One committee is making changes to a document that will hopefully add fairness to a student process.

The UK Student Code of Conduct was reviewed by the Student Code Committee and several changes are being proposed. Associate Dean of Students Tony Blanton said one of the biggest changes concerns the hearings for students accused of a violation to the code.

“The code previously only took into account the student who was being accused of a violation,” Blanton said. “In many cases there is also the person who makes the complaint, who has some kind of injury done by another student … We want to make sure the process was for both students.”

Blanton said the revisions would give rights to the person who brings forth the complaint, which is especially relevant to cases of sexual assault, stalking and domestic violence.

Another change is a separate category for cases of sexual assault and similar violations  occurring between students. The revised code would recognize these situations as a specific set of violations.

“We also added sexual assault, stalking and relationship violence as a stand-alone,” he said. “It had always been lumped in with general physical assault.”

Many of the changes are just updates to keep up with changes in federal law. The committee reviews the student code every year, but no changes have been made since 2005.

Blanton is reques-ting feedback from the UK community about the revisions. He said faculty and staff can read the changes and the rationale behind them on the UK Web site.

Blanton asked comments be in by April 2 and the next committee meeting will be held shortly thereafter. From there, the proposal will go  to the Student Affairs Committee of the Board of Trustees.

“From there we answer questions (and if approved) it goes on to the Board of Trustees meeting in June,” he said. “Hopefully it will go into effect by July 1.”

Suggestions can be e-mailed to [email protected]. A summary and rationale can be found at http://www.uky.edu/StudentAffairs/DeanofStudents/codeRationale.html. The actual code with changes is available at http://www.uky.edu/StudentAffairs/DeanofStudents/pdf/code.pdf.