When a student gets caught drinking on campus, in possession of illegal substances, or any other legal offense, they can expect to face not only the campus police, but the Office of Student Conduct as well.

“We handle everything,” said Dr. Kimberly Greenway, director of Student Conduct and Student Affairs Planning and Assessment. “If a student violates our code of conduct, we handle that. There may be a secondary process going on downtown, but we still handle it if they are a student.”

Once the Office of Student Conduct receives a report of a possible code violation, the first thing that happens, according to Greenway, is the office contacts the student and informs them of the report and gives the student a meeting time with a hearing officer.

“That’s where the discussion of what happened and the actual review happens,” Greenway said.

In most cases, according to both Greenway and Area Coordinator of Residence Nathan Meints, this hearing will handle minor offenses like noise, visitation and smoking violations in the residence halls, but, for more serious offenses, a more formal process will take place.

“We usually refer it to a university student council board,” Greenway said. “The alleged violator speaks to the board, gives a statement and witnesses are called in.

“Afterwards, their first deliberation is if the student violated the code of conduct. The student is then asked what they would consider an appropriate educational sentence.”

Then, the board will take that suggestion into consideration, and will hand down what they feel is an appropriate punishment, which usually includes community service, reflective papers and sometimes disciplinary probation.

“We make it a very safe environment to make mistakes,” Greenway said. “Unless there’s safety of another individual, suspension is not even on the table. Safety is the number one factor in that decision.”

But if the safety of the students, staff or faculty is in danger, according to Greenway, suspension can be used, along with its more serious counterpart, expulsion.

“It’s a very rare process,” Greenway said of expulsion. “It’s got to be a very serious offense to have expulsion on the table. Our main focus is to have it be an educational process.”

If an offense does reach the level that expulsion is on the table, it is likely that the UNA police will also be involved in the case.

“We work pretty close with student conduct,” said UNA police Chief Bob Pastula. “When a student gets involved, we send copies of the reports to student conduct. Sometimes, the student can get in trouble with both the law and student conduct.”

While the UNA police handle the legal part of the offense, they share information and ideas with the Office of Student Conduct, and Pastula encourages students to seek help from Student Conduct if they think they have a problem.

“If something happened to you and you didn’t feel comfortable talking to the police, you can talk to Dr. Greenway or David Shields about it,” Pastula said. “They’ll send it to Student Conduct or the UNA police-wherever it needs to go.”