The IU Office of Student Ethics was renamed the Office of Student Conduct on Aug. 14 to better serve students and represent their responsibilities, office director Libby Spotts said.
“Ethics was a little ambiguous,” Spotts said. “We just wanted to make it a more transparent place.”
The responsibilities of the Office of Student Conduct will not change, Spotts said. Their four main areas of focus are still academic integrity, organizational misconduct, sexual misconduct and personal misconduct involving substance abuse.
The office brought in two focus groups of students, faculty and staff to help choose the name, Spotts said. She and the rest of the people in her office were looking for something clear and easy their audience would like and understand, she said.
The other popular option among the group, the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, was vetoed because a branch of the IU Student Association has a similar name.
The office worked with Vice Provost of Student Affairs Lori Reesor to choose their final new name because it is part of the Student Affairs division, Spotts said. As head of the division, Reesor approved the change to Student Conduct.
Spotts said many other universities use the name Office of Student Conduct, and IU’s name change helps build understanding for those who have seen it used in other places.
In the past, students were often confused about the term "ethics" and how it fit in with what the office does, Spotts said. They would come to Spotts and her team looking for ethics classes offered through the School of Public and Environmental Affairs or Kelley School of Business. Other times, they did not know where to send their conduct reports or what ethics even meant.
“Sometimes it might’ve sounded a little judgmental,” Spotts said.
In addition to its main responsibilities of overseeing four areas of misconduct, Assistant Director Anna Krause said the office will also continue its mediation and restorative justice work.
Mediation deals more with issues between students such as disagreements between lab partners or off-campus roommates where there is no resident assistant to help.
Restorative justice revolves around a group of people all affected by a specific issue in the same way. Krause said an example of these problems might be a dorm bathroom that was flooded because of inconsiderate actions by floormates. Students, custodians and RAs must all deal with this, and the office’s job is to try to make all parties understand how to respect others who are also affected by this issue.
“We provide resources early not only for a particular conflict but also to build stills of interpersonal conflict resolution,” Krause said.
Spotts said the Office of Student Conduct’s main goal is to keep students working toward their degrees no matter what challenges they may face during their time at IU. The team wants to keep students on campus instead of dealing with suspension or expulsion as disciplinary actions.
