Mimi McCarthy, a senior studying accounting, serves as the student body chief justice for the 2016-2017 school year. " />
Contributed by Roger Winstead via Mimi McCarthy
Mimi McCarthy, a senior studying accounting, serves as the student body chief justice for the 2016-2017 school year.
The student chief justice is the chief executive of the Student Conduct Board, Student Government’s judicial branch.
While it does not receive as much attention as the executive or legislative branches of Student Government, the Student Conduct Board is vital to the disciplinary proceedings many students face during the year.
Technician sat down with Student Chief Justice Mimi McCarthy, a senior studying accounting, to discuss her role in the department, the relationship she has with the other branches of Student Government and the trial proceedings of the Student Conduct Board.
Q: What is the role of the student chief justice?
A: As chief justice, I’m more a face for Student Government to represent the [Student Conduct] Board to the other branches. In addition, I’m the one who runs the hearings. I facilitate the hearing and make sure everyone is following the rules and that the student’s rights are being upheld.
Q: What is the Student Conduct Board?
A: Student Government tends to use “judicial branch,” but we’re just completely separate from them. We hear cases that can result in suspension or expulsion from the university. If a student has charges and the precedent is suspension or expulsion for any of them, then they have the option to come before us.
Otherwise, they can do an administrative hearing, which is the same thing, just one of our advisors hears their case instead of [the Student Conduct Board]. So we hear academic and non-academic charges. Cheating and plagiarism are the main academic [charges]. Anything else like drugs, alcohol, trespassing and vandalism are [non-academic charges].
Q: How often do hearings occur?
A: It varies. We have it scheduled that hearings are on Mondays and Thursdays from 4 p.m. onward; we take however long we need to. This semester we have only had three hearings.
Q: How many students serve on the Student Conduct Board?
A: Currently we have 15, but about half of them will be graduating.
Q: How would a student go about joining the Student Conduct Board?
A: We have recruitment in the fall, so we just wrapped it up. There is an application process that we had open for a month and a half. It’s just your normal questions dealing with that, like what skills you have and what the Conduct Board does.
After that, there is a group interview where we simulate different aspects of the board and what a board hearing is to see how they interact with each other and if they have the skills necessary to be a board member. They also do an individual interview. After that, we have a selection meeting. We just had that and accepted nine new members.
Then we have training, which will be this upcoming weekend. In that, we will go over everything, explaining what the board is and what they do. We will simulate a couple hearings where [the new members] will actually apply what they’ve learned.
Q: How do you work with the other two branches of Student Government?
A: We really don’t. That’s been something I’ve been trying to do. Executive and senate work together a lot from what I’ve seen and we’ve always just been this phantom branch that they don’t really know about.
I’ve been trying to show my face more with senate and exec just so they understand more about who we are and what we do. We can’t disclose a lot of our cases just because of FERPA, but I’m trying to be more involved with the other branches.
Q: It seems like less is known about the judicial branch of Student Government than the other two. Why do you think that is and how do you plan on raising more awareness of your department?
A: There’s always been this sort of divide just because we work more with the university because our decision for a student is made on behalf of the university. We deal more with the university and the Office of Student Conduct, while exec is planning events and what not and senate is passing bills.
We’ve just always kind of done our own thing; we really don’t have any connection to [the other branches]. We don’t have to go to their meetings and events. I’ve been trying to work on that, like I’ll try to go to a senate meeting once a month so I can be visible and they’ll see who I am and what’s going on with us.
Q: What is the election process like for the student chief justice?
A: It’s the same [as student body president and student senate president]. I have to go through the general election. The only thing is, our requirement with the Conduct Board is that there are three positions you can hold.
You can be a board member, which means that you hear the cases, a hearing assistant, which is where you sit on the other side of the table with the student as a support system for them and a presiding officer. You must be qualified and trained for all three to run.
Q: Why did you decide to run for this position?
A: It sounded like fun. I’ve wanted to be chief justice since training my freshman year. It sounded like a lot of fun being able to be on a lot of the hearings and facilitate them. I really enjoy it. It’s a lot more work than I expected because there’s a lot more behind the scenes stuff.
Q: Are you a part of any other clubs or activities on campus?
A: I’m part of the University Scholars program, so I’ll be graduating with that in December. I am chair of the student media board of directors. Chief justice takes up a lot of time, so that’s really about it.