Students, Faculty Raise Alarm Over Failings in Disciplinary Process

On March 6, 24 of the 25 students facing disciplinary charges for behavior relating to their involvement in pro-Palestine protests on campus between November 2023 and March 2024 received verdicts decided by the College Judiciary Committee (CJC). These verdicts and sanctions are the latest event in a disciplinary process that has deeply impacted students since letters warning for potential investigations were sent in December 2023. Charge letters were sent in May 2024, two days after negotiations between leaders of the encampment and the administration broke down. The Phoenix interviewed students, faculty members, and staff close to the process, and reviewed documentation of email correspondence and letters to and from the Student Affairs division, as well as evidence presented for but not accepted into files and hearings. 

Increased Disciplinary Action Amid Student Protests

In interviews with The Phoenix, longtime, tenured college faculty expressed concern that the college’s investigations and charges against students represented a departure from its history of fostering a commitment to social justice and advocacy. “I felt as if this [disciplinary process] was departing from all the values that I thought Swarthmore stood for,” said Professor of Anthropology Farha Ghannam. She continued, “Almost all of [these students] came to Swarthmore because they thought it stood for those values [of social justice].” Because of this, Ghannam worries that many students are becoming disenchanted, and losing faith in those proclaimed values.

Associate Professor of History Ahmad Shokr cited that prior waves of campus protests never resulted in charges brought against leaders, despite some even involving sit-ins, like those held by Mountain Justice in 2015 against fossil fuel investments, and Organizing for Survivors in 2019 in favor of disbanding fraternities. 

While more recent data requested by both faculty and The Phoenix has not been made available, Student Conduct Annual Reports accessible online from 2013-2014 through 2016-2017 show an average of 4.25 major misconduct cases of a behavioral nature per year, with no year having more than five. During the 2023-24 school year, fourteen students were involved in behavioral major misconduct cases.

Given the concerns raised by faculty and staff, The Phoenix reached out to Senior Associate Dean of Student Life Nathan Miller. While he communicated over email that he wasn’t able to comment on many specific matters due to legal restrictions on the disclosure of student conduct information and ongoing student conduct process, he contested the allegations of a punitive approach. “It’s worth noting that the vast majority of outcomes associated with these allegations resulted in a finding of either a ‘warning,’ ‘reprimand,’ or ‘not responsible,’” Miller wrote. “When students make mistakes and are held responsible for policy violations, it is a critical time for learning and reflection, which is why college student conduct processes are educational and not criminal.”

Miller also wrote, “I can share, as the individual responsible for overseeing the Student Conduct process, that all of these cases were handled in accordance with the Student Code of Conduct detailed in the 2023-24 Student Handbook.” As his explanation for the uptick in disciplinary action, he referenced a September letter from Vice President for Student Affairs Stephanie Ives to faculty. The letter articulated to faculty the ways that the college had communicated their intention to enforce the Code of Conduct to student protestors throughout the 2023-24 school year. It did so in reference to a 2019 “declarative statement” by then-Vice President and Dean of Students James Terhune that committed to a more consistent enforcement of the Code of Conduct after criticisms of ambiguity and selective enforcement. 

Ives’ letter continued, saying, “By issuing this unequivocal statement to our community, the College made clear that it would consistently hold students accountable for serious policy violations in the future. This statement was made without regard to the identities or viewpoints of any students.”

Still, on the intensified disciplinary action, Shokr said, “My conclusion is that the college is taking exceptional measures against students for engaging in forms of protest that are largely unexceptional.”

It’s worth noting that the vast majority of outcomes associated with these allegations resulted in a finding of either a ‘warning,’ ‘reprimand,’ or ‘not responsible.’

