The Student News Site of the Latin School of Chicago

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The Student News Site of the Latin School of Chicago

The Forum

The Student News Site of the Latin School of Chicago

The Forum

An Honorable Change

Jacob Pharoah

“You’ll have to go before DC.”

That phrase didn’t fill you with joy, did it? We all remember the intimidation that lay before the façade of Latin’s Disciplinary Committee. I know that during my freshman year I envisioned it to be a group of cloaked men and women interrogating the accused in a dimly lit room. But now, it seems, it’s a thing of the past.

A group of faculty and students have been diligently working on coming up with a new alternative since last December. DC has been revamped and now goes by the name “Honor Council,” you may have heard of it. The change was prompted by a drive to create a more transparent and inclusive body. Basically, Honor Council is built on trust. Its goal is to foster communication on disciplinary issues and demystify issues that many students might not be clear on. It is designed to include both students and faculty in an attempt to achieve the common goal of tackling ethical issues while still including multiple perspectives and opinions. Victoria Lancaster, a senior who was involved with the creation of Honor Council, comments that “it’s ideally supposed to create a more comfortable community” and that “Latin students […] should not feel as though cheating is the only escape from a missed assignment—they should be able to tell their teacher they had too much on their plates the night before. Teachers will understand!” It’s no secret that we’re all stressed and under a lot of pressure, but this change serves to remind us that we never have to resort to cheating.

The committee will begin its duties in the spring semester and students can begin applying for positions in the first week of October. The application process will be a mixture of public elections and write-in applications. The feeling was that some students might present themselves better in a written application and others might do better in a public speaking setting, so half of the positions will be filled by the write-ins and the other half by the speakers.

In the name of transparency, Honor Council has made its inner-workings accessible to all Latin students. At the bottom of this article I’ve include the Honor Council Charter and the Honor Council Rationale. I humbly recommend that you read both to get a full picture of what’s going on.

The Honor Council Charter: http://tinyurl.com/HonorCouncilCharter The Honor Council Rationale: http://tinyurl.com/HonorCouncilRationale
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An Honorable Change