Preface
Dear Amherst College students, faculty, staff, family, and friends,
Students’ lives at Amherst College are vibrant and complex webs of intellectual and interpersonal pursuits. The College has developed resources across many decades to provide for a campus environment that nurtures discourse through research, dissent, skepticism and debate. We expect that our students will actively engage with these resources and with each other toward a better understanding of self and communities, local and distant.
Our pluralism of ideas and passions will inevitably, on occasion, lead to conflicts that detract from our constructive educational climate. Whether in the classroom, on a playing field, or within a residence hall, unresolved conflict is the focus of an adjudication’s goal of employing transparent and equitable procedures that fuse rights and responsibilities. We believe in a process that holds students accountable in a manner that respects their adulthood and their self-determination to make decisions based on as much information and relevant factors as possible.
Keep this code close by and become familiar with its contents. Even if you are never a party to an adjudication yourself, your understanding of the rights and responsibilities that all students share will increase dialog and awareness about how we might best live, study, and learn together.