Ahead of Override Vote, Two Sides Share Opinions

Newton residents will head to the polls on March 14 to decide whether to allow the city to raise taxes by $15 million. Supporters and proponents of the proposal share their opinions with The Heights.

The federal government first permitted universities to utilize informal resolution processes, like restorative justice, in cases of sexual misconduct with new Title IX regulations in 2020, according to Woolsey.

BC thus wanted to find new ways to incorporate restorative practices into its conduct process.

After an alleged incident of sexual misconduct, if the victim and the offender both choose to participate, the University will utilize a restorative justice model where both parties meet and have a conversation, Woolsey said.

According to Woolsey, before that meeting occurs, trained restorative facilitators meet with each party individually for pre-conferencing to ensure that the victim’s needs are met and that the session will cause no further harm.

“So when both parties agree that that would be a helpful way to resolve an incident, we will use a restorative justice model,” Woolsey said. “Restorative practices came up as a really survivor-focused and trauma-informed way to respond to some of these really harmful incidents. So we started using it there.”

Beyond its use in the conduct process, Woolsey said the University wants to incorporate elements of restorative justice into broader restorative practices to improve the student experience, including building community among freshman communities and improving Weeks of Welcome programming.

“We wanted to really think about a way to diversify the way that restorative practices are being used across campus and diversify the amount of people and the types of people that were using these practices in different areas so that it’s not just in a conduct setting, it’s not just in a ResLife setting, and students are able to kind of touch on some of these restorative practices throughout their experience at BC,” Woolsey said.

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs and Students for the Lynch School of Education and Human Development Julia DeVoy, who helped launch a minor in restorative and transformational justice at the University in 2018, also emphasized that restorative practices can have wider applications on campus.