When the College of William and Mary students find themselves receiving emails from the Student Accountability and Restorative Practices office, it can be one of the more stressful situations they will face during their academic career. Fortunately, they don’t have to navigate it on their own.
The Conduct and Honor Advisors Program is a 20-member student organization that pairs students facing honor or conduct violations with trained peer advisors who guide them through every step of the resolution process. Operating under SARP alongside the Honor Council and Conduct Council, CHAPs serves as part legal counsel and part counselor in an entirely student-run process.
“Frequently our job kind of balances the role of a lawyer,” former CHAPs vice-chair Will Liethen ’26 said. “But it combines that role with almost a therapist role.”
What sets the College’s system apart from those at most universities is the administration of these councils.
“A lot of work that we do as students, as advisors and the Honor and Conduct Councils, is usually taken up by school administrators at other universities,” newly-elected CHAPs chair Christina Wu ’27 said.
Liethen described the investigative committee that compiles evidence and transcripts to the five-member panel of Honor Council students that preside over formal hearings.
“Some people think of it like a kind of court case,” Liethen said. “And that’s kind of a good analogy, but not quite, as it’s not adversarial, especially since the entire process is student-run.”
When a student is assigned or requests a CHAP advisor, the program begins with an initial intake meeting. From there, the advisor’s work spans the entire resolution process, reviewing case materials, identifying potential witnesses and preparing the respondent for the questions they’re likely to face.
“CHAPs will create a timeline of events,” Liethen said. “They’ll also create a summary of disputed facts. A student’s saying they didn’t cheat on this assignment but the professor’s saying they did — that would be a disputed fact.”
CHAPs don’t speak for their clients the way a lawyer would, however.
“We don’t have the ability to argue on a respondent’s behalf,” CHAPs member Jenna Morris ’28 said. “But I think what’s more rewarding is that we prepare them to be able to argue on their own behalf. So we help walk them through the process.”
That preparation can make a measurable difference. A first-time defendant simply doesn’t have access to the institutional knowledge of proceedings.
“But a CHAP who has seen 20 or more cases already, we’re going to know the types of questions that they’re going to be asked and help them prepare themselves and be able to present their perspective in a sharper lens than a student going through the process without CHAP,” Liethen said.
During Liethen’s term as vice-chair, CHAPs handled roughly 100 cases, the majority of which were honor cases involving allegations of lying, cheating or plagiarism, as opposed to conduct cases, which typically covers issues like alcohol violations, theft or dormitory conflicts.
CHAPs repeatedly described the emotional weight of these cases for students as the most challenging aspect to grapple with.
“A lot of times, this is going to be the worst part of someone’s college experience, being accused of an honor code violation,” Liethen said. “And even if it’s a lower-level conduct case, William and Mary students are typically a bit high-strung and haven’t been in much trouble in their lives. So having someone who has seen a lot of cases and knows the process can be a kind of calming presence — especially when you see all these emails coming at you from SARP.”
Morris put it simply.
“Just hearing from another student who’s acknowledging the academic hardship that they’re going through is really, really beneficial,” Morris said.
Morris added another benefit of the CHAP program.
“We’re all students, and the entire process is student-run,” Morris said. “It’s truly peer on peer, which I think puts a level of emotion and humanity back into it.”
Overall, CHAP’s work has a guiding principle of approaching justice as something restorative. They have foresight and an overarching goal to take all perspectives into consideration.
“Restorative justice is different from other approaches to justice, such as retributivism, which is if someone causes some harm, then they deserve to be punished in a certain way,” Wu said. “Restorative justice is different because it looks at the harm that a student may have caused in the community and asks, ‘What can we do to repair that harm within the community?’”
Advisors are trained to approach each case without assumptions and to adapt to case circumstances they may never have encountered before.
“Sometimes that happens, when we get grad school cases as well,” Wu said. “And so sometimes that means digging a little deeper, taking a few more minutes to prepare for the meeting.”
Morris further explained the CHAPs’ approach to cases. Advisors are required to be candid with hearing panels, and they cannot knowingly provide false or misleading information. They also must recuse themselves if they feel they cannot effectively support a student while upholding that obligation.
“CHAPs have a pretty strong ethical code that we have to follow,” Morris said.
For each of these three members, the path into CHAPs was different, but the reasons they stayed had a similar note.
Morris credits her peers in Mock Trial, where overlapping members recommended she get involved with CHAP’s work.
“I think the thing that drew me in was they were talking about how you help advise people through the honor and conduct process, and then just talking about it being a really, really rewarding thing,” Morris said.
Liethen thanks the program for giving him the opportunity to lead and introducing him to the world of advocacy. Thanks to CHAPs, he began to consider law school.
“I wouldn’t say typically I’d be someone who would apply to a leadership role,” Liethen said, “But CHAPs was just something that I was so invested in that I ended up deciding that being vice-chair would be something that I’m interested in.”
Wu, similarly, has professional goals she developed as a CHAPs advisor.
“I personally am interested in going to law school,” Wu said. “I thought that this particular activity, trying to uphold the values of procedural justice, and advocacy for certain rights that students have — I was drawn to that aspect.”
Wu describes how CHAP remained, as a whole, the most meaningful experience of her time at the College.
“Some of the most impactful moments that I have personally felt, or have experienced, are when I get to connect with the student as a fellow student and as a peer,” Wu said.
Students going through honor cases receive a CHAP by default, though it is ultimately up to each respondent whether they choose to use the advisor’s services. For conduct cases, requesting a CHAP is an option available to all students.
Morris has simple advice when it comes to this decision.
“Not only are they going to help calm your nerves, but there’s information that they may have that you would never even think of, which can be extremely helpful in a proceeding,” Morris said. “If I could give advice to anyone on this campus, this would be: request a CHAP.”