Nathan Miller

Procedural Concerns and Communication Issues

The Phoenix interviewed the five faculty members who served as case managers for the students facing pro-Palestine protest-related charges. These faculty are Ghannam and Shokr, as well as Associate Professors of English Literature Sangina Patnaik and Lara Cohen, and Associate Professor of Anthropology Christy Schuetze. Case managers, as outlined in the Code of Conduct, are college community members selected by respondents, the students who have a code of conduct charge against them. Managers are told to provide “process support” and be present at hearings to ask for breaks. Crucially, they are also included in correspondence between the Division of Student Affairs and respondents.

The case managers told The Phoenix that despite the description of the case manager position and the Code of Conduct requiring the student conduct administrator (Dean Miller) to be available throughout the process, Miller often didn’t engage with their questions and concerns. 

“One of the things that has been mind-boggling and frustrating about the process is that [there are] questions that feel pretty basic,” Patnaik said, including questions about procedural concerns, departures from precedent, and the disproportionate number of students of color facing charges. “We’ve asked them repeatedly, and we haven’t gotten answers, or [we’ve gotten] answers that feel unsatisfying, that are [simply] like, ‘that’s what we needed to do.’”

Interviews and documents reviewed by The Phoenix reveal several instances of communicative problems between students or case managers and Dean Miller.

One student, who wishes to remain anonymous, was sent a letter warning her of an investigation into her alleged involvement in an on-campus demonstration that occurred while she was off campus. The student, who wears a hijab, sent evidence of her being off campus to Miller and wrote that she believed she had been racially profiled. Despite the administration declaring that the student was apologized to for the incident, the email the student received back from Miller, reviewed by The Phoenix, doesn’t address the concerns of racial profiling: “I am sorry for any confusion,” it says, before introducing a letter of investigation for her involvement in a different demonstration.

A different student, who also wishes to remain anonymous, estimates that they have sent Miller over 100 emails that have gone unanswered since they received notice of their charges in May 2024, many of which were reviewed by The Phoenix. 

Despite the administration declaring that the student was apologized to for the incident, the email the student received back from Miller, reviewed by The Phoenix, doesn’t address the concerns of racial profiling: “I am sorry for any confusion,” it says, before introducing a letter of investigation for her involvement in a different demonstration.

External Firms Hired for the Disciplinary Process

The external firms Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhodes LLP and Cozen O’Connor PC were hired to assist with the investigation and subsequent recommendation of charges for major misconduct cases, and the educational consulting firm Grand River Solutions to adjudicate protest-related minor misconduct cases.

After The Phoenix asked about this external adjudicator, Vice President for Communications and Marketing Andy Hirsch said that the high number and complexity of the cases led the college to decide to hire Grand River Solutions. 

Letters from Miller to students also indicate that the college assigned more responsibility to the firm as time went on. A letter from him in May offered students the choice to have an external adjudicator for their minor misconduct case. Then, in November, he wrote that he had appointed Dr. Laura Boren, a Senior Solutions Specialist at the firm, both to conduct all the minor misconduct hearings and to decide their verdict and sanction. “Why does the college want an external investigator or adjudicator to give the decisions on the cases, rather than the college itself?” Shokr asked.

About the role of an external investigator, Hirsch said that the sanctions for the minor misconduct charges were based solely on the process and policies in the College’s Student Code of Conduct, and pointed out that there were seven findings of “not responsible” among these verdicts.

The investigative firms’ primary role before the hearings began was to comb through Public Safety reports to identify and recommend charges based on the college’s Code of Conduct. However, Cohen said the firms’ formalized reports often seemed to merely reproduce the content of Public Safety’s reports while overlooking what she felt were crucial errors in them. 

“There were many instances where either reports were contradictory or they might have raised red flags, for example around questions of racial bias, and at no point did the lawyers take it upon themselves to look into those,” Cohen said. “So despite the term investigative reports, they were conspicuously missing a kind of analytical component.”

