Disciplinary Process Under Review: D.C. On Trial - Volume 10, Issue 1

By Jesse Sunenblick

The disciplinary process has been the object of much criticism over the past year, Several Headmonitor candidates expressed dissatisfaction with the process in their speeches Monday. Student disapproval stems from concerns that punishments are inconsistent, arbitrarily decided and compromised by teachers; biased opinions of students before the D.C.

The S.G.A is introducing a new program that could change the D.C. and how it operates. The proposal consists of two parts. The first suggests that two non-related Dean’s Committees should be allowed before a student is automatically sent to the D.C. The second asserts that team captains who are D.C’d should have the right to be re-elected by their coach and teammates. These changes, especially the latter, would attempt to decrease the number of inconsistent decisions issued by the committee. Headmonitor Smith Glover (‘92) said, “Lots of times when someone appears before the D.C, it’s expected that they’ll be suspended (because of a second Deans) for something that their friends get work duty for. They go away angry and confused as to why this happens. I think that these changes will clear up a lot of the confusion that surrounds the Disciplinary Committee and Deans Committee.”

The new policy will ensure that students do not begin to be treated as conflicts with a criminal record. Often, students with previous offenses live in constant fear of expulsion, vulnerable, because they feel they’ve been blacklisted, to severe punishment caused by as insignificant an offense as breaking a window. Jamie Cowperthwait (‘93), who has stood before the Dean’s Committee, said “Sometimes I feel that if I make some sort of honest mistake I will be in a great deal of trouble.” The reform will also give students more leeway during the years at Milton. Gregg Mosson (‘92), comments, “One Dean’s can be used up too quickly, with the next petty mistake resulting in a D.C., which is the ‘real deal’.”

The second part of the new plan insists that team captains who are suspended be given the opportunity for reelection. This will allow students who have learned from their mistakes a chance to redeem themselves and maintain an untarnished record despite an academic or drug-related transgression.

Burch Ford (Dean of Students), who is one of the three involved in making the decision, stresses that while she supports the proposed plan, it still requires some changes.Once the S.G.A. submits the proposal to Mrs. Ford, she will meet with Priscilla Winn-Barlow (Principal of the Upper School), Edwin Fredie (Headmaster) and the D.C. Committee to discuss it. Ford added, “The decision of the re-electing team captains should rest in the hands of the coach and players.”

With the support of Mrs. Ford, the proposal has a good chance of being passed. However, many skeptics wonder whether the plan will fail only to recede into piles of other unsuccessful S.G.A. plans.

History of The DC

Imagine having been accused of cheating, and having the Headmaster with no input from others, and with no guidelines with which to base his decision, judge you, and suspend you for an arbitrary amount of time. Now imagine being accused of drinking, going before the Dean’s Committee, and getting off with no suspension, even though this was your second drinking offense. Neither of those two scenarios are based on fiction; both are based on the way the disciplinary process has worked at Milton Academy in the not-so-distant past. 

Over the past twenty years, Milton’s disciplinary procedure has undergone tumultuous change. Even today many cry that the DC needs further reforms, Transforming itself from a system run by two different organizations with one all powerful rule, into an equal blend of both faculty and students, Milton’s discipline system has strived to make itself fair, consistent, and invaluable to the needs of students being punished.

Today, many of the complaints about the disciplinary process stem from its lack of consistency. One one occasion a Headmonitor appeared before the Discipline Committee three times. He was not expelled, and was allowed to retain his position. More recently, a student with a parent on the Board of Trustees was unofficially suspended, and no mention of the incident appeared on his permanent record.Recently, the headmaster involved himself in the disciplinary process, adding further confusion over the consistency of punishments.

Twenty years ago, either the Headmaster, or the Girl School’s Principal, would, with few guidelines and little input, determine a student’s punishment, Due to an outpouring of student outrage, this process was changed in 1972 to a form resembling today’s Discipline Committees, a boys’ and girls’, each made up of four faculty members and four elected student officers. These students included the male or female-head monitor, and three DC representatives. During the seventies, according to Chuck Duncan (former Dean of Students, 1974-81), discipline at Milton was “pretty loosey-goosey.” A student found with alcohol was subject to the Dean’s Committee, and therefore not eligible for suspension. Also, during this period, there was no limit on the number of Dean’s Committee one student was allowed to have, so students could (and did) come before the committee repeatedly for alcohol offenses. Eleven years ago, the total number of people who served at any one time on the DC was raised from eight to the current ten, with the division being made up of four faculty members, the Dean of Students, and five students.

In 1984, the discipline process underwent its first major changes since 1972. That year the boys’ and girls’ committees merged into one Discipline Committee as one of the final steps of coeducationalizing MA. In response to the reputation that the school was receiving as being lenient on drugs and alcohol issues, the school tightened its guidelines on drinking offenses, making them no longer possible Dean’s Committees, and instituting a minimum three day suspension. The school also started their prohibition program which states that a student on probation who comes before the DC should expect to be expelled. Five years ago, the school decided that a person was only allowed one Dean’s COmmittee, and that for the next Dean’s-comparable offense, the student would have to go before the Discipline Committee. Another major event in that year was a case in which was a case in which the co-head monitos went to the Discipline COmmittee for marijuana use, was suspended, yet did not lose his position as co-head monitor. The next year the school decided that people in leadership positions would have to lose those positions if DC’d. In 1988, the school also denounced the previous three strike rule, and implemented the now in practice two strike rule which recommends expulsion after two Discipline Committees.

The school’s now mandatory five day suspension for any alcohol offence began in 1989 after the Drug and Alcohol Committee met to set guidelines for those types of infractions which not make up 75% of current DCs. And finally, the most recent change in the discipline process has been the removal of the DC representative position. Until two years ago, each class elected DC reps to sit on Discipline Committees involving a member of that class. Now, an S.G.A representatives from each class sits on DCs involving his class.

The recent trend in the changes of the Discipline Committee has been toward tightening and making more consistent the disciplinary process. After an extremely strict process through the early seventies, and the dramatic loosening during the mid-seventies, the school feels it is time for the pendulum to swing back a little towards the strictness of the earlier years, while keeping the fairness and student involvement of the current system. As Duncan said, the school’s discipline is “becoming more conservative.”