Last updated: August 26, 2021

The Office of Community Standards is committed to Anti-Racism and believes that accountability is crucial in a community striving for growth and equity. In an effort to be transparent, we are publishing the information we have in regards to our cases with diverse student populations. This data examines the process of student referrals and hearing results to better understand how different student populations could be disadvantaged in our current process.

What we know…

The Office of Community Standards (OCS) only has available data available beginning with the academic year 2018-2019. OCS previously used paper-based records and transitioned to an electronic database in 2018, which is now used to track data including race/ethnicity details. OCS is committed to maintaining and monitoring this data in future academic years.

In the 2018-2019 academic year, OCS allowed in-person hearings, as well as the opportunity for students to accept responsibility via email. There is no current tool available to examine the proportion of students who chose an in-person hearing versus accepting responsibility during this timeframe. In 2019-2020, OCS transitioned to hearing all cases in-person. Our goal is to allow students to have meaningful conversations with hearing officers to understand the impact of their decisions that potentially violated a policy. For 2020-2021 and beyond, we adjusted our alcohol policies, and will be using a restorative justice approach with these conversations.

The charts below contain more detailed information.

Cases with a student listed as a respondent

• A “respondent” is a person who potentially violated a Miami University policy, based on the information provided to the Office of Community Standards.
• The populations identified below are identified by Miami University’s published diversity data, which may be found on the enrollment reports for Fall 2020.
• This information was collected utilizing information from undergraduate students across all Miami campuses.

Cases where a student is found responsible

• “Responsible” means that a student either accepted responsibility without attending a hearing (2018-2019) or who was found to have violated at least one policy based on the preponderance of the evidence standard after attending a hearing (optional in 2018-2019, required in 2019-2020).
• Current data is not available to show how many charges were listed for each student; the information below means they were found responsible for at least one charge, but may have been charged with another policy violation from the same incident.

Summary

The OCS staff examined how our process plays a role in structural racism. We must re-examine our policies, practices, and hearings in order to ensure that all of our students, specifically underrepresented students, are treated equitably and fairly.

The data above shows that the reports that we receive from various stakeholders in the community (such as the Office of Residence Life, Miami University Police Department, and Oxford Police Department) are typically consistent with the current student populations at Miami; underrepresented students do not appear to be disproportionately referred to OCS for potential violations of university policy. 

Additionally, as we transitioned to all in-person hearings for 2019-2020, the data above shows that students were found responsible less frequently with an in-person conversation than when students were given the option to accept responsibility via an email in 2018-2019. However, this also shows us where gaps may exist. Students who identify as Black or African American were found responsible at an almost equal rate when compared to 2018-2019 academic year, while students who identify as White were found responsible 15.75% less often.

In the 2018-2019 academic year, Black and African American students were found responsible approximately 63% of the time when taking into account students who chose to attend an in-person hearing and those who accepted responsibility via email. However, for the Black and African American students who chose to meet with OCS, they were found responsible less than 50% of the time - 24.3% and 21.6% for at least one charge or for their only charge respectively. It is clear that meeting with a staff member decreases the finding of responsibility. We believe this is due to students being given the opportunity to share their story and provide context for specific situations.

The lack of a decrease compared to other groups is likely accredited to the fact nearly 45% were not utilizing in person hearings and simply accepting responsibility. This trend is not surprising when we consider the role structural racism plays in policing and adjudication processes as shown by the history of how Black and African American individuals have experienced racism in America. We recognize that this history could influence some students’ past willingness to participate in in-person hearings when they were optional because some may have felt like it wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome.

It is also vital that we recognize that while in-person hearings influence that rate of being found responsible, it is still very necessary for us to find ways to eliminate bias from the process that impacts all marginalized groups, specifically students who identify as Black and African American. As our office moves toward fostering greater restorative conversations with students regardless of the type of violation, we hope to create more equity in our processes because we are listening to the lived experiences of all students which affect outcomes tremendously. As an office, we must take accountability for the ways that we approach our work and acknowledge that we have been complicit in upholding oppressive systems, whether explicitly or implicitly. Naming that our process is not perfect and that there will always be ways to improve, shown by the data collected, is the first step in holding ourselves accountable while also providing a starting point for more action-oriented antiracism work.

Our commitment:

• Comparing only two years of data presents challenges to identify trends
  • Our office is committing to collecting and sharing our data every semester by updating this page with new data and trends to show how our process evolves.
  • This page will next be updated with data for the Fall 2021 semester no later than February 15, 2022.
• Additional Bias Training
  
  • Our office staff is committed to identifying appropriate and extensive Bias training and completing it no later than December 31, 2021.
  • Our staff will post updates to this page as specific training sessions are identified and scheduled.
• Analyzing past data to learn more about trends
  • Our office is committed to analyzing available data from previous academic years to determine which students accepted responsibility via email, versus who chose to attend an in-person hearing.
  • This will allow our office to learn more about the frequency with which different student populations utilized the hearing option in past years.
  • This task was completed during summer 2021.
• Tracking on-campus and off-campus reporting trends.
  • Our staff is committed to tracking and analyzing the percentages of students referred to our office via on-campus reports (Office of Residence Life, MUPD) versus off-campus reports (Oxford Police Department) to determine if they are proportionate.
• Finally, we are actively looking to gather students’ voices and perspectives on our process.
  • Our office is committed to engaging in hard conversations with students that will lead to productive changes for all parties involved.
  • This includes, but is not limited to, revising our student satisfaction survey that is sent out to all students after meeting with OCS to be more inclusive.
  • A revision of this survey is scheduled to be completed for use in the 2021-2022 academic year.