The Geoduck Student Union supports the right of students to the education they have already paid for. The current draft of the code allows the college to revoke a degree with a ‘more likely than not’ standard of proof. This is unacceptable. The GSU takes the issue of academic integrity seriously but the possibility of a degree being revoked under that standard is too great. If we as an institution are willing to revoke a graduate’s degree, we should be absolutely certain that we are in the right to do so.

In Art Costantino’s email to all students on October 26 he stated “the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ criterion is appropriate in cases where a person might be deprived of a fundamental freedom.” Since degree revocation applies retroactively to an education in which students have invested years of their life and huge sums of money, we believe that revoking that investment is depriving students of a fundamental freedom. Standard courts, which use the beyond a reasonable doubt standard, often make decisions far less important than whether years of a student’s life will be negated. When Evergreen is deciding issues of no real import, a more likely than not standard is acceptable, but not in this instance.