FORMER MEMBER BLASTS OU RULES COMMITTEE FOR NOT CARING ABOUT RIGHTS OF OU
STUDENTS

During the recent controversy over a proposal to strengthen marijuana
penalties on campus, some students accused Ohio University's Review and
Standards Committee of not representing all students. One former committee
member agrees.

Jeff Bruzzese, a 2000 OU graduate and former president of Students
Defending Students at OU, recalls that his time as a member of the Review
and Standards Committee was spent fighting for students' liberties and
constitutional rights.

"The Code of Conduct and the Judiciary Process will only be as fair as the
Review and Standards Committee allows it to be." Bruzzese said. "The Review
and Standards Committee can only be as good as the information it receives.
So as long as the committee fails to meaningfully represent the student
body, the lack of student representation will continue to manifest itself
in unfair code revisions."

Like other members of the Review and Standards committee, Bruzzese was
responsible for researching and bringing proposals for changes in the
Student Code of Conduct to the other committee members. Over the past
several months, a student group, Students for a Sensible Drug Policy, has
been battling several of those proposals that deal with drug policy on
campus, including one that would allow OU to expel students caught with
marijuana.

Richard Carpinelli, who chairs the committee and serves as assistant vice
president for student affairs, said he doesn't know what Bruzzese is
talking about with regard to lack of student representation on the
committee. "I think membership represents a broad constituency, but OU is
broad and including everyone would be a monumental task," he said.

EACH YEAR THE REVIEW AND STANDARDS Committee reviews policies in the
Student Code of Conduct and considers revision to the code, Bruzzese said.

Bruzzese said he brought two issues to the committee's table. The first
dealt with the Exclusionary Rule, a judicial tenet whereby evidence
obtained illegally -- for example through an unwarranted search -- can be
excluded from a trial. According to OU's on-line student handbook,
university officials can enter a dorm room, "for matters pertaining to
general health, safety, suspected rule violation and for the upkeep of
university furnishings and equipment." They don't require a warrant.

Bruzzese charged that OU officials and residence assistants are not
consistent in their entering of students' rooms and should be more heavily
regulated.

The second issue Bruzzese brought involved section B3 of the Student Code
of Conduct: Failure to Comply or Identify. The code states that a violation
of this rule is "failure to comply with directions of university officials,
police or any other law enforcement officers acting in the performance of
their duties, or to identify one's self to these persons when requested to
do so."

"There are certain times when people have to comply, but if we went by OU's
rules, it would be like the Nazi government in Poland [during WWII],"
Bruzzese declared.

He said that unlike his suggestions, the other committee members' proposals
were aimed at taking rights from students.

Some of the proposals include: making possession of clean drug
paraphernalia (which doesn't have drug/marijuana residue) a Class A
offense, punishable by expulsion; making the act of harm to oneself (for
example, losing consciousness because of alcohol consumption) equal in
punishment to doing harm to other persons (including rape, assault); and
making the possession of marijuana a Class A offense, potentially
punishable by expulsion.

Possession of paraphernalia is currently not included in the Student Code
of Conduct.

Bruzzese said that the proposal to make paraphernalia a Class A offense
stemmed from implementation of a rule in the student handbook stating that
empty alcohol containers are illegal on campus.

Another former committee member and 2001 OU graduate, Luke Ellwood
disagreed with the bodily harm proposal. "'A6' is a very broad offense that
deals with mental or bodily harm to oneself or others," he said. "So
basically something as mundane as being passed out drunk and something as
horribly serious as rape are lumped together under this heading." Ellwood
is now a Technology Solutions engineer in Dayton.

Bruzzese recalled how the committee operated. "Proposals were suggested in
a scarily nonchalant way," he said. "I became very frustrated at these
meetings trying to figure out what was right. More than one vote was
four-to-one against me."

Bruzzese recalls leaving one meeting with the following words written in
his notes about the sort of attitudes prevalent among Review and Standards
Committee members: "Alcohol is evil. and anyone who drinks it is bad, a
detriment to the university."

Another major problem, according to Bruzzese, is that the person who ran
the committee meeting, Richard Carpinelli, at the time served as director
of Judiciaries. He sat as a mediator during the hearings of alleged student
offenders and sometimes clarified the Code of Conduct to the jury.

"The Code of Conduct leaves discretion up to the Hearing Board for student
offenses, but Mr. Carpinelli made up the legislature, prosecution and he
was basically the judge," Bruzzese argued.

Carpinelli now serves as assistant vice president for student affairs,
though he still serves on the Review and Standards Committee. This year,
Judy Piercy, who also sits on the committee, is director of Judiciaries.

Former student and committee member Ellwood said he also found the way the
hearing board is run to be inconsistent. They have a lot of leeway to make
decisions because of the vagueness of the Student Code of Conduct. "They
need to make the code more thorough and specific so students have a code of
conduct that works for them, not against, by reducing the amount of
latitude the hearing boards get," he said. "I just felt that the
regulations in the code should be so specific that the hearing board's job
becomes very simple and there is less room for having wildly different
punishments being given out for similar offences.

While the hearing boards may try to do a good job, he added, "I would
rather have things in writing and laid out specifically than trust a
hearing board to know what they are doing."

During hearings, Bruzzese added, representation for students is flawed.
While at OU, Bruzzese helped defend students as a member of Students
Defending Students.

"University officials speak for the university while all the students
usually got was me," he recalled. "Students are not normally allowed to
have attorneys defend them."

The Code of Conduct states that students have, "The right to be accompanied
throughout the judicial process by another member of the university
community (administrator, faculty member or student)."

SSDP has recently argued that students have not been properly informed
about the proposed changes to the Student Code of Conduct. In an interview
fall quarter, Judy Piercy said that it was the student representatives
responsibility to take the information to their constituents. If they
didn't, it wasn't the administration or committee's fault.

However, Bruzzese wondered how he could accomplish that.

"What means do I have to inform the students about anything?" he asked. He
could not recall any effort by the committee to circulate information to
the student body.

Bruzzese acknowledged that his views might not always be the best for the
university, and agreed with other committee members that the university
only has one major recourse for dealing with student offenses. "University
officers cannot hand down a jail sentence or [more severe penalties]," he
said. "All we can do is tell people they can't go to school here anymore.

"If the world was the way I say it should be, it would be all messed up,"
Bruzzese said. "I am on one extreme."

However, he maintains that the university is approaching the other end of
that same extreme.

Bruzzese recommended that in order to reach a compromise, a meeting should
be held involving everyone impacted by the decisions being made. The
current system of student discipline lacks a "diversity of views" and
procedural protections for accused students.

"All it would take is a group of people to care," he said. "Students need
to be heard meaningfully, respectfully and thoughtfully, and that is not
going to happen the way things are set up."

Bruzzese, originally from Steubenville, Ohio, graduated in August 2000 with
a degree in political science. He is now in his first year of law school at
Capital University in Columbus.

Carpinelli, briefed on Bruzzese's criticism, said last week, "I respect his
right to express his opinion, but I would disagree with everything he said."

He denied charges that the committee ignores student opinions. "We listen
very carefully," he said. "The committee has always been willing to talk.
It is not too frequent that groups like SSDP request to speak up about an
opposition to something we are proposing, but we are very open to
discussion. Student opinion does matter."

He also disputed the charge that the Review and Standards Committee is run
inefficiently. "We have an agenda and a discussion on every issue," he
said. "They basically see how policies work in judiciaries and recommend
revisions based off of that.