Patnaik told The Phoenix of a situation where one of the law firms recommended that the college pursue a charge that was not in the college’s Code of Conduct. This resulted in a confusing position for the student until Student Affairs responded to their communication and dropped the charge. Additionally, many respondents and case managers revealed that the external investigators never spoke with them throughout their investigations.

“There was no mechanism for aligning the practices or values of this legal firm with [those of] the college,” Patnaik said.

Cozen O’Connor, assisting with the major misconduct cases, was simultaneously hired by the college to review Student Affairs’s bias reporting process, including the Bias Incident Reporting Form, as well as many bias complaints themselves. Given that many of the respondents attempted to use this form to report incidents of bias in the investigation, recommendation, and adjudication of student charges, faculty expressed that they saw a conflict of interest in having Cozen O’Connor hired by the college to assist with both processes. 

Miller said that the use of external contractors is “not an uncommon practice at Swarthmore or in higher education more broadly,” citing previous external firms hired for Title IX adjudication and in the period after spring 2019 protests. Hirsch added that “the firm’s work on the bias complaints positioned it well to make recommendations on how to improve our bias process more broadly.”

In major misconduct cases, external firms investigated students and then submitted formal reports of their findings and recommendations that Patnaik said sometimes exceeded 200 pages and included extensive use of CCTV footage. The administration would use this investigation to make the final decision about which violations to charge students with, though Patnaik said that “at no point did they deviate from the charges the lawyers drew up.”

The use of CCTV footage took on extra weight not only because of rising campus concerns about surveillance but also because email records show examples of contradictory communication about their usage. According to emails obtained by The Phoenix, one student repeatedly asked Miller for access to CCTV footage related to their case over the course of several months. The student says that Miller first denied the request, declaring the footage irrelevant. He then later sent the request to Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhodes, who also refused to turn over the footage, claiming that it no longer existed. However, the student found two CCTV clips uploaded to her OneHub, a “virtual data room” used throughout the disciplinary process, after case managers had requested it at a faculty meeting. The student continued to ask Miller for other relevant CCTV footage and time to review it and revise their written statement. Months later, the student gained access to several of the clips while Miller said they would not be reviewed by the CJC, only to change course days later and say they would be.

Dean Miller’s Control Over Hearings 

The choice to schedule a mass hearing for every event in question caused scheduling difficulties, given the large number of relevant parties. Case managers said that administrators seemed to grow frustrated with these challenges and resorted to a process where “it became clear at a certain point that certain people’s [schedules] were being prioritized over others,” according to Shokr.

The student who shared the story about CCTV footage also told The Phoenix that Miller would inform students and case managers of hearings scheduled with very little advance notice, cancel hearings very near or even at their scheduled start time, and extend them far beyond their scheduled end time. Shokr shared a time he had requested for a hearing to be rescheduled because of an urgent medical appointment he had. The hearing was not rescheduled.

Several sources told The Phoenix about a Swarthmore student facing charges who had graduated and was now a PhD student. Despite the Code of Conduct requiring hearings to occur without disrupting students’ coursework, the student was reportedly not able to attend their own hearing after having the request that it be moved to accommodate their academic schedule denied.

Because of the intensity of hearing schedules, one student had five hearings scheduled over the course of their finals week. Others who were studying abroad in different time zones were required to stay up until early in the morning and then attend their courses later that day. 

“We raised the fact that this felt punitive and left no space for the student to actually be a student,” Patnaik said. “As a faculty member, when I go to college administration with a serious concern about student safety or student wellbeing and health, I expect it to be taken seriously. And I can’t say that that was my experience.”

While the external law firms were required to be hired in an investigative rather than legal capacity, the attorneys then served as witnesses during the hearings themselves. About this positioning, Patnaik said, “this feels very unfair because students are not allowed to have legal representation. In fact, their case managers are not even allowed to speak in the hearings. We can [only] call for breaks.”

Multiple sources told The Phoenix about how the Code of Conduct gave Miller considerable control over hearings.

