Restorative Justice in Higher Education

"The way that you see how you affected people is very powerful."
Dustin, Colorado State University

In an April 2009 article in The Chronicle (“With ‘Restorative Justice’, Colleges Strive to Educate Student Offenders”), Sara Lipka claims that “student-conduct administrators around the country are hailing restorative justice as the next big thing.” With the process of restorative justice, students at fault are able to claim responsibility for their mistakes while learning a lesson that would hopefully prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future. A blend of mediation and restitution, it seeks to resolve a conflict by identifying the harms caused and devising, with suggestions from both victims and offenders, an agreement to repair them. This form of justice involves cooperation from both the offender and the victim. In a way, the process involves both mediation and restitution. The offender learns how and why a situation harmed the victim and is then offered the opportunity to remedy the situation. The article also makes mention that restorative justice “not only offers an alternative to the legalistic conduct systems colleges now shun; it also resonates with so many mission statements about personal growth and community.”

A company called Restorative Solutions provides classes that teach the process to college administrators. On their website, they highlight five steps that help the process, and they are listed as follows:

• hold students who harm accountable for their actions.
• provide those harmed with a safe place to share how the incident impacted them.
• give students, faculty and residence hall staff a voice in helping the respondent (offender) make things right.
• develop an effective alternative to the traditional system of judicial affairs.
• create a culture of belonging and caring where community standards are relied upon for setting and correcting behavior.

Several institutions across the country have begun to bring restorative justice into their disciplinary systems. For example, Clemson University, Michigan State University and the University of Michigan have all begun to implement this policy. At Michigan, some student cases have even begun to consist of a restorative conference rather than a disciplinary hearing. The article includes several instances that range from remedying a situation involving students releasing a bullsnake in a lecture hall to students riding through a farmer’s pasture to a drunk student terrorizing a family at their own home. Stuart Field, a biology instructor, claims that “It can really stick with them and go a long way towards affecting future choices.”

http://chronicle.com/article/With-Restorative-Justice/30557/
http://www.restorativesolutions.us/colleges.html