Five years ago in the Daily

'The best code is no code at all'

- James Duderstadt, November 27, 1990, in a letter to students published in the Daily.

Okay, so he changed his mind a little. In fact, the "Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities," which was mailed out to students this summer, is a comprehensive code of nonacademic conduct. While the latest code has corrected many of the glaring flaws in previous codes, it would still cause more problems than it would solve.

In 1988, the University responded to student protest against racism by implementing a dangerously vague and overly broad code regulating students' conduct outside the classroom. After a district court struck down this code as an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of expression, the University implemented an interim code aimed at halting racial and sexual intimidation. This code, too, was suspended following a recent Supreme Court decision limiting anti-hate speech measures.

You have to give them credit. If not totally honest, at least the administration is persistent.

The new code will take a different, and hopefully more legal, approach. First, it will deal only with harassment and theft or property damage. Second, rulings will be handled by student tribunals rather than administrative decree.

While these changes represent a welcome improvement over the old code, this code ignores one basic fact: we already have a legal system in this country. While this may seem obvious to students, it has apparently eluded our administration through four years of code-mongering.

While the U.S. legal system is imperfect, it is based in hundreds of years of precedent and well thought-out legal theory. The student tribunals to be utilized under the new code, on the other hand, are mere kangaroo courts that do not necessarily follow standard legal procedure. For instance, grounds for guilt exist if a majority of jurors find it "more likely that not" that the defendant is guilty. Call us sentimental, but we prefer the defendant being innocent until proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Why, then, do we need to set up our own legal system? The letter introducing the code furnishes several horror stories; such as beatings and harassment of students and professors that supposedly warrant disciplinary action by the University.

This implies that if there were no code, rapists, thugs and other criminal scum could wander freely through campus and terrorize the University community without fear of punishment. This implication is totally inaccurate. All of the examples are illegal actions, subject to prosecution in courts of law.

Granted, there may be some instances when they may spare grief to the victims of harassment by imposing swifter justice. However, this comes at the expense of legal safeguards designed to protect the innocent from false prosecution. Victims' rights count, but they do not supersede the rights of the accused.

The administration is attempting to build support for this code by playing on students' fears of rape and harassment, just as it played on those fears when pushing precious codes and deputizing the University police force. The connection is very clear.

First, deputized police replace the Ann Arbor cops. Now the code usurps the legal system itself. A disturbing pattern emerges. The University has created its own government within the ivory tower, a government which is not bound to the standards and principles of the outside world, and is accountable to nobody.

The city of Ann Arbor already had police and courts of law to protect it. The University need not assume these functions. There is no reason to assume that it can do a better job. Once again, the best code is no code at all.

09-15-97