The Student Government Association’s advocacy office submitted a letter late last month outlining objections to proposed revisions to the Code of Student Conduct, including the elimination of student conduct panels, limited appeal options and expanded administrative authority.
The Student Advocate’s Office, which aids students navigating the Conflict Education and Student Accountability process, sent a 20-page letter to Associate Vice President and Deputy Dean of Students Rachel Stark on Jan. 21 detailing a list of concerns with proposed changes to the code, like giving administrators broad control over student discipline and removing clarifying language about prohibited conduct. The letter’s authors and members of activist student organizations said proposed changes to the code will hurt students’ rights in the conduct process and grant officials too much authority over student outcomes.
Stark in November said the revisions, including removing panels, will improve “objectivity and timeliness” in the conduct process, and continued to defend officials’ plans at an SGA meeting last Monday, indicating they would not make sweeping changes to the code in response to community feedback. Officials released a draft of the revised code in November and launched a two-month period seeking student, faculty and staff feedback on the changes — eventually extending the feedback deadline to Feb. 13.
The SAO’s letter raises issues with nearly every aspect of the proposed changes, including proposals, like expanding the definition of prohibited conduct, adding the ability for University officials to hold individual students accountable for the actions of unregistered student organizations and giving case managers complete authority over the conduct process without student or faculty oversight. The letter recommends officials retain student panels, “clearly and precisely” define prohibited conduct and add language clarifying students can only be held accountable for their individual actions, not those of an organization.
“The code as currently written is procedurally and substantively flawed,” the letter reads. “The amendments currently put forth by the University will leave each student more confused about what constitutes impermissible conduct and less able to challenge allegations made against them.”
The Hatchet directed questions to Stark about the revised code, but a University spokesperson returned the request. They said officials are continuing to carefully review and consider feedback from community members in all areas of the draft code and do not plan to finalize changes until they have considered all the feedback.
The spokesperson confirmed officials will not seek the Board of Trustees’ approval for the code’s revisions, despite officials seeking it for the last major revisions in 2019 and 1996, but will present the changes to the Board this spring.
Ben Wieser, the SGA’s chief student advocate who leads the SAO and signed the letter, said the proposed elimination of student-involved conduct panels in favor of a professional “case manager” model will strip students of key safeguards in the disciplinary process, like the input of their professors and peers.
Administrators propose removing panels — which usually consist of three to five students and a faculty member or administrator in cases of potential suspension or expulsion — from the new code and moving to a solely case manager model, where a full-time student affairs official decides a student’s case and sanctions. Students can only appeal case manager decisions to another student affairs administrator under the new code, rather than to a new student, faculty and staff panel as the current code allows.
“Instead of it going to a panel of your peers, it goes to an unknown administrator who, at the worst case, you can appeal to another administrator,” Wieser said. “And so they’ve removed that check, they’ve really removed the students right to be heard.”
Following the April 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment in University Yard, officials charged nine student groups with violations of the code for their alleged involvement in the encampment, all of which opted to have their cases heard by student panels.
The University spokesperson said officials guided their decision to remove panels with the goals to “strengthen consistency, objectivity and timeliness” in resolving conduct cases. Officials state on the proposed revisions website that multi-person panels previously accounted for 1 to 2 percent of resolution pathways.
“We believe our trained professional staff are better positioned to provide more objective, consistent and procedurally sound investigations, assessments, and outcomes,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson declined to comment on which specific revisions to the proposed code, if any, officials are planning to implement based on the collected feedback.
Zainab Abdi, the SAO’s deputy student advocate for conduct and safety who signed the letter, said the vagueness of the new code’s language is a major problem with the revisions. She said removing the word “reasonable” from a requirement that students follow officials’ “reasonable directions” and a clause saying students must follow instructions from officials “acting in performance of their duties” makes it unclear which directives students must follow.
Abdi said the revisions appear to target prominent student groups that have disaffiliated from the University, including Students for Justice in Palestine and the Anti-Zionist Jewish Student Front, both of which cut ties with GW following the encampment, as the current code does not allow administrators to punish individuals for the actions of unregistered organizations.
“These changes are happening at a period post encampment, where University officials have been recorded saying that they wish they could have just expelled students that participated in mass political engagement,” Abdi said.
A representative from SJP, who asked to remain anonymous due to a fear of retaliation from University administrators, said the group is preparing to handle more University “repression” if officials adopt the draft code in its current form. The representative said after a March 2025 incident in which administrators sought to enter a University-approved private event without citing an authorizing policy, a student conduct panel ruled officials added rules granting themselves access to all campus events after the fact, allowing the organizers to avoid charges.
“I can’t know this for a fact, but all of the evidence seems to suggest that the motivation for these changes is the ways that they allow the administration to crack down on organizations like SJP,” the representative said.
An executive board member of the Arab Student Association — one of the nine groups that faced sanctions after the encampment — who asked not to be named out of a fear of retaliation from University administrators, said the organization feels officials are attempting to remove due process and concentrate power within CESA by ending student-involved panels. The member said if officials enact the changes as is or with minimal changes, it could allow University administrators to unfairly target student activists on campus.
“We expect high end repression against our demographic, our community,” the member said. “If we’re targeted, which we have been in the past, we’re scared it’s probably going to happen again.”
SGA Vice President Liz Stoddard said officials’ argument that panels are unnecessary because only 2 percent of students chose a panel hearing last academic year is flawed, because over 90 percent of court cases end in plea deals — a statistic she said doesn’t mean the remaining cases should be denied a fair trial. She said Stark has been “really receptive” to critiques of the new code student leaders have brought to administrators, although she is skeptical about how many changes officials will actually make in response to student concerns.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Stoddard said. “Yeah, thank you for being a good, receptive partner, but I will believe it when I see it in writing in that code.”