With all hearings held on Zoom, students first give opening statements but then are not allowed to speak until after all witnesses had been questioned. 

Student respondents were not able to directly ask questions of witnesses in their hearings but were instead directed to enter questions into a chat for Miller to then read to the witness. This procedure, however, came under fire given frequent reported alterations to questions and multiple sources confirming to The Phoenix a comment Miller made in a separate context, that he “had a responsibility to alter students’ questions.”

Relating to a case involving a charge of assault by using a megaphone indoors, for which the college has since suspended a student, students consulted with audio investigators Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Fabio Claudio Cervi of Earshot investigations, a nonprofit organization that conducts “audio investigations for human rights and environmental advocacy.” The report, obtained by The Phoenix, found that the megaphone used, the MyMealivos Hi-Power, produces sound at a level that could cause damage to a person’s hearing if right next to them, but was unlikely to have caused damage if used for ten minutes at more than a meter away.

Both the student and case managers advocated to enter this report into evidence for the student’s charge, but Miller deemed the report irrelevant and denied the requests.

Shokr feels that all of this taken together makes it “really hard to overstate how cruel the college administration has been to these students.” He continued, saying, “[There are] concerns about racial bias, concerns about basic procedural issues with the hearings, excessive delay, withholding of evidentiary materials, undefined charges, denying relevant witnesses, changing the evidentiary record just before a hearing is about to begin, which happened multiple times. And then you combine that with [the way] that we’ve come forward with basic issues about the students’ mental and physical health, ability to complete their coursework, applications for further opportunities, and the administration simply hasn’t cared.”

While Miller agrees that the disciplinary proceedings were a source of anxiety, he claims the school has been responsive to the demands on students: “Above all, I want to stress that we appreciate this process can be extremely difficult for students, particularly given the national context we’re in right now. We have been and will continue to offer an array of resources and support to these students.”

We raised the fact that this felt punitive and left no space for the student to actually be a student. As a faculty member, when I go to college administration with a serious concern about student safety or student wellbeing and health, I expect it to be taken seriously. And I can’t say that that was my experience.”

Sangina Patnaik

Case Managers’ Role in the Disciplinary Process

Despite their frustrations with the process and lack of communication, the faculty serving as case managers all emphasized the importance of the role in the disciplinary process. The 2024-25 updated Student Code of Conduct, however, changes the power these managers have. A line in the ’23-24 code, “[Case managers] do not actively participate in the process, ask questions or speak for the respondent,” was changed to a line in the ’24-25 code that reads, “[Case managers] do not actively participate in the process, ask questions, speak for the respondent, or advocate on behalf of the respondent.”

Cohen outlined how this updated line could result in two major changes to the role. About the first, she wrote in email correspondence with The Phoenix, “In the ‘23-24 [Code of Conduct], the case managers cannot ‘ask questions or speak for the respondent.’ The syntax here indicates that case managers can neither ask questions for or speak for the respondent. But in the ‘24-25 [Code of Conduct], ‘ask questions’ becomes its own clause and thus its own prohibited act; i.e., it’s not just that case managers cannot ask questions for the respondent in the hearing; case managers cannot ask questions at all. This is important because case managers have had to ask quite a number of procedural questions regarding these hearings, which would now be barred – even as students have been told that the hearings are the place to address any procedural issues they find with the disciplinary process.”

The second change comes from the added clause that case managers do not “advocate on behalf of the respondent” in the process. Cohen says this would prohibit a lot of the work these managers have done with this series of hearings in future instances. “Given what we’ve seen of the problems with the disciplinary process and the toll it’s taken on students, that kind of silencing is very disturbing.”

With an updated Code of Conduct and recent semesters of protest activity that the college has frequently described as potentially violating it, it is unlikely that this round of charges will be the last. Neither the encampment of Spring 2024 nor the Parrish sit-in of this semester have yet to result in disciplinary action, but Hirsch indicated they “could very well result in additional charges.”