Student complaint leads to code review
Ryerson is reviewing its Student Code of Non-Academic Conduct after a student complained that a teacher unfairly charged him under it.
A committee of both students and faculty is reviewing the code.
Toby Whitfield, a second-year business management student, is not pleased with the Ryerson Student Code of Non-Academic Conduct. Last year, he was accused of violating it.
The code outlines behaviour which the University considers to be inappropriate, describes how the University will respond to such behaviour and indicates the possible consequences.
Whitfield takes issue with section F1 of the code which states, “The director of Student Services will deal with the majority of cases informally.”
“The University wanted to charge me based on their interpretation of the code and it differed from my interpretation. The policy outlines larger issues, it needs to target smaller issues that to some people are not issues at all.”
He preferred not to mention the specifics of his case.
“The problem that he encountered last year brought to the attention of the Senate that the code was out of date,” says Diane Schulman, Director of the Office of the Provost and Vice President Academic and Secretary of Senate. Schulman is a member of the committee currently reviewing the code.
It was not new information that the code needed to be updated, she says. “The policy was quite old. It was written at a time when Ryerson was a much smaller place.”
The committee was set up because the policy was due for renewal, she says. The Student Code of Academic Conduct has been reviewed several times.
Nora Loreto, President of the Ryerson Students’ Union, believes that they are reviewing the code for additional reasons.
“Two instances I know of that likely triggered the review is the filming of the professor that had an outburst on a student (that was posted on YouTube) and the White Minority at Ryerson group on Facebook.”
Loreto says that other than the fact that these instances were just plain wrong, administration didn’t really have anything in place to ensure that guilty parties were punished.
The issue of improper monitoring of student action, especially of students on their own time, is something to keep an eye out for too. Whitfield’s problems with the code are a perfect example of that, she says.
“We know the government got mad at something he did and, somehow, he managed to get in trouble for it under the non-academic code.”
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