Last year Dalhousie University discovered that a group of male dental students had been using a Facebook group to make derisive and sexually explicit comments about their female classmates. But instead of simply penalizing them, the university, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, also used a process known as restorative justice.
For five months the male students, their classmates, and a wider circle of administrators, dental professionals, restorative-justice experts, and community members met to talk about what the students had done, why, how it had hurt people, and what the students could do to change both themselves and the environment that had fueled their behavior.
Dalhousie drew widespread attention, in part because many observers were outraged that the university had not immediately expelled the students. The case became a high-profile example of a growing practice in which colleges try to help redeem, rather than just discipline, students who violate campus policies.
Advocates of restorative justice think it’s worth asking whether colleges are living up to their educational ideals when they default to old, familiar punishments, as the University of Oklahoma did when it expelled two fraternity members in March for leading a racist chant. By contrast, restorative justice brings offenders together with those they hurt to talk at length and figure out ways to repair the harm, often through educational, self-help, or community-based sanctions.
The practice began to take root on just a handful of campuses a decade ago, and now at least 70 colleges have full programs, estimates David R. Karp, a practitioner, trainer, and researcher in the field.
The scenarios vary. One student who abused accommodations given to him during an examination because he is learning-disabled met with other learning-disabled students to apologize. Another who was aggressive with his ex-girlfriend and the police while drunk apologized to everyone involved, entered a treatment program, and went on to speak at educational sessions for low-level drug and alcohol offenders.
Traditional punishments may factor in: That young man was also suspended for two semesters. The common theme in restorative justice is giving victims a voice and offenders a chance to restore their standing in the community.
“What restorative justice does is say, How can we punish people without destroying them?” says Mr. Karp, associate dean of student affairs and director of campus life and student conduct at Skidmore College, in New York. “That’s a philosophical shift, and people don’t immediately go there.”
Learning a Lesson
Even if a college doesn’t fully adopt the practice, it can still incorporate the philosophy into more-traditional student-conduct hearings, Mr. Karp says. He sees restorative justice gaining greater acceptance as an effective approach to helping both offenders and victims.
It’s not right for every case, practitioners say. The victim or victims must be willing to participate. The offender has to admit guilt and agree to take part in what can be an embarrassing and painful process. A meeting, often called a conference or circle, can last as long as two hours, during which a facilitator guides the discussion and everyone is supposed to work together to determine the appropriate reparations. Students may also be dealing with law enforcement or other campus officials simultaneously.
While the process can sound touchy-feely, those who have used it say it’s anything but.
“If you did something that harmed people, how comfortable and soft would it be to stand in front of people and explain your actions?” asks Chris Loschiavo, associate dean of students and director of student conduct and conflict resolution at the University of Florida. “That’s what we’re asking people to do. I don’t know in any world where that’s easy.”
When students hear from the people they hurt, they are quicker to understand how their behavior affects others, practitioners say. In their view, that’s a critical part of the maturation process for young adults, and something a university should offer.
“Restorative justice provides the most efficient and effective way, the most meaningful way, of conveying that lesson,” says Greg Phlegar, associate dean of students and director of the Office of Student Conduct and Campus Values at Denison University, in Ohio.
Of course, students who choose restorative justice — presented at administrators’ discretion as an option — may be predisposed to that kind of learning.
Still, Mr. Karp has confirmed that it happens. Analyzing more than 600 student-conduct cases at 18 institutions, he and another researcher found that restorative justice had a greater effect on student learning than did more-traditional methods. Offenders were more likely to say that they took responsibility for their actions, that they had a greater appreciation for the campus, and that the process had helped bring closure.
Buy-In and Trust
That’s what happened to Brent, a student at the University of Florida (he asked that his last name not be used). As a freshman he got drunk and high in his dormitory room one night and ended up in a confrontation with his roommate, a resident adviser, and the police.
Brent was an alcoholic coming into college, he says, but earlier treatment didn’t work. Taking part in a two-hour restorative conference, he says, “was probably one of the hardest things I’ve done.” The resident adviser, whom he had shoved, told him she was so shaken that when she went to take an exam the next morning, she started crying in front of her classmates and had to ask her professor if she could take the test at a later date.
Sitting in the room with his fellow students, something clicked for Brent. “It wasn’t in any way antagonistic, coming from a place like ‘You suck,’” he says. “It was coming from a place of ‘Hey, we know you have a problem.’”
