About

Student Rights & Responsibilities engages across GW to foster equitable and restorative accountability to community standards. We do this through

  1. promoting individual rights and communal responsibilities,
  2. supporting community members to identify and repair harm, and
  3. growing community capacity for conflict management.

Philosophy on Student Conduct

  • We are educators within the university community, and our learning environment is the student conduct process. In this environment, students often choose to learn by taking risks and pushing institutional and personal boundaries. These behaviors are part of the expected leaning process and are not necessarily reflective of a person's character.
  • In our learning environment, all students will receive respect and care, as will other community members. This includes balancing transparency about our process with appropriate privacy regarding individual matters.
  • Our learning environment is an opportunity for education, repairing harm, and connecting to the community.
  • Leaders in this learning environment uphold a fundamental obligation to communicate the rights and options students and others have in the conduct process.
  • We attend to the reality that many aspects of student conduct processes originate in systems that were historically designed by and for those with institutional power. We commit to working towards a system designed by and for all members of our community, making deliberate efforts to incorporate views that have historically been marginalized.
  • Our learning environment works best when it incorporates as much information as possible. For this reason, we seek to create an environment of disclosure, where those with information bring it forward. We balance this against the educational benefits of resolving reports in a timely manner.
  • Our learning environment includes not just respondents and complainants; it includes the entire university community. For that reason, all of our work must balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the community.