Undergraduate student judicial systems in colleges and universities: Ensuring both legal and educational components

There is concern among student affairs administrators that student judicial systems are too formal and legalistic. Many contend that formal systems limit the educational goals that can be accomplished. However, student judicial systems are faced with criticism from special interest groups, legal action and pressure from campus constituencies for more due process protections. The purpose of this study was to determine how colleges and universities ensure both the legal and educational components of their student judicial systems.; A self-designed questionnaire, the “Survey of the Legal and Educational Components of Undergraduate Student Judicial Systems,” was sent to a representative sample of the voting delegates from U.S. member colleges and universities of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). Three hundred and seventy-four institutions (66%) of the 567 colleges and universities that received surveys responded to the study.; Participating institutions were asked to report if their student judicial system permitted and/or required 13 different due process protections. Over 50% of institutions permitted and/or required 8 of the 13 due process protections. In addition, over half of institutions either agreed or strongly agreed that their student judicial systems encouraged student learning on 13 of the 15 educational components listed on the survey.; The results of this study indicate that both public and private institutions provide due process protections above what is required by case law. Furthermore, this study found that the due process protections provided are not strongly related to each other. The results suggest that institutions pick and choose among due process protections that are most appropriate for their campus cultures.; Despite the concerns regarding overly legalistic student judicial systems, results of this study imply that these concerns might be overstated. There was only one small (0.11) statistically significant correlation between one due process factor (two due process protections) and the educational components. Thus, the hypothesis that as the formality of due process increases the emphasis on student learning decreases cannot be supported based on the results of this study. The amount of due process provided and the extent to which student learning was encouraged appear to be unrelated.