One recommendation from the committee that has not been publicly released proposes a student presence in disciplinary decisions.

The Ad Board Review Committee advocated a model where students could select one of two committees—one with students and one without—to hear their case, according to Pfister.

Hammonds told The Crimson that there would be recommendations in the spring relating to “student participation in governance,” though the nature of the changes has not been publicly discussed.

Pfister said College disciplinary proceedings would be improved if students were involved in the adjudicating process.

“Students have insight into students’ lives,” Pfister said. “We were looking for ways to take advantage of some of that insight.”

Senan Ebrahim ’12, chair of the UC’s Student Life Committee, said that the issue of student representation in disciplinary proceedings is “absolutely a question at the forefront of everyone’s mind.”

Currently, the only disciplinary body in the College in which students can participate is the Student-Faculty Judicial Board, which has heard only one case in the 20 years of its existence due to its limited purview, according to Jay L. Ellison, associate dean of the College and secretary of the Ad Board.

PLAGIARISM 2.0

Another issue that the Ad Board Committee sought to address in its report is plagiarism in the digital age, but these recommendations have also been withheld from the public eye.

Students, faculty, and administrators have expressed concerns that the College’s plagiarism policies have not kept pace with the expanded use of Internet resources in students’ work.

“It feels different with the Internet than it was 20 years ago when people were going to the library xeroxing books,” Ellison said.

Hammonds said she thinks members of the College community need to have conversations about ways of combating modern forms of plagiarism.

In light of the changes presented by technology, the Ad Board Reform Committee hoped to devise a wider range of punishments so that the Ad Board would be able to impose more appropriate consequences upon plagiarists, Pfister said. Guidelines for punishments are not set by the Ad Board itself, but by the Faculty and the administration.

“The Faculty rules as they stand right now are the ones we enforce,” Ellison said.

DEFENDING NON-DISCLOSURE