Creative/nontraditional punishments at univerities

Factual Questions
1

Kind of a weird question, but one I’ve been wondering about. There are plenty of threads here on the dope on the wacky world of high school rules and discipline, but relatively few on college discipline.

Stereotypically, teachers and administrators in elementary and high schools have had a wide range of punishments that they may inflict on misbehaving students, including failing grades, letters home to parents, parent/teacher conferences, detention, corporal punishment, suspension, and expulsion.

What about at the university/college level? My experience was that colleges typically divide the world of misbehavior into two categories, “academic misconduct” which was basically “cheating” and “nonacademic misconduct” which included fighting, vandalism, and contraband such as weapons or drugs. The punishment for academic misconduct ranged from a warning, to a failing grade, to expulsion. The punishment for nonacademic misconduct was either a warning or some type of suspension from school or the dorms.

Are there any schools that issue high-school like or otherwise creative discipline? For example, are there any schools that will “paddle” a graduate student for bringing a handgun into a lecture hall, above and beyond any applicable penalties in the regular criminal justice system such as a local criminal charge for “unlawful concealed carry on school property”? Are there any schools that require parent/teacher conferences for freshmen caught cheating on a test or plagiarizing a paper? Do any colleges have high-school style “detention” where you have to sit in a lecture hall for 3 hours under the watchful eye of Dean Smelly for the horrible offense of shooting spitwads at sorority girls or mooning a librarian?

I have heard about Bob Jones University and Pensacola Christian College and their punishments of “socialling”, “campussing” and “shadowing”. Is that all? Are there other creative types of discipline used at universities other than warnings, failing grades, suspensions, expulsions, and referral to local law enforcement?

Again, we are primarily talking about the forms of discipline that the school claims to have the right to administer rather than what behavior is “against the rules” to begin with or what the procedural rules are for disciplinary tribunals.

2

Colleges and Universities are dealing with legal adults. Therefore, they can’t hit them, lock them in a room, or discuss things with their parents. They are, essentially, customers. They can refuse to do business with them in the future (i.e., kick them out). I don’t think they have any reason or incentive to try to be “creative.”

3

According to studentsreview.com, at Bob Jones University “Most punishment includes being placed under social probation, which means that the student cannot even speak to a member of the opposite sex. Failure to comply results in expulsion.” So it’s possible that there could be a school where if you “refuse” corporal punishment or “refuse” to sit in the detention room they can just escalate to expulsion. They could say, “The dean has ordered you to be padded for the offense of cheating on the Chemistry 304 midterm. If you do not bend over and accept the paddling as a free adult, you will be expelled totally from this school forever. If you accept the paddling, you can go back to class as normal. What is your choice?”

4

Bumping this thread because I never got much of a response. It’s clearly the case that universities can execute discipline in the manner of Bob Jones above - that is, they can institute “punishments” that arguably impact the adult student’s freedom but it is not “forced” using physical threats of beatings or imprisonment, but enforced by telling the student that if they do not go along and consent to the restrictions of the punishment, they will be expelled (which the school can clearly do without violating the student’s civil rights). Therefore, the punishments arguably do not infringe the adult’s rights because they are theoretically optional - you can just walk off campus at anytime and accept your expulsion. Are there any universities that tell students caught cheating something similar to what I said above?

5

Real universities are about opening up their students’ minds, and they recognize that to do that you need to treat them like the adults they are.

Institutions like Bob Jones are about keeping minds closed, and students sign up for it because they do not want their preconceptions challenged,and in a very real sense, they want to continue to be treated like children who cannot think and make decisions for themselves. Real universities, however, do not do this sort of shit, and would not get away with it if they went against their ideals and tried to.

6

The place where I teach reserves the right to inform a students financial sponsor about certain infractions. This usually means parents, although there a few spouses.

Military, Naval and Air Force Academies also are university level and they have very creative punishments.

7

But how does this relate to the type of discipline issued? Are you suggesting that UCLA should not ever warn, suspend, flunk, or expel a student, because that student is an adult and thus deserving of being treated with respect, which means no discipline? The regular criminal justice system uses jail as a means of punishment against adults and very few people say that imprisoning convicts constitutes treating them like children. Why, therefore, does giving “detention” to freshmen for the horrible offense of not using proper citation in English 101 constitute treating them like kids?

8

How do they get around the privacy issues, signed waiver by the student?

Cadets/Midshipmen at the United States Military Academy, the United States Naval Academy, the United States Coast Guard Academy, the United States Air Force Academy, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy are subject to the UCMJ, right? But I’m hoping by “creative punishments,” you’re talking about marching off demerits.

9

For scholarships it almost always is part of the terms of the scholorship agreement. For others, yes a waiver is signed.

10

The uni has your marks, and you’re going to need them.

Didn’t pay those parking fines? Never returned that library material? Outstanding misdemeanor fines due the city, for party and noise violations?

No marks for you! And no registration in Sept!

They don’t do the ‘Call your parents!’, thing unless there are health issues usually. It’s the other way around. They tend to field calls from angry parents demanding to know why Johnny doesn’t have his marks?

11

How the hell do you get any of that out of what I said? Suspending and flunking are not “punishments”: they are equivalent to a business refusing to do business with you or refusing to provide a service or product because you have not upheld your side of the contract. Warnings are simply what the word says, warnings that if you do not uphold your side of the bargain, you will be suspended or flunked. This is treating people as adults. Putting them in detention, and the other sorts of things you envisage (and that are done at pseudo-universities such as Bob Jones), is not.

What bearing does this have on what universities do? Nobody, no person or organization apart from the state has the right to detain legal adults against their will. Children, who, for good reasons, do not have full adult rights, can be detained for certain reasons by a certain very limited group of adults (basically, their parents, and those, such as their teachers, authorized to act in loco parentis for the child in question).

For one thing because they could simply refuse to stay in your private little jail, and there is nothing you could legally do to stop them. More importantly because it would be disrespectful to the students, who, unlike students in K-12 school are there of their own free will, and probably won’t want to be there if you treat them disrespectfully.

It is not only that university students legally are adults; more importantly, universities want and expect them to behave like adults. If you don’t treat them as adults, either they will not behave as adults, or they will leave (or not come there in the first place).

University is not high school. Not only do universities not have teh powers over their students that high schools have, universities do not want to be like high schools, they want to be communities of willing, hopefully even enthusiastic, learners, something that schools, with legally coerced attendance, cannot hope to be.

12

I was given an hour of “community service” at my UK university for eating pizza in a computer room. I don’t actually know what this entailed cause I was told that would be my punishment in a meeting with whoever (I forget now) and, er, that was it. I never actually served this punishment.

(Was also given a more conventional punishment of a warning for smoking pot in the libarary but I don’t think that’s the spirit of the OP).

13

Those “schools” are closer to religeous cults than legitmate centers of education. One way to tell is by the “creative punishments” they use to instill social conformity through peer pressure, isolation, shame and so on.

As others have pointed out, real colleges are institutions where young adults willingly go to learn. The only “punishments” they typically require are the ability to withhold your grades or expel you from the program.
I’m not even sure what the OP thinks college students should be punished for. In the adult world,

would typically fall under the LEGAL definitions of “simple assault” and “indecent exposure”, of where there are ADULT consequences.