Running head: ASSESSMENT PLAN 1

Assessment Plan
Cody Benedict
Wright State University

Background Information:
Assessment Plan 2

Wright State University is a fairly young university. The Office of Community Standards
and Student Conduct (CSSC) is even younger. Everyday CSSC strives to fulfill the University
mission of transforming the lives of our students and the communities that we serve. CSSC aims
to support and live the overall all mission of the University; CSSC is exploring adding a
restorative justice component to better our community and allow students to gain a deeper
understanding of how their behavior affects the university community as a whole. Arguably, the
current adjudication system is set up to be more punitive than educational. Moving toward a
restorative justice model would be more in alignment with the mission of the office of educating
students regarding their civic and social responsibilities as members of a global society. And the
university.
Restorative Justice is process is allowing" all the stakeholders affected by an injustice
have an opportunity to discuss how they have been affected by the injustice and decide what
should be done to repair the harm (Braithwaite 2004) This system of adjudication are typically
found in violations occurring in the residence life setting. I an example, in the first year residence
community of Oak Hall, at 2:30 am in on Sunday morning a student has been found to have
vandalized serval doors and decorations in the hallway and was being loud and unruly. When the
student is confronted by the staff, it is discovered that the student was drinking to excess and was
sent to the hospital. The student later reported that they do not remember the events that had
taken place. A restorative justice program would involve the on-call staff from Residence Life
and the University Police Department and other members on the floor who were affected by the
behavior and allow those community members to discuss the student as to how their behave or
has had implications for them. Then the students and affected community members would then
work together to provide a form of restitution to the community.
This plan will give a overview of the Office of Community Standards and Student
Conduct, a literature review of restorative justice practice, a method of assessing the need of
installing a restorative justice program through comparison of comparable institutions and taking
a look at the different types of potential policy violations that might be better resolved through
restorative Justice. This plan will include a detailed plan of data collection, an outline of posting
results of the data collection and other miscellaneous information related to the selected
assessment.
Mission:
The Office of Community Standards and Student Conduct supports the overall mission of Wright
State University by educating students regarding their civic and social responsibilities as
members of a global society.
Vision:
The Office of Community Standards and Student Conduct strives to motivate all students to
make ethically sound decisions and have a positive impact on the Wright State community and
beyond.
Assessment Plan 3

Purpose:
As part of its educational mission, Wright State University establishes the Code of Student
Conduct and student conduct system.
The Code and related system are designed to:
Resolve disputes in a cooperative, educational, and non-adversarial manner
Provide students with the opportunities for service and leadership
Increase awareness of and respect for differences of culture, gender, religion, race, sexual
orientation, and ability
Goals:
Utilize Restorative Justice methods more in our daily conduct practice this is part a small part of
an ongoing effort to determine if restorative justice has a place in the conduct process at Wright
State University.
Action steps include:
A thorough examination of Restorative Justice practices to give staff a base level
understanding of the concepts
Benchmarking against other comparable institutions who currently use restorative justice
practices in their conduct system
An examination of where we may already be inadvertently using restorative justice
practices and how we can recognize and enhance these practices
Outreach to those effected by our current restorative justice practices
Conduct a survey of evaluation and follow up of already implemented Restorative
Justice practice

Efforts will be measured by:

The creation of an executive summary of Restorative Justice already on our campus and
how efforts could be enhanced.
A proposal for moving forward with the addition of further practices as warranted.
Information gained from outreach to those students involved in our current Restorative
Justice practices

The background information was collected from me being a current staff member of Community
Standards and Student Conduct. Information about CSSC can be found at
Assessment Plan 4

