When our team receives an incident report, a Conduct Officer will first determine if a potential policy violation occurred. If it is determined that the incident is not related to a policy violation, the student will be referred to work with our Conflict Resolution staff. If it is related to a policy violation, then the Conduct Officer will send a Notice of Allegations letter to inform the student of the allegations, and request a meeting.
The letter is emailed from studentconduct@ou.edu to a student's official OU email address and will require additional verification to view. In most cases, the letter will include the date, time, and location of the incident, and the alleged policy violation.
Please refer to your Notice of Allegations for details to schedule your meeting.
The intake meeting gives the student the opportunity to do the following:
Students are often understandably apprehensive about meeting with Student Conduct. Rest assured, the meeting is meant to be educational and informal. Our office uses an Inclusive Conflict Excellence approach based in Social, Procedural, Restorative, and Transformative Justice Lenses. These lenses are pivotal in ensuring that our university community can be a place of belonging and emotional growth for all students.
Resolutions are based on educational goals, not punitive measures.
Cases may be resolved in the following ways:
If the student accepts responsibility for the allegations, the Conduct Officer will discuss possible outcomes and educational sanctions. An Outcome Letter with sanction details and deadlines will be sent following the meeting.
If the Conduct Officer has determined that the preponderance of the evidence does suggest that a policy violation occurred, and the student chooses not to accept responsibility, the case will be forwarded to a Hearing Panel.
This is the end of the process for most Student Conduct cases.
This optional step only occurs when a student does not accept responsibility for a policy violation, or wishes to appeal their assigned educational sanctions after accepting responsibility.
The Hearing Process offers students the opportunity to present their cases before an impartial hearing panel made up of students, faculty, and staff from the Norman and HSC campuses. The University Hearing Panel will consider the facts presented and assess the credibility of those providing information to determine if the student has engaged in a policy violation.
The entire hearing process is outlined in detail in the Student Rights and Responsibilities Procedures.
