E arly this summer, Vernon Wall, then the assistant dean of students, was arrested for operating while intoxicated. Pete Englin, the dean of students and Wall’s direct superior, was responsible for dealing with the repercussions. This is what Englin said at the time: “At this point, he’s been charged, but he hasn’t been convicted yet. He and I will cross that bridge together if it comes to that point.”

This seems like a pretty reasonable standard—wait until an independent source determines guilt or innocence before imposing punishment. But is it universally applied? When contacted for this editorial, ISU Director of Judicial Affairs Bethany Schuttinga said, “The Office of Judicial Affairs does not track criminal court proceedings — our process is completely separate.” One has to wonder then why the university chooses to apply one standard to its staff and another to its students.

However, Dean Englin has the answer. In a Tuesday article about the Student Judicial Code, Englin was quoted as saying, “This is an educational process, not a punitive one.”

Tell that to Eric Osterholm, the student expelled for his actions during the April 18 riot in Campustown. It is hard to see how an expulsion meets this standard. Sure, Osterholm found out that actions have consequences, but as a philosophy major with a 3.8 GPA, chances are he had already heard about cause-effect relationships in one of his classes. This “education” is found in any sentence from any criminal court, up to and including a sentence of death, which most would agree is punitive in nature.

It also seems odd that the most severe outcome of an educational process is to forcibly deny someone an education.

It is time to drop the charade that the university judicial process is anything more than an ISU court. Someone is tasked with gathering evidence and presenting a case. Depending on the situation, that person or others are then responsible for determining guilt or innocence. Although the sentences may in some cases be more compassionate, they are still sentences.

One of the most important characteristics of a just court is openness. Without public accountability, there is no check on other pressures that might bias a decision. One such pressure that seems quite relevant here is the desire to maintain the reputation of an institution of higher learning. Any outcome may reasonably be questioned when the process that led to it is shrouded in secrecy.

The university obviously recognized the need for openness in the case of Vernon Wall — that’s why they decided to wait until a real court reached a verdict. It is time it extends similar respect to all students.