Literature Review: The following literature review will discuss what Restorative Justice is,
some basic principles of restorative justice and some pieces of assessment in restorative justice.
Student conduct is one of the more interesting functional areas in student affairs. Student
conduct, for the most part, allows you to play detective. You have to discover: the who, the what
and the why. Did you notice that I missed something, the student development piece perhaps?
The system of student conduct as a whole is designed to reflect the American justice system. As
professionals, we have to discuss with students and attorneys the difference between the conduct
system and legal system and the differences can be slim. In graduate school, we are taught to
design and implement programs that foster the idea of student learning. How can we accomplish
that goal when the roots of our field are planted with a system that is punitive by nature?
According to a study as reported that only a small portion of college and university focus
their sanctioning around restorative procedures. According to Karen Clark author of A Call for
Restorative Justice in Student Judicial Affairs As of 2009, only 8% of all campus communities
had any form of restorative procedures as part of their judicial proceedings. (Clark 2014)
Restorative Justice can be defined as allowing all the stakeholders affected by an injustice have
an opportunity to discuss how they have been affected by the injustice and decide what should
be done to repair the harm (Braithwaite 2004) Restorative justice focuses more on impact on the
community this could include residence life staff, other residents of a particular residence hall,
the police or any other student or employee of the university that has had any involvement with
a particular incident. Those members will then get to meet with the student that has been accused
of violating policy and share their perspective, ask the student questions and the accused student
is also allowed to inquire that community member. The basis is found restitution for harm. The
restitution could be working with the custodial staff to see what it takes to keep the residence
halls in working order, working with the residence life staff to repair or replace any decoration
(i.e., bulletin boards, door decorations) that were damaged during the incident.
Restorative Justice is founded on the pillars of mediation, restitution of harm that is
caused and positively reflecting human behavior. (Pederal 2014) The appeal of Restorative
Justice to many conduct officers according to the literature is the idea of positivity reflecting
human behavior, or understanding what it means to be an apart of the community and each
person at the University plays a vital part of the success of the community. If you were to
examine or benchmark the mission statements of conduct offices around the country, you would
find that a lot of the statements will make reference to the idea of being a success contributing
member to the greater society.
Restorative Justice has its complications. As being considered as being in infant stages
around the country assessment efforts already available are limited. Restorative Justice practice
is very complicated to adopt because of the focus on behavior and not a person. Knowing that
restorative justice involves many people and involves a lot of training to have a successful
process.
Arguments from critics of the process are saying that it, as whole restorative justice is
sprinkled with the idea of white supremacy because America is white dominated culture and the
best way to behave, is to act like a white person. A student who does not identify as being white
Assessment Plan 5

might find themselves at a disadvantage. It should also be noted that Restorative Justice cannot
replace the conduct system entirely, but can be used with certain violations to support the overall
learning of the student best. Finally, little information has been published on the success of
restorative justice practice has in the conduct system, but its predicted more will be available in
the coming years.
Potential Learning Objectives:
Students who go through the restorative justice process will be able to articulate how
their actions effected the surrounding community.
Students will be able to identify the role they play in the university community.
Students who go through the restorative justice program will be able to articulate the
effect their continuing behavior may impact their future employment opportunities.
Planned Assessments:
Benchmarking: Benchmarking seeks to determine how the program, services, facilities compare
with peer institutions or institutions that considered best-in-class Typically benchmarking data
comes available through the use of survey. Benchmarking data is the most direct form of data
collection. The sole purpose of benchmarking is to compare and contrast.
Rational of Benchmarking: CSSC has choose to use benchmarking as form of assessment.
Aligning with the goal as indicated by Dr. Taylor is to be able to produce a comprehensive list of
comparable institutions that are successfully implementing a successful restorative justice
programs.
Process to Data Collection: Sending the survey through the national ASCA (Association of
Student Conduct Administrators) listserve. The purpose of this is to see how many responses that
could be collected. The collected data would be used to gain an idea of the vitality of restorative
justice programs throughout the country.
I would then personally contact all local universities that Wright State University would compare
its self too. These universities would include:
Ohio University
Kent State University
University of Cincinnati
Miami University
Youngstown State University
University of Toledo
Shawnee State University
Bowling Green State University
This list was compiled and selected because of our close relationships with these institutions and
the attributes of these universities are very comparable with Wright State. If the data collected
informs us that over half of the universities on this list are practicing restorative justice, it would
make a stronger case for CSSC to install a restorative justice program in our conduct system.
Assessment Plan 6

Survey:
1. Do you or have you considered installing a restorative justice program
2. Do you offer a statement of understanding that explains the process of restorative justice
and how it works in the conduct process?
3. Do students have the option to opt in or opt out of the restorative justice process?
4. If you have an installed program, what types of cases do you send to go through the
process?
5. What types of outcomes or sanctions are result of going through the process?
6. Have you seen any decline in the types of violations since using a restorative justice
model?
7. Would you be willing to become a part of network to share ideas and techniques around
restorative justice?

Results: The survey results that were collected would be logged into a excel spreadsheet. The
names of the institution would appear in the vertical columns. The question numbers would then
be placed in the horizontal columns being labeled Q1.Q2, Q3etc. I would then share the data
collected with Dr. Taylor. Dr. Taylor and I would work to process the collected information into
an executive summary. The executive summary would then be placed in detailed report
requesting to make the shift the conduct system to restorative justice model.

Misalliance Information: When working with benchmark assessments, you have to be very
initial with the way you complete it. In meaning that you have to have a clear purpose, in this
scenario, CSSC is trying to install a restorative justice model. We are using our comparable
institutions to provide the justification to join the bandwagon or be pioneer and design a program
from scratch and be a visionary in the region.

