According to the Parker Handbook, if a student believes that they’re facing unfair treatment in terms of disciplinary measures, they can “elect to bring the case to the Committee of Four”: a group composed of students, advisors, and administrators. The aforementioned students, historically the Senate Heads, are envisioned to be mediators of sorts: chosen responsible peers bringing together perspectives of student and teacher. The only issue is that the Committee of Four doesn’t (really) exist.

Junior Sammy Kagan, a Senate Head, has heard of the Committee of Four, but not from a Parker official or briefing. “From my mom, actually,” Kagan said. “After a full semester, I haven’t heard anything about it.” This raised some concern for him, and not just about this particular missing piece of the puzzle.  Kagain said, “I think that the lack of official notice is emblematic of Parker discipline and Parker Student Government at large.”

School administrators are revising and clarifying Parker’s disciplinary policy after a four-year period in which the upper school sustained four different Heads of Upper School and three different Deans of Student Life.

Currently, in an approximately ten-page section of the Parker Handbook, students can read the Upper School Code of Conduct, a section that outlines how Parker students should behave.

However, according to some Parker students, the school’s discipline system is a topic of some confusion. Junior Elisabye Slaymaker said, “The only people that really know anything about the Parker discipline system are the people who are already in trouble.”

According to Principal Dan Frank, the handbook intentionally “provides for some flexibility, so that each situation can be understood and appreciated for the specifics of the case.”

The handbook is not supposed to be the be-all-end-all of Parker discipline, according to Upper School Head Justin Brandon. “The handbook is a guide,” Brandon said. “It just gives us a set of parameters in which we can work.”

Freshman Griffin Kass feels ambivalent.  “I would say that overall we’re educated on some issues more than others,” he said “We know a lot about academic dishonesty and tardiness and stuff like that, but a lot of freshmen seem unaware of the action taken for things like theft and bullying.”

The handbook gets at these issues in a section entitled “Major Offenses and Violations,” which can be found on page 96. The disciplinary procedure is outlined: there will be a parent meeting “at the school” with an unspecified faculty member. There will be a discussion about a “subsequent disciplinary action,” with no specification as to what that may be. The process concludes with the decision of the principal, who “has the ultimate authority to determine final punishment.”

Junior Amaya Contractor finds the disciplinary system confusion. From the “numerous incidents” she has witnessed, she believes “Parker doesn’t have a definitive punishment system.  There’s no set procedure.”  “I think consistency is what Parker lacks, and what’s most important,” Contractor added.  “It shows some kids that they can do certain stuff and it’s OK, whereas others face big repercussions for minor issues, which I’ve heard a lot about.”

“Right now, they don’t understand the repercussions of their actions,” Contractor said. “So if you actually state that, then I think you’ll avoid a lot of behavioral issues. There needs to be more transparency between the administration and the student body, with that being the reforming system of punishment.”

Upper School Dean of Student Life Christian Bielizna values both the consistency students like Contractor want and some “flexibility”in the disciplinary system. “There will be a general nature to any student handbook to some degree,” he said. “I’ve worked at many different schools in my career, and pretty much any school’s handbook serves de facto as a legal document. It’s a catch-all. It’s a one-size-fits-all document.”

Bielizna also recognized the difficulties that come with a “catch-all” document. “We’re not making widgets, we’re raising children,” he said. “There can’t be a one-size-fits-all. So we need to be general in a starting place, to give an indication about the values of the institution, but then people are humans, they’re children. So you need to have enough latitude to support, to suit their needs. It would do students a disservice to put down something that is totally concrete.”

History teacher Andrew Bigelow suggested that the system itself has undergone significant changes in recent years, potentially contributing to some of the confusion. Parker used to have a system in which, if a person got in trouble, no matter what they did, it just went straight to the Dean of Student Life, Bigelow said.

Then, if the student being disciplined disagreed with the dean’s decision, the issue moved to something called “the Committee of Four,” which Bigelow was in charge of for a time. The committee consisted of all the grade heads, the senate heads, the dean, the student who got in trouble, and the student’s advisor. “It was sort of a little committee of appeal,” Bigelow said. “Then we as a committee would make a recommendation.”

In the past four years, the changes in the position of Head of Upper School and the Dean of Student Life have caused some challenges in created a consistent disciplinary system, according to both Bielizna and Bigelow. “There has been no record keeping,” Bigelow said. “So basically, Mr. Brandon and Mr. Bielizna have no disciplinary framework that’s been passed down to them. So we have to start over.”

One way they have been trying to “start over” is with a push for a restorative justice program. Wikipedia defines restorative justice as “an approach to justice that personalizes the crime by having the victims and the offenders mediate a restitution agreement to the satisfaction of each, as well as involving the community.”

Last year, according to Bigelow, all the gradeheads were trained in restorative justice practices, but, he said, “we haven’t done anything with it.” He also noted that restorative justice was briefly included in the handbook, but “it got cut.”

For those frustrated by the disciplinary process, Upper School Head Justin Brandon has some news. “This year, I’m re–evaluating some of our policies to see what makes sense for Parker,” Brandon said. “We have a committee of faculty and staff to review what we have in our handbook to make sure what we have meets the mission of Parker, to guide us and to support us with more transparency.”

Although some of the details of the committee are still under wraps, Brandon said that later on in the process, students will be brought onto the committee to provide their input.

“What’s in the handbook is applied with a lot of optimism,” Brandon said, acknowledging that the current system has some flaws. “We hope that we have great kids who are doing well and are well behaved, but we are limited because of that.”

Despite the changes being made in the upper school, it doesn’t look like Parker’s program as a whole will be revamped. At least not according to Frank, who said that in general, “the system is good, and the process is sufficient.” Despite this, he noted that “no system is perfect,” acknowledging that there is a place for Brandon’s reform. “It will move things in the right direction, a positive direction.”