Law and Outlaw
2013-2014

PROGRAM COVENANT

The inquiry and experiences we have before us as members of this program require a common commitment to the tasks ahead and to one another. Our work together will be most fruitful when we overcome our creative inhibitions, prepare ourselves carefully to address the assigned program material, and bring our most careful academic reflections to our discussions. Our learning will depend on the mutual, reciprocal, and thoughtful contributions of each one of us. There must be a common agreement and commitment to do the assigned work, meet assigned deadlines, participate in all program activities, and to bring to our common inquiry a respect for our individual ideas.

Students and faculty agree to:

• Accept that LOL is three quarter, year-long learning program and make an initial commitment to remain in the program for the academic year. The old school Evergreen curricular model of year-long, team-taught, coordinated studies programs is about much more than content-learning. It is also about learning community, intellectual transformation and personal growth, as expressed TESC’s five learning foci and the six expectations of an Evergreen graduate.

FIVE FOCI

1. Interdisciplinary Study — Students learn to pull together ideas and concepts from many subject areas, which enables them to tackle real-world issues in all their complexity.
2. Collaborative Learning — Students develop knowledge and skills through shared learning, rather than learning in isolation and in competition with others.
3. Learning Across Significant Differences — Students learn to recognize, respect and bridge differences – critical skills in an increasingly diverse world.
4. Personal Engagement — Students develop their capacities to judge, speak and act on the basis of their own reasoned beliefs.
5. Linking Theory with Practical Applications — Students understand abstract theories by applying them to projects and activities and by putting them into practice in real-world situations.

SIX EXPECTATIONS

1. Articulate and assume responsibility for your own work.
2. Participate collaboratively and responsibly in our diverse society.
3. Communicate creatively and effectively.
4. Demonstrate integrative, independent, critical thinking.
5. Apply qualitative, quantitative and creative modes of inquiry appropriately to practical and theoretical problems across disciplines.
6. As a culmination of your education, demonstrate depth, breadth and synthesis of learning and the ability to reflect on the personal and social significance of that learning.

• Accept that LOL is an experiential program based on face-to-face interactions and a strong learning community. Individual absences from schedules classes, event or meetings will diminish learning and achievement for everyone, including your self. Work cooperatively with program colleagues in sharing and building on each other’s contributions. Be willing to learn by being open to new ideas, suggestions, points of view, and methods of instruction.

• Attend and participate fully in all program classes, events and activities. Notify your seminar faculty in advance of expected absences from the program, and as soon as possible for unexpected ones. Explanations can be useful, but faculty will not judge the adequacy or legitimacy of “excuses.” Frequent absences or the emergence of a pattern of absences, regardless of their larger circumstances, will be reflected and discussed in faculty evaluations of the student.

• Stay informed about the program and its schedule, including active monitoring of the class web sites and your campus email account. These will be official channels of program communication, and everyone in the program is responsible for any information posted on the web pages or sent to campus email accounts.

• Work together with Access Services (867-6348, Lib 1407D) to accommodate any student with a disability or health condition that might impact effective participation in this program and learning community. It is a student responsibility to initiate contact with Access Services, and faculty responsibility to respond with the accommodations Access Services suggests. Contact faculty and Access Services as soon as possible; accommodations cannot be made retroactive to the date of initial contact.

• Read and abide by the Social Contract and the Student Code of Conduct, as they govern actions and responsibilities in this program and in all aspects of campus life. This includes, but is not limited to, a commitment to respect and value differences of belief, ethnicity, race, religion, age, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, class background, age and experience.

• Communicate in a direct and timely way about any problems, changed plans, misunderstandings, needed accommodations, etc.
• Respect each other’s lives outside of the program and follow through on obligations made to others in teamwork situations.
• Respect the learning community, as well as college facilities and equipment. Theft or deliberate damage of equipment is grounds for dismissal.
• Be fully present and work safely. This means, in part, that no one should come to class impaired by the use of drugs, licit or illicit, or alcohol.
• Maintain clean individual and collective work spaces. This includes, specifically, bodies.