Needs Assessment: A needs assessment is defend as an assessment seeks to determine the

presence or absence factor and conditions, resources, services and learning opportunities that
students need to meet their educational goals and objectives within the context of an instructors,
office, departmental or university mission.

Rational of Needs Assessment: In conjunction with the benchmarking survey question 4 if

you have an installed program, what types of cases do you send to go through the process?
Based on the results of this question, I would use our conduct database to generate reports to
answer the following questions:
What are the totals of the selected policy violations?
What are the numbers of how many times each particular student has violated that
selected policy?
Assessment Plan 7

How many students have administrative holds for incomplete sanction?

What is the current demographic or first generation students or student who considered to
come from low income homes?
This assessment was selected to see if our current method of punitive sanctioning, punitive
sanctioning being fines and sanctions that have little to no educational measure are making an
impact on the students going through the conduct process, or do we need to reconsider how we
adjudicate certain violations.
Process to Data Collection: The following steps will lead you to gaining the number of the
types of violations that could be received from Q4 of the benchmarking survey. Choose the type
five common violations that go through restorative justice model at other institutions and create a
report through our conduct data base to get the numbers of those particular violations at Wright
State. Use the following steps to create a new report in Advocate:
1. Log into Advocate with your university ID (W123ABC) and your university password
2. Click on the Reporting tab
3. Answer Step One Select the basis in which the report will be used with Administrative
Action Then click Continue
4. Give Report a name and description and designated box. Name the report Potential
Violations That Could be Resolved by Restorative Justice. (Report 1)
5. Make sure the following are checked marked in order for successful report creation:
Base:
IR#
Parent-Summarize Children
Incident Type-Summarize- Nonacademic
Date and Time of Incident- Date Range- Start with 8/1/Current Year-Todays date
Incident Administrative Actions
Click on Allege Violation- Customize Values into Singe Row-Summarize Select
allege violations (i.e. AB-8-3 Drug Violation-Use)
6. Click Save and Submit-
7. Once the report is generated, click on View Report in Another Tab
8. Right click on your mouse-print
Then create a second report and name it Potential Violations That Could be Resolved by
Restorative Justice- Involving Students with multiple violations (Report 2) This report will
allow us to tabulated how many cases involve individual students who have been charged with
the same violation type more than once. Follow Steps 1-5. Click on Student Information-
Administrative Action Tab. Then check:
Student Name
UID
Click on Save and Submit
Assessment Plan 8

*** If you encounter an issue with report creation please contact Advocate Support at 1-703-373-
7035.***
Results: When the report 1 is generated by scrolling to the very bottom. You will see totals of the
allege violations that you selected. This report should be printed. Transfer data into executive
summary. The totals should be displayed in the report as follows:

Violation Codes 2014-2015 2015-2016 2016-2017

AB-7-17-Possession
or consumption of
alcohol 195 227 202
AB-8-3 Drug
Violation-Use 256 303 353
** The data above is just an example and do not represent factual values.
Include the total number of incidents for three years beginning on 8/1 and ending on 7/31 or
todays date. Take report 1 divide by the total number of incidents throughout the year. This
information can be found on the office share drive, in the Assessment folder and the file will
be called Stats by year
You will use those numbers to gain the percentage number of cases that could have been resolved
through restorative justice by the total number of cases.
You will then tabulate numbers provided by report 2. Once you have determined the number of
students who violated each particular violation more than once, take that number than divide it
by the number of total of report one.
We will also use the number of students with administrative holds for incomplete sanctions. That
report can be found on page two in the reporting tab of Advocate. These numbers will confirm
how many students have current holds on their student accounts for incomplete sanctions.
Finally, contact institutional research to gather demographic data. You will want to try to find out
the following
Data on first generation
Data on student socio-economic status of students at Wright State.
Once complete provide summary of data to Dr. Taylor.
Misalliance Information: Remember the idea of needs vs. wants and proving that our current
practice is no longer effective or fulfilling the mission of the office and the university. In order to
prove the need to install a restorative justice program we will need to the let all our data that is
collected tell our story.
Assessment Plan 9

Works Cited
Braithwaite, J. (2004). Restorative justice and de-Professionalization. TheGood Society, 13(1),
28-31. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20711154

CLARK, K. L. (2014). A CALL FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

JUDICIAL AFFAIRS. College Student Journal, 48(4), 707-715.

Karp, D. R., & Sacks, C. (2014). Student conduct, restorative justice, and student development:
findings from the STARR project: a student accountability and restorative research project.
Contemporary Justice Review, 17(2), 154-172. doi:10.1080/10282580.2014.915140
Assessment Plan 10

Pedreal, M. B. (2014). Restorative Justice Programs in Higher Education. Vermont Connection,

3537-46.