The Judicialization of Student Conduct Administration and Its Impacts on Practitioners

Abstract

This study examined the lived experiences of student conduct administrators in light of the impacts of the "judicialization" of their profession, illustrated in this sphere as the use of civil litigation to resolve matters typically addressed through campus disciplinary systems, the encroachment of students' attorneys into the disciplinary process, and the maze of legislation and case law regulating this work. Using forty years of research that studied the impacts of medical malpractice litigation stress on physicians, the scholarly practitioner found parallels among reported impacts between both sued and non-sued student conduct administrators and doctors. A national survey of 350 student conduct administrators followed by interviews with 12 survey respondents set out to determine the ways in which the changing nature of their profession effected their personal lives, professional work, and beliefs about the profession of college discipline. The Concerns About Litigation Survey for Student Conduct Professionals revealed significant differences in reported impacts between several demographic groups. These data mirrored results from the studies on physicians pertaining to the same demographics.The interviews invited participants to share personal narratives about their lived experiences and led to the discovery of seven themes pertaining to the judicialization of their work: (1) communication, (2) conservative decision making, (3) mental health concerns, (4) responding to perceptions of what student conduct is, (5) the role of campus legal counsel, (6) the shift from being student-centered to process-centered, and (7) impacts of students' attorneys.