• Turn off cell phones and put them away during classes, program events, and team meetings.
• Use laptops and/or e-readers during classes, program events, and team meetings as little as possible – and only for tasks related to the subject matter under review. Stay off Facebook, email, shopping, etc. If we catch you surfing anything other than class content during class, we will count you as absent for the day.
• Take full responsibility for any work submitted as one’s own. This means, in part, not plagiarizing work. To plagiarize is to offer as one’s own the words or ideas of others. Plagiarists could lose credit, be removed from the program and may be required to leave the college. Ask faculty if you have any questions.

• Recognize that everyone, students and faculty alike, will blunder into mistakes, lapses in good judgment, indiscretions, poorly, even objectionably, phrased comments, and so on. Everyone must be willing to point these out, honestly and gently, and continue learning from and with the other members of this program.
• Engage in respectful, honest, open and well-intentioned exchange and investigation with one another. Refrain from unjustifiably offensive behavior or language.
• Resolve disputes directly and without rancor. All members of the program should abide by the principle of honest and face-to-face resolution of conflicts. In case of a conflict, if you do not feel successful in resolving the situation, bring your concerns to the attention, first, of your faculty. Any conflicts that cannot be resolved by your own efforts or the efforts of your faculty will be referred to our program’s Academic Dean. None of us may skip steps in this process.

All students specifically acknowledge that to receive credit they must:

• Complete all assignments on or before due date.
• Prepare for and attend all program activities.
• Submit written work double-spaced, stapled and printed in fonts no larger or smaller than the equivalent of Times 12 or Arial 11.
• Initiate and complete additional reading and writing assignments to make up patterns of absence due to college athletic team activities.
• Make no other use of photos taken or images created in connection with program assignments, when they include a likeness of others in the program.
• Complete a self-evaluation and academic statement.
• Write a faculty evaluation.
• Attend an evaluation conference.

Faculty specifically agree to:

• Review work in a timely manner.
• Be available to meet during office hours or by appointment.
• NOT accept late student work.
• Schedule an evaluation conference and prepare a written evaluation to accompany each student’s self-evaluation.
• Allow no one to carry an INCOMPLETE beyond the end of the program except in truly extraordinary circumstances,
• Ask a student to leave the program if his or her behavior is consistently disruptive, antagonistic and impedes the program from progressing. Any student who is asked to leave and wishes to appeal may do so by arranging to meet jointly with faculty and program’s academic dean. Such a decision will be binding, although students always have access to the college’s formal grievance procedures.
• Ask a student to leave the program if he or she misses two weeks of class/program activities.

AWARD OF CREDITS

The faculty will award full credit to every student who satisfactorily completes the assigned program work. Final decisions about credit and evaluations will be made by the program faculty at the end of the quarter. Full credit will be awarded when faculty judges that the student has sufficiently fulfilled the college-level requirements and standards of the program, including academic performance and commitment to/fulfillment of the learning community.

Full credit and superlative evaluation are not the same thing. A student can receive full credit, but also receive evaluations that reflect a poor quality work. On the flip side, a student could attend classes and submit assigned work regularly but receive partial or no credit because of careless or poor quality work. Academic credit is awarded based on consideration the quality of the final product, as well as the time and effort that went into producing that product.

FERPA LAW

Students acknowledge that under the federal law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, faculty are prohibited from discussing anything about their enrollment or work in the program or at the college with anyone else. Among other things, that means the faculty cannot respond to inquiries from parents, friends, loved ones. Students may complete a waiver with the Registrar that allows faculty to discuss matters of the student’s enrollment with specified other people. Even if there is a waiver in place, the faculty will be reluctant to discuss the work in the program with anyone other than the student.

Good faith compliance with this Covenant is required for membership and for any credits in Law and Outlaw.