This academic year marked the first one in which the Common Application, soon to be used by more than 300 colleges, included a question about discipline of students. The question was added after considerable discussion and reflected a growing national debate over crime on campus and the appropriate responsibilities for colleges to protect students ? sometimes from other students.</p>
<p>As the board of the Common Application reviewed the experience, it tentatively decided this year that it would get even more specific, and ask applicants and their counselors not only about convictions (in either the legal system or the equivalent in school processes), but about pending actions…</p>
<p>But when the Common Application leaders shared the idea with their members ? via the electronic discussion list of the National Association for College Admission Counseling ? the reaction was negative. And so the Common Application is keeping the question focused on convictions, not on any pending actions.</p>
<p>Colleges are free to consider or ignore information submitted on the Common Application, but its growing popularity, which extends to some of the most competitive colleges around, has made its decisions influential.</p>
<p>Many admissions counselors ? both at the high school and college level ? had strong reactions against the idea of requiring students or counselors to report on incidents when there wasn?t yet a conviction and might never be one. Some worried about due process and others feared that relatively minor infractions might get blown out of proportion.</p>
<p>Rob Killion, executive director of the Common Application, said that in the end, the idea of ?innocent until proven guilty? was important to admissions officers, and that his board was guided by that reaction…</p>
<p>The questions asked of applicants and their counselors are parallel: One question asks applicants whether they have (and counselors whether they know if the applicant has) ?ever been found responsible for a disciplinary violation at an educational institution you have attended from 9th grade forward (or the international equivalent), whether related to academic misconduct or behavioral misconduct, that resulted in your probation, suspension, removal, dismissal or expulsion from the institution?? A second question asks about convictions of misdemeanors, felonies or other crimes. The proposed changes that were abandoned would have added pending charges to both questions…</p>
<p>A college can easily decide that a pending court action isn?t relevant, or is only something to be watched for a conviction, he said. ?But if I were making the decision, I?d want to know if criminal charges were pending against an applicant. My concern is that something doesn?t fall through the cracks and colleges don?t even know to ask about it.?