Student Conduct Practice: The Complete Guide for Student Affairs Professionals (review)

Concerns about student conduct are as old as the university itself. In the United States, thousands of court cases, particularly since 1961, and hundreds of articles in legal journals and law reviews have addressed the underlying legal principles that impact the adjudication of such behavior on college and university campuses. There has been, however, much less coverage of such issues in the literature of higher education and student affairs. Student Conduct Practice is the latest book-length effort to deal with the thorny issues faced by administrators and faculty who deal with such conduct issues.

In the introduction, the book's editors pay tribute to one of the first such books, written in 1998, The Administration of Campus Discipline: Student, Organizational, and Community Issues. One monograph to which the authors should have provided a reference is The State of Judicial Affairs: Current Forces and Future Challenges (1998), which was published by the Association for Student Judicial Affairs (ASJA). It was the work of all of the association's presidents up to that time.

There are also several monographs in the New Directions for Student Services series published by Jossey-Bass, which either directly or indirectly address some of the issues dealt with by these authors. However, this book does pull together a number of important topics which go beyond the above-mentioned books.

Student Conduct Practice takes a retrospective look at the issues raised by the authors of the earlier book and adds commentary on some new issues and related directions which are currently part of student conduct practice. It also pays homage to the Association for Student Judicial Affairs and the work done by, and within, the membership of the association since its founding in 1988. In addition to the editors' personal experience working with the Center for Academic Integrity, several chapter authors also specialize in academic integrity issues.

ASJA, which has recently changed its name and acronym to the Association for Student Conduct Administrators (ASCA) has, since its inception, clearly been the primary organization for professionals who deal with student conduct. In its 21 years, the association and its membership have been at the forefront of improving student conduct practice and working to professionalize the work done by members and their institutions. As a founding member of the association and a past president, I disagree with the need for the most recent changes but acknowledge the good work of the association and compliment Lancaster and Waryold on bringing together some excellent professionals to write on topics of great importance to student conduct professionals and others in student affairs and the university as a whole.

The book is organized into two parts with a total of 16 chapters. Part 1 is titled "Structural Considerations." Among its 10 chapters are those which address the underlying philosophy upon which student conduct administration is based, the presumption that practitioners need a certain temperament to serve as a student conduct administrator; a description of the role of the student conduct administrator in the institution's governance, a description of the means of revising a code of student conduct, the legal underpinnings of student conduct practice, examples of current organizational and methodological means of conducting student conduct processes, applied ethics as they impact student conduct boards, the importance of the use of the social justice model in student conduct practice, ethical decision making, and issues related to information technology.

While each has something to make it appeal to the reader—particularly to someone who knows little about student conduct issues—the overarching concept for this collection of chapters seems difficult to grasp. It might have been more appropriate to break the chapters down into more sections and focus each section on a particular topical area. This comment does not, however, negatively affect the content of the section.

Part 2, "Current Issues," has chapters dealing with incivility on today's college campuses, First Amendment issues...