During the 2019-20 academic year, Takiyah Amin, Ph.D., a scholar, educator, and consultant, completed an examination of student-conduct policies (known to many as The Pathfinder) through an antiracism and anti-oppression lens and recommended changes. Amin, Dean of Students Rochelle Dickey, and Community Standards and Conduct Specialist Josh Isringhausen then redrafted the conduct policies based on feedback from internal reviews and campus focus groups. 

“One of our major goals in rewriting these policies was to make them easier to understand and to provide clearer expectations for all students about what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior at CC,” says Isringhausen. “We remain open to feedback from community members about how these policies are understood and interpreted. Many of the changes we have sought to implement over the past few years such as increasing student involvement in the conduct process and developing a robust restorative justice process, have been hampered by the challenges of the COVID pandemic. However, we continue to regularly assess the impact that our policies and procedures have on the campus community and especially on marginalized groups. As we shift out of our COVID response, we are dedicated to redoubling efforts to create systems which mitigate the impact of implicit biases, result in fair and just outcomes, and focus on personal growth and development while maintaining standards of behavior conducive to the educational mission of our community.”

The changes focus on increasing accessibility to the conduct process and reducing subjectivity and bias through more community involvement in the process, and include revisions based on best practices and strategies. Restorative justice practices were updated as a way to resolve conduct cases. Revised policies went into effect in the 2020-21 academic year. A Student Conduct Advisory Group was formed to review the policies annually.