It’s been four months since the pro-Palestinian encampment at Bryn Mawr College —referred to by participants as “The People’s College for the Liberation of Palestine”— ended, following a nearly three week stint on Merion Green and multiple failed attempts to negotiate with Bryn Mawr College Administration. Despite demands that the encampment be moved in time for graduation, organizers chose to stay on Merion Green, prompting Bryn Mawr administration to level several Dean’s Panels against the organizers.
This would prove to be one of the more controversial moves from the admin that Spring. In one of her final acts as Head of the Honor Board, Bryn Mawr College alum Xenya Currie BMC ‘24 released an email on May 15 accusing co-Chair of the Honor Board Dean Tomiko Jenkins of failing to comply with proper Dean’s Panel procedures on multiple occasions. Administration did not respond to the allegations.
In July, the Bi-Co News was contacted by encampment organizers Mari, Ali, and Marley, Bryn Mawr students of various class years who were looking to go on record about their experiences undergoing the Dean’s Panel process. Because confidentiality guidelines concerning Dean’s Panels can be nebulous, we were asked to use first names only out of an abundance of caution.
The organizers allege that on May 3, 10 encampment organizers received an email from Dean Tomiko Jenkins summoning them to a Dean’s Panel “because [they] deliberately defied the directive of College officials which is in violation of the Honor Code.” It was later revealed that one organizer had received this message by mistake, and was promptly removed from the email thread.
In speaking with Honor Board Head Katelyn Stealey regarding this claim, she clarified “the Bryn Mawr College Honor Code is pretty specific about what the jurisdiction is for Social Cases. It actually does not include College policy directly except for the Drug and Alcohol Policy, which is stated in the Social section of the Honor Code as being a College policy that is under the jurisdiction of the Honor Code. [Defying the directives of College officials] would not be a violation of the Honor Code, but it could still be a violation of College policy.” She went on to clarify that this does not mean that the College could not sanction students for breaking College policy that was not in the Honor Code, simply that most College policies are not included under the Honor Code.
The Bryn Mawr College Undergraduate Student Protest and Dissent Policy states:
If, during an event, the appointed moderator believes that the conduct of persons present poses a threat to the rights or safety of other members of the community or of guests, she or he will ask such persons to cooperate in restoring order and remind them of their responsibilities under this policy. Should she or he be unable to restore order by so doing, she or he may: Ask Campus Safety to remove any persons who are posing a threat to the public order; Decide to move the event to another physical space; Decide to end the event and disperse the gathering.
In the event that protests disrupt an event at which there is no appointed moderator, any faculty member, administrator or Campus Safety officer present may assume the role of moderator.
This would appear to be the policy Dean Jenkins is referencing in her email when she claims defying College official directives is in violation of the Honor Code. And while disregard for this policy, including ignoring the directives of an administrator who has assumed the role of moderator, can lead to a Honor Board Hearing or a Dean’s Panel, it is not in violation of the Social Honor Code, as Dean Jenkins initially stated.
Organizers promptly disputed the claim that they had violated the Honor Code, and were then allegedly told that their summoning was justified in the Undergraduate Student Handbook chapter on Dean’s Panels under Section A: “In general, a Dean’s Panel will be convened to deal with … circumstances in which College resources, policies or property have been abused.” Student organizers claim to have not been informed in writing of the specific policy, resource, or property they had abused, which could constitute a violation of Dean’s Panel Policy C: Notification, which specifies that “Each student brought before a Dean’s Panel will be notified by letter or email from the chair that a Dean’s Panel is being convened. This letter will specify the behavior or issue that gave rise to the concern and direct the student to schedule a meeting prior to the hearing with the chair or their designee.”
Members of the original 9 encampment organizers who were brought before a Dean’s Panel in early May claimed that they were identified as leaders based on previous contact with Administration, both over email and through attendance at in-person meetings. “It really seemed like they identified us largely based on who they had been in meetings with, which was really frustrating because they’re always talking to us about trust, and establishing clear lines of communication, but when it actually came down to it the people that they chose to have disciplinary procedures against were just the people that they knew,” stated Mari.
As the Panels began, the confusion only grew. During her second procedural meeting, Marley, a member of the Encampment 9, asked who was bringing the Dean’s Panel case against her, and was told that it was a decision “made collectively,” denying her the right to know who was accusing her of violating College policy. While this right to know your accuser is a key feature of the Honor Code, affirmed through the need for positive confrontation between two students before an Honor Board Hearing procedure can even begin, no such provision exists in the Dean’s Panel policy. Students may be brought before a Dean’s Panel with no knowledge of who is leveling the case against them whatsoever.
