Here are photos of our new Judicial Committee (JC) Support Slip and our old JC Complaint form.

JC, and conflict in general, seems to have a spectrum between...
1. Power over: We blame, shame, and judge each other, until we figure out who's wrong and punish them.
2. Power with / Empower: We hear each other's feelings and needs, empathetically and without defensiveness, until we can come to a solution that everyone's excited about.

There's a lot of #1 in our culture, and not so much of #2, so we sometimes have an uphill battle in JC.

As one example of changing that current to support students in getting their needs met together and take responsibility, instead of looking to punish and blame each other, we updated our JC Support Slip this week.

Staff member Harry said, "Already, I've seen this change a discussion about teasing and hitting from, 'you shouldn't be hitting and need to control yourself' to, 'how can we support you when you get angry?' From that JC, instead of a punishment, we chose to experiment with getting a punching bag for the students, something they were all excited about, not just the student who asked for the JC. I'm excited to see how it goes."