In an email to students early Wednesday morning, the Office of Community Standards announced a large addition to du Lac, the University's code of conduct.
The addition to the handbook is comprised of the Expectation of Responsibility clause, which outlines new policies regarding underage drinking on campus as it relates to student safety and wellbeing.
Du Lac outlines the new expectations as the following:
"In situations where someone requires medical attention due to an alcohol and/or drug-related incident, students are expected to:
- proactively contact an appropriate authority (e.g. Notre Dame Security Police, residence hall staff, 911, etc.) to seek medical attention, and
- remain with the individual requiring medical attention and
- cooperate with responding emergency officials."
The Office of Community Standards cited students' concerns for disciplinary action when deciding whether or not to seek help for students who may have imbibed an unsafe amount of alcohol as a key reason behind the changes to University policy.
Students who help others will be exempt from disciplinary status outcomes (disciplinary probation and dismissal from the University with/without the opportunity to reapply) even if they had been acting in violation of the University's alcohol or controlled substance policies, the clause outlines.
Students who help others may, however, be subject to "formative and/or professional outcomes," including workshops, meetings with University administrators and/or University partners, written assignments, apologies, restitution, alcohol assessment or counseling, psychological assessment and random drug screening.
Students requiring medical attention will also be exempt from disciplinary status outcomes, and will be subject to formative and/or professional outcomes as well as "loss of privilege outcomes," according to du Lac.
Loss of privilege outcomes include "loss of parking and/or campus driving privileges, loss of extracurricular privileges, loss of specific privileges within a residence hall, loss of opportunity to live in campus housing, ban from an area of campus and no contact orders."
The clause also makes clear that exemption from disciplinary status outcomes only applies to alcohol and drug-related violations of the student code of conduct that are related to the incident in question.
The entire Expectation of Responsibility can be found at http://dulac.nd.edu/community-standards/standards/responsibility/