The powerful combination of shame and a desire for redemption drive the most successful cases, practitioners say.
For victims there may be vindication in confronting the person who hurt them. A victim can explain, for example, that his stolen laptop had all his research on it, and that he may end up failing a course. He can also ask questions that may have been bothering him, like whether he was a target or just the victim of a random theft.
“It’s part of the healing process and part of the process of making sense of the experience, which is what victims often need,” says Mr. Karp.
In traditional student-conduct systems, some administrators are now more likely to ask students charged with offenses who they think was hurt and how they could fix it. “What you have is a lot more buy-in,” says Mr. Loschiavo, “because they have an active role in coming up with the consequences.”
Some colleges are using restorative approaches outside of the campus conduct system. The University of Vermont trains resident advisers to respond to problematic behavior by focusing on the effect of students’ actions on others. By setting group standards through regular meetings, advisers also encourage students to think in advance about how to handle conflict. When bad things happen, as they invariably do, offenders are equipped to try to make them better.
In the six years the program has been in place, says Stacey Miller, director of residential life, she’s seen a noticeable difference not in the number of incidents but in how they are resolved.
Before, for example, if a sprinkler system was set off, no one would come forward. Now the guilty party is more likely to admit that he did it. “There’s something there in the community,” Ms. Miller says, “that creates a level of trust.”
Growth and Limits
The appeal and growth of restorative justice extends beyond higher education. It’s been tried on a national scale in Rwanda to deal with human-rights abuses. Some states, like Vermont, use it in the criminal-justice system.
Greater adoption across public schools nationally could accelerate its use in college, as students come to campus familiar with the model. Oakland’s public-school system, for example, announced this year that its pilot phase had been so successful, with significant drops in suspensions and chronic absenteeism, that all schools would use restorative justice by 2020.
Still, the practice has its limits. Its viability in cases of sexual misconduct remains debatable, with some practitioners saying it’s difficult to work with a student who has displayed a pattern of predatory or abusive behavior. But restorative justice seems to have worked well in some cases in which the offender is ready to accept responsibility and make amends.
At Dalhousie, the female students who opened a complaint about the Facebook group pursued restorative justice because they felt larger problems in the dental school needed to be recognized. Twelve of the thirteen men involved agreed to participate. They were suspended from the dental clinic and attended separate classes in another campus building during much of the process.
The facilitators interviewed more than 60 people as the team studied what it felt was a troubled atmosphere at the dental school, including a deeply competitive culture, concerns about favoritism by the faculty, and a history of misogynistic, homophobic, and racist behavior. In all, each of the 12 men spent 150 hours in individual and group sessions.
“The process was not going to be something only about men and women and the harms between them, but this was a broader issue around culture and climate,” says Jennifer J. Llewellyn, a law professor at Dalhousie, an expert on restorative justice, and one of three facilitators.
The students and other participants jointly approved a 72-page report, including detailed letters about what different parties had learned and hoped to achieve.
It’s unlikely that a university without deep expertise in this area could have handled such a complicated, explosive case. Colleges starting from scratch have struggled to get their programs off the ground.
“It was really, really hard” to introduce the process at Denison, says Mr. Phlegar. “There’s a lot of infrastructure that one needs to think about if they’re planning to use full-fledged restorative practices. We didn’t really have that in place.” As a result, he says, some resolutions “were not so great.”
Done poorly, the process can be superficial, or too regimented. Discussions might veer out of control. Is the offender prepared to be criticized? Does the victim know what he or she wants? Training for staff members who run such sessions is critically important, practitioners say, as is preparation for everyone involved.
“The more serious the case, the more time- and labor-intensive you have to be on the front end,” says Mr. Loschiavo.
Used well, practitioners say, restorative justice can be adapted to even delicate cases, like Dalhousie’s. Ms. Llewellyn, for one, thinks the University of Oklahoma missed an opportunity with the fraternity members it expelled. Instead of immediately kicking them out, the university could have helped the students, at least those who were willing, learn from their mistakes.
“It’s totally understandable that people get enraged and say, ‘We are not going to tolerate this,’” she says. “But this is not about tolerance, it’s about change.”
Beth McMurtrie writes about campus culture, among other things. Follow her on Twitter @bethmcmurtrie, or email her at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