Typically, one or two procedural meetings will take place before a Dean’s Panel so that the deans and students can review the process together. During these meetings, students may submit the names of witnesses they would like to have present at the hearing. These witnesses are to be informed by deans of their summoning so that they can submit testimonies prior to the hearing. According to members of the Encampment 9, the majority of witnesses were unable to submit statements ahead of time because they were never contacted by admin. Instead, the students facing Dean’s Panels had to notify their own witnesses that their presence was requested.
The alleged composition of the Dean’s Panels for the Encampment 9 were also atypical. As written in the Student Handbook, Dean’s Panels may include “up to two undergraduate members of the Honor Board.” For cases in which the deans believe student involvement would be inappropriate, they must consult with the Head of the Honor Board, as outlined in the procedures in the Student Handbook. According to student organizers, no undergraduate students were present at their hearings, nor was former Head of the Honor Board Xenya Currie consulted about the decision to remove undergraduates, according to the email she sent in May.
Other organizers had other issues with their Panel composition. Ali reports being given a list of staff and faculty members who could be present as Panelists, only to arrive at her Panel and find Campus Safety Liaison Rose Miller, who was not on the list she received, serving as a Panelist. Another claimed that there were non-Panelist observers at her hearing whose attendance she was not informed of and whose presence was not explained. Marley explained that the Encampment 9 had asked to undergo their Panel collectively, but that “I thought it was sort of unclear whether we were being [sanctioned] individually or together.”
The sanctions the deans were pursuing were also not made clear to organizers. At one point in a meeting, Ali alleges, Dean Karlene Burrell-McRae reportedly told a student that expulsion or suspension were not avenues they were willing to pursue, while Dean Jenkins reportedly told a different student that same day that these consequences “were not off the table”.
Eventually, the Panel settled on sanctioning the Encampment 9 with a probationary period between 2 weeks and a year, depending on the class year of the student, and a written apology to facilities and grounds staff, as well as various members of administration whose work, they were told, had been impeded by the encampment. During the probationary period, students could not face another Honor Board Hearing or Dean’s Panel or else risk expulsion or suspension.
Shortly after the Encampment 9 were summoned, other student protesters began mass reporting themselves for Dean’s Panels to demonstrate collective responsibility. It’s estimated that between 60 and 70 students used the self-report form on Bryn Mawr’s website to admit a violation of the Honor Code related to the encampment. The self-reporting students were contacted by administration in two waves. The first wave of self-reports, and the second wave of student protestors to undergo Dean Panels that spring, were mostly seniors who needed to face a Panel before graduation. The second wave of self reports, and third wave overall, was mostly non-senior protestors who were not contacted until late May, almost two weeks after the school year ended.
Ali, a self-reporting student in the second wave, claimed that she was contacted by admin prior to graduation. When she arrived for her Dean’s Panel however, she found that her process would look different from what was typical: “I got told, at the start of the Dean’s Panel, you can choose to waive this process and get the same punishment as the first round, because they had their hearing before ours.”
Ali was supported during her Dean’s Panel by Associate Professor of English Jennifer Hartford Vargas. She reports that Vargas told her on the day of her Dean’s Panel that former President Cassidy had confirmed the day prior that she was planning on offering second wave students the option to surrender their Panel, but did not inform the students in the second wave until they arrived at the hearing. Students in the second wave rejected this offer, opting to undergo the Dean’s Panel as their peers in the first wave had.
The option to “waive” the Dean’s Panel does not appear anywhere in the guidelines, nor is there precedent for it from past cases, according to Stealey. “To do this would be in violation of the written policy in the most updated Student Handbook which is where the authority of a Dean’s Panel is spelled out in its entirety”, said Katelyn. In fact, going into a Dean’s Panel with the case already decided and sanctions already in mind stands in direct opposition to the spirit of the Honor Code. “For a Dean’s Panel to be conducted in the spirit of the values of the Honor Code, including the belief in the integrity of each individual, and also in non-assumption of guilt, to offer the option of consequence without a formal hearing process taking place I do think is in violation of the written policy,” Stealey added.
