American Way of Life

If you’re an American University student, you’ve inevitably heard about the infamous Judicial Affairs and Mediation Services system. If you’re caught drinking on campus, smoking marijuana, playing hall sports, or downloading torrents, you’re liable to come face-to-face with jams, the main disciplinary body on campus. The typical student gets off with minor charges, but penalties can also include loss of scholarship, housing, or expulsion. Charged students are put on trial, where the odds are stacked against them and the chances of an acquittal are slim.

I’ve never been JAMed, so I set out to hear the stories of those who have been through system for both minor and major offenses. This is not an exhaustive report, rather a glimpse into the world of jams from those most affected by it: the students. Some of the names of those interviewed have been changed to maintain their anonymity.

The jams system is composed of three different bodies, all with specialized tasks and varying degrees of sentencing. The firstgtier is Mediation. According to the jams Web site, mediation “provides an alternate forum for the resolution of conflict.” Mediators are recruited from the student body, staff and faculty. They’re used to resolve disciplinary disputes of a minor nature.

Most folks are familiar with the Judicial Affairs portion. There are two kinds of judicial procedures at AU. First, there is a hearing process. This is pretty simple: the student goes to a hearing with jams Director Katsura Kurita Beltz. The student gives his or her story and Beltz determines the punishment.

When this happens, the student, most likely, will end up in Heads Up, the mandatory class for those caught drinking or taking illegal substances. The more dangerous option is a trial, where the student goes before the Conduct Council. In trial, students can lose their scholarship or housing or be expelled from the University. jams can convict with a “reasonable preponderance of guilt,” which typically translates to 60 percent certainty.

Laura Taylor is a model student—on scholarship, distinguished through community service, activism and academic achievement. Yet, the AU junior is facing pending jams charges. The reason? Standing next to the Border Patrol table at the AU Career Fair.

Last fall, Taylor and a friend stood next to the patrol representatives with a sign detailing human rights abuses committed by the Border Patrol. When Public Safety complained she was “impeding free speech,” Taylor replied she too had a right to speak and that she was only standing next to the table. After nearly two hours of deliberation, Public Safety told her to move ten feet away. She complied; the ordeal presumably ended. Several weeks later, Taylor and her friend received a jams notice for “disobeying public safety.” Her hearing with Beltz is pending. When Laura called to complain, Beltz said that Laura did not have constitutional rights on campus; the chilling reality of a private institution—constitutional exemption.

My most common encounters were with students caught drinking. The dry campus rule has dogged many AU students.

Jason Farthing was charged with drinking in the dorms and disrespecting an RA. He didn’t hit him, he said, but it’s an offense merely to be surly to an RA. Jason was able to beat the disrespect charge, but not the charge for alcohol.

“I admitted to drinking, though I never apologized. I’m too hard headed for that,” he said, adding that the system’s response was overblown and arbitrary.

“I had a class during Heads Up, so I was forced to do work independently, which was a lot more than anyone else,” Farthing said. “Plus, there was no acknowledgement of completion. I never knew when I was done.”

Reid Rosenberg was also caught drinking. Unlike Farthing, he attended the Heads Up classes. “No one took it seriously, including the teacher,” he said.

It’s really more a matter of whether you think it can be reformed or scrapped altogether. I’d say a good scraping is in order. But realistically, the administration should look into seriously revamping the system; the current process is unfairly arbitrary and simply unreasonable.

Everyone has a favorite jams story, the one told by a roommate, a friend, or perhaps yourself. The number of students who have passed through the jams system is innumerable. But after a while the tales begin to sound the same. There are outliers like Taylor who are railroaded. More often, though, it is just kids who forget to lock their doors when they’re drinking. It’s a minor detour, but an ineffective and annoying one. Few have anything good to say about jams. Probably fewer have sworn off drugs and alcohol due a couple of Saturday morning lectures and administrative threats.

AU creates institutions like jams to protect the student body, from themselves and each other. But a system that is profoundly unreasonable protects neither. While anarchy on campus isn’t probable for the near future, American should reconsider whether the judicial system in place is serving the students it purports to protect. If not—and that seems likely—perhaps a change is in order.

Think about prisons for a minute. What comes to mind? Criminal. Convicts. Guilt. Orange jumpsuits. Derelicts. People who have written off society and are easy to write off in return.

Sophomore Ava Page and senior Emily Noll want to change that perception. The duo co-founded the campus group Justice Not Jails last semester, aiming to shatter preconceived notions about crime, educate people about the brutalities of prison life, and create a campus movement around prison activism. Their mission is simple: change the crime paradigm.

“Too often, we rely on fear and ignorance to justify the mass imprisonment of millions of people, so it is often hard to create an alternative discussion and school of thought in the face of mass hysteria crime campaigns by politicians and media,” said Page, who feels the system is now discussed only in terms of crime control.

Page and Noll became interested in criminal justice reformation after taking part in an Alternative Spring Break trip to San Francisco last year. They returned to AU as witness bearers, educators and advocates.

“After the Alternative Break Prison Justice Trip, I felt that the understanding the issue of incarceration in the United States was extremely important in trying to eradicate many other social inequalities like racism, classism, and sexism,” said Page, a Law and Society and Women and Gender Studies major.

“I wanted others in the AU and D.C. community to gain the same understanding I had about an issue that is so immense but rarely discussed in American society,” she said.

Found just last year, Justice Not Jails has already done quite a bit to expel misconceptions about prison and the justice system on campus. Sanho Tree, of the progressive think-tank Institute for Policy Studies, spoke about the international and domestic effects of the U.S. war on drugs for the club’s kick-off event for the school year. In November, the club hosted a panel on the incarceration of youth, which examined the practice of trying youth as adults and featured representatives of the Free Minds Book Club, Campaign for Youth Justice and other formerly incarcerated young people.

Just a month or so after their start, Justice Not Jails members organized a campus-wide book drive, collecting donated books and setting up libraries in local jails, institutions that have been bookless for years. To wrap up 2007, the group sponsored a coat and warm clothing drive to help relatives of those incarcerated in D.C.

While Justice Not Jails may not have overthrown the criminal industrial complex in their brief existence, the club’s mix of educational events and direct community action fosters solidarity and understanding between such socially stereotyped groups as colligates and convicts. Exposing the flaws of the justice system, while affirming the similarities among all humanity, the club is working to change the most unjust and unyielding of jail cells.