While news of students getting in trouble with the law for one reason or another is constantly heard around campus, the way the University deals with those students is spoken about much less.
According to Paul Cousins, the director of the Office of Student Conduct, about 600 to 800 students are referred to the Office of Student Conduct every year for disciplinary action due to violations of the Code of Student Conduct. If the offense is illegal under Federal or North Carolina law, the student may also be charged by law enforcement.
There are times when students are charged with crimes outside of N.C. State’s campus in which the University is notified by outside law enforcement. Whether or not the University chooses to enforce its own additional disciplinary action depends on the severity of the offense, Cousins said.
“The primary reasons that we would get involved would be if there is a real potential impact to the safety of the N.C. State community,” Cousins said.
According to Cousins, violence to other people, possession and distribution of felony-level drugs, DUIs on campus and repeated instances of plagiarism or falsified research are all examples of offenses that represent significant risk to the community and could result in a student being forced to leave the University for a certain period of time.
However, in an effort to address the root of the problem and help students get back on track, they are often given “homework” while away, Cousins said.
Cousins said if Counseling suspects a student’s behavior was related to drug and alcohol use or a mental health issue, the student will typically have to be involved in a program such as rehab or counseling while away.
“We want some sort of trained clinician to have hands on with that person working with them to try to figure out what are the root causes of the behavior or the decision-making and not just dealing with the symptoms,” Cousins said.
According to Ronni Margolin, a psychologist for Student Health, the Counseling Center gets a significant number of referrals from Student Conduct to work with students who have gotten in trouble for on-campus offenses.
Margolin said there are plenty of services within the Counseling Center for students in order to help them deal with the underlying causes of the misconduct.
Group therapy for alcohol and drug abusers and individual counseling to deal with issues such as self-harm or anger management are all types of counseling that Student Conduct has referred students to attend, Margolin said.
“We also have psychiatry services available,” Margolin said. “For instance, sometimes people who struggle with bipolar disorder struggle with things like managing anger and other feelings, so we have medications that will help with that.”
Margolin said even if a student is sent to the Counseling Center through student conduct, sometimes he or she doesn’t want to talk about the circumstances, and the Center is not allowed to tell Student Conduct about the difficulty.
“Although we work closely with Student Conduct and try to communicate with them, what happens in therapy is confidential,” Margolin said.
Cousins said whether it be within campus limits or outside of them, disciplinary actions must be taken when students break the Code of Student Conduct, but the goal is to help students by getting to the root of the misconduct, not by moralizing them.
“The conduct process is by-in-large seen as a real punitive, heavy handed ‘it’s the man’ kind of thing,” Cousins said. “Certainly it can be…but the majority is to try and do problem solving with people.”
Cousins said Student Conduct tries to make the process of dealing with students’ criminal misconduct as holistic as possible to prevent repeat offenses and ultimately help students achieve their goals.
“It’s never going to be like ‘so, idiot, you’re drinking beer?’ We know you are drinking beer,” Cousins said. “Let’s talk about what’s going on beyond that. What’s going on with you that brought you here, and let’s fix it.”