The AMS Judicial Committee (JComm) decided last week to drop four of the eight cases related to minor liquor violations incurred during Homecoming weekend. The cases were brought to JComm’s attention by Campus Security over the course of the first term. JComm Chief Prosecutor Jenn Mansell
said the cases were dropped because “We didn’t feel that [these cases] contributed to what the Homecoming experience is.”
When did JComm decide they were only interested in prosecuting infractions related to Homecoming?
According to Mansell, the four cases were dropped because they didn’t feel the minor alcohol violations, which took place north of Princess Street, had a direct effect on the University—read: they weren’t closely related enough to Homecoming or Queen’s to hurt the University’s reputation, and therefore, they were too much of a hassle to deal with.
JComm’s whimsical and inconsistent application of the Code of Conduct calls into question the legitimacy and effectiveness of student-run non-academic discipline, which is already under the microscope since the summer, when seven of the University’s deans put forward a motion to the Senate to remove non-academic discipline from students’ hands.
The incidents in recent weeks point to a need to clarify non-academic discipline to students.
A student-run non-academic discipline system, in theory, is something that we would like to stand by and protect. That said, in order to be effective and taken seriously, the system needs to pull itself together and clearly define what is and is not acceptable behaviour. What students can do without being reprimanded isn’t very clear when the only determining factors are vague phrases about “affecting the Queen’s reputation.” If JComm is only concerned with prosecuting events connected with Homecoming because of the negative attention it draws to the University, the don’t appear to be concerned with non-academic discipline at all, but rather just preserving the University’s image and reputation. The institution of peer-istered discipline was established for more principled reasons than that.
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