Justice and the Olivet College Code of Conduct

The Olivet College Code of Conduct states that to make students more socially and individually responsible they place emphasis on leadership but at the same time they include disciplinary actions to, “hold students accountable to the standards of the community”. The standards they list are: respect for oneself, respect for others, respect of property, and honesty and integrity. I believe that the code of conduct is meant to act as distributive justice, fair treatment for all, but I think it comes off as a procedural form of justice. Through personal experience I would also claim that the code of conduct fails to achieve justice.
The text claims the four elements of justice to be fairness, equality, impartiality, and appropriate consequences or rewards for your actions. In the perfect world, the code of conduct would result in all four of these traits being displayed, at Olivet College they strive for this but do not accomplish it. A college should practice equal treatment but some administrators have biases from their past experiences that prevent this.
Demonstrating respect for others should harbor a fair community such as the college strives for. I do feel that respect for others is something that Olivet stands behind with their justice system. There are very strict rules on harassment, hazing, assault, abuse, as well as the disruption of the teaching and learning process. If these rules are enforced properly the first elements of justice, fairness and equality, should occur.
Elements of justice I feel the college does not support are impartiality and appropriate consequences. Because of our college’s small size, one negative incident could make an administrator or faculty member impartial to a student or co-worker. The code claims, “Disciplinary proceedings hold student accountable to the standards of the community” like I quoted earlier, but I have seen many instances where this is not the case. If you look at the list of reported party incidents it looks like the same fraternities and sororities get in trouble, which would lead you to assume they repeatedly break the code of conduct, but it is true that certain fraternities and sororities have more connections and pull at the college. This shows that justice has not been distributed fairly. When certain Greek houses have advisors high up in the administrative chain you can’t help but question the impartiality of the entire situation.
Regarding appropriate consequences I have heard of many instances where several people break the same rule but have different outcomes. I think that to have a distributive justice system anyone caught cheating should face the same sanctions. But the Handbook allows for a committee to judge each situation separately. Plagiarism or cheating can result in a consequence as small as a written warning or as severe as expulsion from school. You must ask yourself if ethically you can cheat more or less to receive harsher or more lenient consequences. This shows that the code is more procedural than distributive.
And upon my investigation I can say that the justice system of the college is not up to standards. I write an Ethics column for the Echo and every member of administration I talked to gave me a different name of who was in charge of sanctions. Regarding plagiarism I spoke with Linda Logan, Norma Curtis, and Matt Wait, and no one was sure of who was on the Academic Performance Committee who is in charge of hearing regarding academic dishonesty. Matt Wait is the head of the judicial board but once again every infraction is dealt with on a situational basis and may not always make it to the judicial board. In close I will say a college code of conduct should operate under a fair and impartial system like the distributive system of justice but Olivet College’s system is situational and procedural in my opinion.