The Council, composed of administration, faculty and one student representative from each class, reviews aspects of non-academic student life that affect members of the College community.
According to Student Government Organization (SGO) President and Council member Steve Ruckman '01, the Council is required to complete evaluations of theme housing every two years. As part of the process, each house submits a report on what it has been doing and what it plans to do in the future. The Council makes suggestions to the houses based on their reports.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Sarah Turgeon, who is a member of the College Council, said that, while there was some concern over whether all the theme houses were holding enough events for the College community, overall she "was really impressed with what the theme houses were doing."
Parker said that while the Council is only halfway through its review, he does not anticipate any major changes in the College's theme housing system.
According to Parker, while the Council has set aside the issue of cheating until its review of theme housing has been completed, the Council plans to report its findings on the cheating question by the end of the semester. He said that the issue was brought to the Council last year by Dean of Students Leiber who noticed a "spike" in the number of incidences of cheating brought to the administration's attention by the faculty, and that since then the Council has gathered information and spoken with students and faculty about the subject. "I don't think its a major problem, but there is definitely cause for concern," Will Johnson '03 said.
Parker said that the Council found that one of the major problems is that students improperly cite Internet sources or fail to cite the information at all. "The Internet has made it easier and easier to download information without citing sources," he said.
Parker added that the Council is looking into different ways to deal with the problem. One of the proposals was to include presentations about how to acknowledge Internet sources into orientation week or First-Year Seminars, he said.
"The real problem is that students lack the value of intellectual responsibility, and we're trying to change that with next year's freshmen," Seth Birnbaum '02 said.
Birnbaum added that the Council has already informed professors that they can check the content of their students' papers with papers available on the Internet with several Internet-based programs.
Parker said that when the Council releases its findings to the College community, it will likely reaffirm the importance of the Statement of Intellectual Responsibility and warn students that failing to cite Internet resources is considered plagiarism.
He added that while he does not think that additional policies concerning cheating will be necessary, the Council will continue to monitor the number of cases of cheating that are brought to the administration. He said that if that number continues to be high, the Council will do more. But Parker added that at the moment, he is hoping that the high numbers from last year were a fluke.
Finally, Parker said that once the Council has finished its inquiries into cheating and theme housing, it plans to look at a new way for student groups to raise funds for their activities. He said that currently student groups must request funding from different departments, but that the process is difficult for both students and department chairs. He said that the Council hopes to create an administrative group that would be in charge of distributing funds to different groups, thus "making it easier for everyone" by eliminating students' need to go to different departments.
"It seems like something we could fix quite easily by creating a new clearinghouse," Parker said.
He also said that if there is time, the Council would like to look into the Outreach Program, adding that the Council wants "the College to do everything it can to support the program." A review would make it possible to determine if this is occurring by examining what resources the program needs, how it uses them and how it is currently being supported by the College.