Donald Keough, News Editor–

After two years of student and faculty feedback, the revised student code of conduct is being finalized this summer. Students will likely be able to keep furniture in the rooms- with some restrictions- and can also expect more transparency with student organization policies and changes in how minor charges are handled.

The last revision was set in motion at the beginning of the 2022 Fall semester. Since then, a variety of feedback and student/faculty effort has gone into the revisions this year, including from the community and through the work of a code of conduct committee who meets bi-weekly.

Mary Kate Kennedy, the Director of Community Values and Student Conduct, has worked closely on the code since she came to Denison in 2021. When she first arrived, she said that many students were frustrated with the code. This was one of the reasons she helped create the conduct committee to help reshape the code, saying she felt “the students deserved to be heard.”

The first conduct committee had 14 student/faculty members, and today the committee has 29 students/faculty members. Kennedy described them as “leaders of student voices and community perspectives.”

“It’s been helpful in our team to hear direct feedback [from the community],” Kennedy said in an interview. “We can better [understand] not only what is in [the code of conduct] but also how the code affects our community.” 

Kennedy also works one-on-one with students to help resolve violations of the code, and she hopes the new changes to the code will aid in destigmatizing the violation process.

“We don’t want students to be intimidated,” Kennedy said. “Intimidation causes anxiety, which we don’t want. We want to have productive conversations with students [because] the accountability process is important for student’s futures.” 

Patrick Gavin ‘26 is one of the students on the code of conduct committee. He started working with the committee at the beginning of this semester and has also met with Kennedy to help work on the code.

So far, he’s found student involvement in the committee to be “helpful because students are the ones who are being affected and are the ones who know what rules are unfair and aren’t working.” 

This semester, Gavin has focused on student safety, specifically around alcohol. He said that this was one of the main reasons he joined the committee after he was concerned by the number of alcohol health-related issues. 

“I feel like alcohol safety was a really big issue in the first semester on campus,” Gavin said. I think it’s something that can be scary, especially on a campus like Denison where these issues aren’t very common.”

Since joining the committee, Gavin has found the process rewarding.

“Getting to see these new rules being implemented, and getting to say ‘oh, I’m a part of this, I was able to contribute to this,’  and helping the community out is really cool,” Gavin said. “Not a lot of people have an opportunity to do that.”

With the code’s changes being officially set into motion in the fall, Kennedy plans for various events to be held to help raise student awareness of the code, such as Denison’s third “know your code” week and workshops. 

Kennedy acknowledges that it has been a long process to revise the code, but she believes that it will be beneficial to the community. 

“Conduct isn’t an easy job, but the basis of our work is in community well-being,” Kennedy said. “…This is all part of the process of helping Denisonians learn how to be Denisonians.”