First-time violations of some Code of Student Conduct regulations that occur during freshman year will no longer be visible to employers and graduate schools on a student’s disciplinary record, after changes to the code implemented this summer that the Office of Student Conduct is expected to announce today.
A first-time violation of certain noise and alcohol policies will be kept as an internal record, rather than a disciplinary record, provided that the student completes sanctions and has no additional conduct violations over the rest of his or her time at Georgetown, the university will announce today, according to Georgetown University Student Association President Trevor Tezel (SFS ’15).
“This policy addresses students who may have had a lapse in judgment and/or decision-making during their first-year [sic] of college,” reads the revised code of conduct, which is already available online. “It encourages students to take responsibility for their decision-making by giving tangible benefits to those students who learn from their mistakes and demonstrate better decision-making throughout the remainder of their Georgetown career.”
While the Office of Student Conduct may disclose requested information from a student’s disciplinary record with potential employers or graduate schools, provided that the university receives written consent from the student, information from a student’s internal record will not be shared with anyone outside of the university.
“Now, essentially, if you get a first-time alcohol violation as a freshman and you don’t receive an additional violation, that won’t appear on your record. It will be maintained internally by the university,” Tezel said.
Upon completion of sanctions, the violation will be transferred from the student’s disciplinary record to the university’s internal records. The first violation will, however, reappear on the student’s disciplinary record if the student commits any further conduct code violations.
This policy applies to on-campus noise violations and on-campus alcohol violations, including possession or consumption of alcohol and the possession or use of alcohol-related paraphernalia, and does not extend to transfer students during their first year at Georgetown.
If a freshman commits multiple infractions during the same incident, all of the violations from that incident will be removed from the student’s disciplinary record in compliance with the new policy.
Students are typically required to complete an educational requirement, pay a fine, undergo housing probation or complete work sanction hours as a penalty for such violations.
“The new policy reflects a movement that the Office of Student Conduct has made in the past year or two toward educationally based assignments in order to assess learning from past violations,” Tezel said.
In addition to the first-year record policy, the Office of Student Conduct created a provision to the Code of Student Conduct stating that students of any year will no longer receive fines from the Office of Student Conduct for their first trash or property maintenance violation.
Students are usually fined by the D.C. Department of Public Works in addition to the Office of Student Conduct for trash violations.
“We were advocating on the behalf of eliminating the fine because it was kind of a common sense idea that the residents are already being fined by the city for this and it’s unfair for the students to receive an additional fine for a trash violation,” Tezel said.
Work sanctions and educational assignments will still be issued as penalties for first-time trash and property maintenance violations.
