Restorative Justice initiative for academic dishonesty takes off.

A professor (un)learns a valuable lesson

The new initiative for enforcing Restorative Justice in academic dishonesty is slowly but surely taking off.  Despite the fact that it is quite clear nobody at the upper administration really knows what it means and despite promises that it is only optional, new measures were promptly implemented and enforced.

The idea was simple and beautiful: Amidst the pandemic chaos, the position of Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate studies was eliminated, and an alternative facilitated mediation process was established as:

"part of a process that shifts from punitive responses that place all responsibility on offenders and shifts toward addressing harms done."

We are happy to  announce that so far the process has shown great success, as demonstrated in the case of Prof. Greg Samsa who caught two students cheating in the final exam. In the meeting between the harmed party and the responsible party, mediated by a restorative justice expert, Prof. Samsa was confined to his office at all times, instructed to write a letter of apology, post it on social media and write a hundred time on the board “punitive measures suck”. Students were encouraged to throw apples at Prof. Samsa, injuring him severely. Additionally, the committee upheld the students’ decision to grant Prof. Samsa an F.