Author: Justin Young
If you’ve been paying attention to the complaints of disappointed partygoers, the e-mails sent out by Dean Avery’s office or the multitude of articles gracing the pages of The Weekly, you know that Oxy is currently cracking down on off-campus parties. As a member of the Off Campus Coalition that ASOC President Andrew DeBlock (senior) has spearheaded over the course of the last few weeks, I have had the opportunity to hear the stories of other off-campus residents, many of whom, myself included, have been through the judicial process for the parties they have hosted. There were a few consistent themes in many of the stories told, which raise important issues about the rights of Oxy students, especially those living off campus.
First, Oxy disproportionately executes its inherent authority on students living nearby, despite the fact that there is no geographic “threshold” that determines when and where the college should intervene in a student’s behavior. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the college relies too strongly on non-student residents of the neighborhood as witnesses in judicial hearings. In effect, it makes students less-than-equal as residents of the neighborhood, which certainly should not be the case. If you’ve been paying attention to the complaints of disappointed partygoers, the e-mails sent out by Dean Avery’s office or the multitude of articles gracing the pages of The Weekly, you know that Oxy is currently cracking down on off-campus parties. As a member of the Off Campus Coalition that ASOC President Andrew DeBlock (senior) has spearheaded over the course of the last few weeks, I have had the opportunity to hear the stories of other off-campus residents, many of whom, myself included, have been through the judicial process for the parties they have hosted. There were a few consistent themes in many of the stories told, which raise important issues about the rights of Oxy students, especially those living off campus.
Pause for a moment to consider this scenario: You are at home over winter break, which is, for the sake of this thought experiment, across the country on the East coast. You throw a house party where there are underage attendees (whom you did not invite, but decided to show up), alcohol and music loud enough to disturb your neighbors. Despite some vomiting in your yard and some litter strewn around your house, the party was problem-free and everyone made it home safely.
However, after returning to Oxy and starting the new semester you receive an ominous e-mail from a mysterious “Conduct.” Curious about what this Mr. Conduct has to say, you read it to find that you have been accused of violating the college’s Drug and Alcohol Policy and its Guest Policy, causing “disruptive behavior,” and damaging private property. You are summoned to a conduct hearing where you learn that your previously-unassuming East coast neighbor has e-mailed the school an (exaggerated) description of what happened at your party. Finally, you are found guilty for some, if not all, of these accusations.
Despite the absurdity of this scenario, it is completely within the rights of the college to make it a reality. Section 7 of the Student Code of Conduct in the Student Handbook reads, “The Code shall apply to conduct that occurs on College premises, at College sponsored or sanctioned activities, and to off-campus conduct that adversely affects the community and/or the pursuit of its objectives.” Essentially, this “Inherent Authority” clause means that while you are a student at Oxy, no matter how far away from the campus you may be, you are subject to its rules and its judicial authority. You can be at home in China and the college can find you guilty for your actions there. While the scenario I described above is unlikely, it can conceivably happen since there is no geographic limit to how far Oxy’s authority reaches.
At face value, the Inherent Authority clause should disturb every student, no matter where they live, because it gives the college authority where it definitely should not have any (for example, in your parents’ home). In practice though, it allows the college to pursue its crack-down on off-campus social life. The clause is unevenly utilized on off-campus residents that live close to the school. After all, what is the likelihood that the college would actually pursue a conduct hearing for a student that hosted a house party in Silverlake?
The de facto policy of the college to treat nearby residents with more scrutiny puts them in a different regulatory class. A student’s off-campus living experience should not be dictated or informed by the school’s design. That is, of course, one of the many reasons students choose to live off campus in the first place. If the college wants to closely regulate the surrounding neighborhood, it should throw out the Inherent Authority clause in favor of specific wording that makes it clear what kind of authority it has over residents living closer to campus. Otherwise, the college’s Inherent Authority discriminately targets certain members of the student population. It should be clear to students in the handbook that if they choose to live nearby, there will be some babysitting involved.
Perhaps the greatest affront to the rights of off-campus residents comes to light when the college actually executes its Inherent Authority. Many of the off-campus residents in the judicial process find themselves in a conduct hearing not because of Campus Safety or what the college saw firsthand, but because of reports by neighbors. My roommate and I were called in for a conduct hearing because of an e-mail sent to the school by our neighbor. While the event in question was our first and only party of the semester (and quite modest to be perfectly honest), our neighbor attributed the disorderly conduct that had been occurring in the neighborhood during the prior weeks to our household. To be clear, I don’t have any kind of grievance against these other student houses in the neighborhood. Instead, I bring up my own example to illustrate a flaw in Oxy’s judicial process: The power dynamic between off-campus residents and neighbors is completely one-sided.
In its efforts to establish “order” in the immediate neighborhood, the college is placing a premium on the word of (oft-unnecessarily annoyed) neighbors over the word of the students. In the conduct hearing, a student is allowed to read a neighbor’s accusatory e-mail, but his or her position is entirely defensive, and the student is in the awkward and powerless position of responding, or rather explaining, re-framing or rationalizing whatever exaggerated description the neighbor provides. This approach by the college makes no sense. If two parties are in a dispute, you do not resolve it by talking to only one party, and you certainly do not start with the assumption that one party is correct and that the other party must respond. As a former RA, I can attest that any kind of conflict resolution training will tell you this.
Because the college, or rather Campus Safety, cannot be everywhere at once, it relies disproportionately on residents in the immediate neighborhood in order to execute its Inherent Authority. If Campus Safety broke up an off-campus party, their actions would be understandable. After all, in my experience, they treat students with a more-than-reasonable amount of respect and leeway. But a neighbor is not impartial, and an e-mail only a few sentences in length does not warrant bringing off-campus residents into the judicial system, burdening them with mandatory conduct hearings and assigning them essays and letters to be written to the neighbors and the school as punishment – especially when students have actual schoolwork to deal with.
We are lease-holding, rent-paying residents of the Eagle Rock neighborhood. We take out the trash, pet the neighbors’ dogs and move our cars on street-sweeping day just like every one of our neighbors. Our homes are not colonies of the college, beholden to its authority. One’s status as a student does not de-
legitimize the measure of sovereignty he or she has as a neighborhood resident. Just because we live closer to the college than a student living in Silverlake or downtown does not mean the college should have the ability to monitor and regulate our behavior, despite what kind of intentions it has for its Master Plan.
Justin Young is a senior UEP major. He can be reached at jyoung@oxy.edu.
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