Bryn Mawr administration would repeat this pattern again in late May, when they contacted non-senior students who self-reported for a third wave of Dean’s Panels. According to Colby, a student protestor who was contacted during that third wave, Dean Jenkins actively discouraged students from undergoing the Dean’s Panel process. “It was pretty clear from the phrasing of the email… that they were not equipped in any type of way to be holding 70+ of these meetings, so they were really urging us to sign this statement they had drafted up that was like ‘I agree to this punishment’, which was the one year probation, and then the apology letters,” Colby stated. Colby’s allegation is not just that administration had predetermined sanctions in mind when they began the Dean’s Panel process with the third wave, but that they moved to disperse with fact-finding processes entirely, presuming the guilt of students who self-reported and providing them with a set of preconceived consequences.
Colby stated that she, along with other members of the third wave, decided to push for a Dean’s Panel procedure as normal. During this time, non-seniors who underwent Dean’s Panels earlier in the semester also began the process to appeal their probation. Then, they received another email from K. Cass.
In late May, student protestors who had faced a Dean’s Panel for the encampment in the spring were allegedly informed via email by former President Cassidy that, as a result of the mishandling of the prior cases, the probationary periods would now be void. Students who had not graduated would no longer be on probation, and would only have to write the apology letter mentioned earlier. This allegation was echoed twice by two different student organizers in two separate conversations.
If the allegations made in the article by student activists are true, that would mean that Bryn Mawr College administration broke with precedent and violated written Dean’s Panel procedures on five separate occasions in the spring: in their failure to correctly identify the policy organizers had violated in the initial notification of the Dean’s Panel sent to the Encampment 9 on May 3, in their failure to explain to the students involved in the Dean’s Panel the composition of their Panels, in their failure to contact witnesses for the hearings, in their offer to let students “waive” their Panel and accept a prewritten set of consequences, and in their encouraging students to sign pre-written admission of guilt and accept the same set of consequences as previous students. Add these to the procedural violations Currie alleged admin made when calling the Panel in the spring, and that’s 8 times Bryn Mawr College Administration allegedly violated their own policies when holding Dean’s Panels in the spring.
This is not without consequence. On the one hand, Bryn Mawr admin’s fumble of their own procedures leaves them legally at risk. In choosing to discipline students, private institutions must demonstrate “substantial compliance” with their own guidelines in order to avoid being legal liability, according to the ACLU. Breaking with their own precedents and procedures opens the school to legal risk, and makes holding students accountable all the more difficult.
More concerning though, is the damage this controversy has done to the trust between Bryn Mawr administration and the student body. Speaking on her experience, Ali said “I feel the disorganization set the precedent that they can essentially change the rules on you how many times they want without you being able to do anything about it. You can still have disciplinary action taken against you even if it doesn’t follow their own rules that they set.” Students have few avenues to take when they feel they are being taken advantage of by administration. Bryn Mawr staff and faculty are not held to the Honor Code as Bryn Mawr students are, as Stealy explained. Dean’s Panels and Honor Board Hearings are to address student behavior specifically. There are no formal processes students can initiate to hold administration, particularly deans or the president, accountable for their violation of procedures.
In writing this article, the Bi-College News attempted to get confirmation from Deans Jenkins and Burrell-McRae and former President Kim Cassidy that the allegations made by student organizers were true. In response, we received the following from Chief Communications Officer Samara Sit:
In May 2024, the Undergraduate Dean’s Division administered multiple Dean’s Panel processes conducted in response to the student encampments. There are no Bryn Mawr College students currently under sanctions from the Spring 2024 Dean’s Panels that addressed the student encampments. The stipulations of all related resolutions concluded prior to the start of the Fall 2024 semester.
The act of administering the Dean’s Panels last spring confirmed opportunities for future improvement, and in fact, several of the opportunities related to the Honor Board process were previously identified in 2023 by staff and students for potential restructuring. Notably, the existing process is designed for occasional use and not for large groups of students to move through simultaneously. As announced on August 30, the Undergraduate Dean’s Division will be in ongoing conversation with the campus community this academic year to review the Honor Code and will address these and any other possible improvements to ensure a clear, mutual understanding of the implementation and panel process moving forward. This process will be supported by an administrative working group composed of faculty, students, and staff members.
The longterm impact of these alleged violations will have on campus life remains to be seen. Tensions on campus post-encampment are still palpable; Students, faculty, and administration alike are reeling from the conflict that took place in the spring. Moving forward as a community is difficult when abuses of trust have yet to be acknowledged. Students want to put their community back together, but reconciliation cannot come without the sacrifice of recognizing the ways in which we’ve harmed each other and recommitment to truth and transparency.
