that the group be communicated with and that we give that group a voice at William and Mary.”

At a meeting on Charter Day, Sharp raised the question of how the school communicated with parents. As both an alumna and the parent of a current student, Sharp felt that the lines of communication differed between the groups.

“It’s hard for me to separate what parents hear and what alumni hear,” Sharp said. “I wasn’t aware of what was alumni information and what was parent information. I just didn’t see that much going out to parents. I figured it was something they loved to hear about as well.”

Aided by members of the Office of Creative Services, Ridley and Wallace decided a blog would be one of the most efficient ways to increase parent participation at the College.

“It’s a very accessible form of communication for a whole host of people,” Ridley said. “We’re not inundating people with lots of emails, and it’s accessible for anyone who wants access to it.”

For Sharp, the blog was an opportunity to relate the personal story of the college admissions process she went through with her daughter, Katie Sharp ’14. With the Day for Admitted Students this past weekend, Sharp felt that the creation of the blog was timely.

“I was remembering where we were a year ago,” Sharp said. “For those of us who are not within the College walls, you still hear a lot of news stories, and you read a lot about college admissions. I felt I was being pulled back there by where we were at that time of year.”

Sharp related her personal experience with the admissions process to encourage conversation between parents who had already faced or were preparing to face the process. The blog post has already garnered a significant amount of response from parents, with 15 comments received within the past week alone.

“When I taught journalism, unless someone was really upset about what was written and wrote a letter to the editor, you didn’t hear feedback,” Sharp said. “Other parents and alumni have written in, and now they are telling their story. In a way, I generated a bit of a conversation.”

While it has yet to be decided who can post and when new posts will appear, Ridley and Wallace expressed hopes for the blog to continue to grow and encourage further conversation among parents.

“We’re open to exploring where it takes us,” Ridley said. “We’re not set in stone with who can post. Moving forward, there’s certainly opportunity for it to grow and pursue a full representation of the parent community.”

When the U.S. Congress returns from the spring recess May 2, lawmakers will be loading their rhetorical weapons for the next partisan battle: how to reduce the country’s mounting debt. The debate will include, among other things, decisions about which federal programs’ funds should be slashed and by how much. Pell Grants are one program under the threat of the budget axe, which may jeopardize some student’s ability to attend college.

782 students — 13 percent of the College of William and Mary student body — currently receive Pell Grants, according to the Office of Financial Aid.

In the fiscal year 2012 budget plan authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which passed the House of Representatives April 15, Pell Grant funding was reduced to 2008 levels, or $16.3 billion. The budget plan also reduces the maximum award per student from $5,550 to $4,705.

“This budget takes the necessary steps to ensure Pell spending is brought under control and targeted to the truly needy instead of being captured in the form of tuition increases,” Ryan’s proposal states.

In contrast, the Obama administration has allocated $41.2 billion for the program in its 2012 budget proposal. President Barack Obama’s budget continues support for a maximum Pell Grant award of $5,550, but eliminates students’ ability to receive two grants in the same year, which means that students who attend classes year-round cannot receive summer aid. It would also eliminate the government subsidy to pay the interest on student loans for graduate students.

With the exception of limiting students to one grant per year, Pell Grants were largely spared in the eleventh-hour budget resolution passed April 8 to fund the federal government through September.

According to a summary of the bill from the House Committee on Appropriations, the federal government will save more than $35 billion over the next 10 years by eliminating students’ ability to draw more than one Pell Grant in the same year.

“We’re going to have to cut that out. It’s a little too expensive,” Obama told reporters during the negotiations. “We want to make sure that we preserve the levels for those young people, or not-so-young people, who are going to school during the year.”

College Director of Financial Aid Ed Irish said that roughly 100 students at the College have taken advantage of Pell aid each summer. The cuts will take effect starting in 2012. Beyond that point, the state of Pell Grant funding remains uncertain, as lawmakers stick to campaign promises to slash federal spending and find a compromise to reign in the nation’s mounting debt.

“Through this effort to cut spending, we bring a sense of responsibility back to Washington, D.C.,” Representative Rob Wittman (R-Va.), who represents the College’s congressional district, said in a statement after voting for the House Republicans’ budget proposal. “Responsible governing means tough choices. No one gets a blank check. Cuts of this magnitude can be hard to swallow, as they will directly impact many Americans, but we must face the reality of what will happen if we do not make these hard decisions.”

A spokeswoman for Wittman did not respond to a request for comment on this article.

While the House Republicans’ budget, as it currently stands, will probably face opposition in the Democrat-controlled Senate, students will nonetheless likely face some belt-tightening.

“It’s too early to get an official read on the impact, but we anticipate that individual Pell recipients might lose up to $2,000 each,” Irish said.

John Kendrick ’12, a Pell Grant recipient, said while the cuts will require him to make more money at the two jobs he works during his time at the College, he believes that cutting federal spending will be more beneficial in the long term.

“Obviously, I’ll have to pay more, but I’m okay with it,” Kendrick said. “My thing is, I feel like the debt is a problem that really affects our generation more than anybody else, so I’m willing to make some sacrifices.”

For other students, the loss of Pell Grant funding could result in some tough choices in the midst of already difficult financial burdens. The College announced new tuition increases starting in the fall of 2011.

Pell Grant recipient Alex Villanueva ’13, who had to delay attending the College for a year in order to help support her family, said she is unsure of what her options will be if her aid is cut and she cannot find a job that can help pay for her tuition.

“I do want to finish out William and Mary, but if the tuition hikes keep going up and the aid keeps going down, it might be a choice between going to college and having a house,” she said.

Villanueva acknowledged that while there are no easy solutions to reducing the national debt, she felt that cuts to student aid are a step too far.

“If we don’t have education, if we don’t have somewhere for people to look to for the future, then what do we have?” Villanueva said.