A Call for Restorative Justice in Higher Education Judicial Affairs.

This paper aims to provide support for post-secondary institutions' exploring and implementing restorative justice in their judicial practices. Although restorative principles have been employed successfully across the globe in criminal proceedings and K-12 education, most colleges and universities have not yet embraced this practice. By exploring the limited literature and research on restorative justice, this paper demonstrates the benefits of restorative discipline to the campus community, to the hegemonic male culture, and to student development. It will also present general strategies for implementing restorative justice on college campuses. There are very few articles exploring the benefits of restorative justice in higher education. This paper fills that gap. Keywords: restorative justice, restorative discipline, higher education, hegemonic male culture, judicial affairs ********** In The Little Book of Restorative Justice for Colleges and Universities, Karp (2013) commenced his treatise by describing "The Story of Spirit Horse" (p. 3). In the narrative, he described an actual situation in which a Skidmore College student, where Dr. Karp served as Associate Dean of Student Affairs, stole a statue, "Spirit Horse," from a local antique shop. Although the crime easily fit into local law enforcement's judicial processes, the campus procedure was to initiate its own disciplinary action. Dr. Karp advocated for restorative justice proceedings. The restorative process began with the story-telling phase. Through the shopkeeper's, the art director's, and the statue's artist's stories, the perpetrator was surprised to learn of the impact of his behavior. As a result of his deepened understanding, the student agreed to perform deeds that reflected genuine remorse and a commitment to regain trust of the community. Impressed with Skidmore's handling of the situation, the local district attorney did not pursue the matter and removed the occurrence from the student's permanent record. This situation is a poignant example of the far-reaching impact of restorative justice in higher education. Historically, most campuses have employed a legal system of justice in their disciplinary proceedings. This tends to be adversarial. Its win-lose atmosphere often leads to resentment, alienation, and even isolation for the students involved (Gehring, 2001; Karp, 2005). Unfortunately, it has not made a dent in the unruly behavior that plagues many campuses. The major challenges involving students on our campuses appear to be getting worse: high-risk alcohol and drug use persists at dangerous levels. Student mental-health issues have never been more prominent. Cheating and a lack of respect for academic integrity are epidemic (Lake, 2009, para. 1). Exploring diverse approaches to supplement these ubiquitous traditional systems of justice seems prudent. Karp (2013) is a contemporary voice calling for this search. Just as criminal justice officials have learned they cannot incarcerate their way out of the crime problem, campus conduct officers know they cannot suspend their way out of their student conduct problems. Restorative justice offers a different approach that is educational for the student offender while also meeting the needs of the harmed parties and the institution (p. 8). Unlike traditional judicial approaches that focus on punishment, restorative justice aims to repair the harm caused by the crime while holding offenders accountable to active measures of restitution (Karp, 2013; Zehr, 2002). Having been successfully implemented in the court system, its novel ideas have also been applied in K-12 education communities. Higher education, on the other hand, has been reluctant to embrace its practices. In one of the rare pieces of research on restorative justice in higher education, Meagher (2009) noted that only 8% of colleges and universities had any kind of restorative program on their campuses. …