For a college where there is so much emphasis placed on dialogue and discussion about issues such as politics, race and gender, one would think that the spirit of frank and open communication would extend to all aspects of our residential life here at Pomona. Yet, some proceedings at Pomona remain shrouded in secrecy, and that concealment is detrimental to the student body.

We are all adults here; if people break the student code and face serious consequences, the Pomona community should be aware of at least what the charges and the consequences are. However, The Judiciary Board has a strict policy that the J-Board trials are closed and that the details of the judicial proceedings are to be completely confidential.

Obviously, the decision to keep J-Board trials closed was not made hastily, and there are certain instances where the privacy of the defendants is important. If someone is accusing someone of sexual assault, for example, the victim might be made to feel uncomfortable having the entire school know his or her name.

The J-Board has claimed other reasons for not revealing its dealings. A popular concern is that at a school as small as ours, students might be ostracized–perhaps even for the entire length of their college career here–for whatever errors in judgment led them to be tried. For that reason, J-Board reasons that it is better to keep everything private and minimize the number of people that know about the occurrences. But although J-Board might be concerned that individuals could be unfairly accused, Deans always investigate the charges before an actual charge is filed against the student.

But since Pomona is indeed such a small school, you can bet that if someone does something bad, other people are going to know about it. The problem is that if we are to respond, we need to know facts, not rumors.

Another issue of concern is that if we don’t know for sure how people are being punished for their violations of the student code, then we have no basis on which to judge whether the punishment is excessive or too lenient. If one year there is a J-Board which gives out excessively harsh punishments for infractions which the student body generally agrees are not serious offenses, how are we ever going to protest that? We can’t monitor whether the J-Board system is working efficiently if we don’t know anything about what they’re doing.

Two years ago, there was a summary report of J-Board charges and the consequences that was put in every student’s mailboxes. Although names weren’t revealed, the report listed the charges and the punishments determined by J-Board. Although that seems like too little and too late–it wasn’t distributed until the end of the semester–that was at least some information. For the benefit of having an informed and aware residential community, J-Board should reconsider its policy to reveal their proceedings.