Matt Kawadler
Matt Kawadler is a senior at the ILR School. He is from Sharon, MA and he graduated from Sharon High School.
“I am looking at the campus judicial systems and determining—are these fair systems? Is it fair when an accused student, with no law experience, has to speak one-on-one with a judicial administrator? Cornell’s judicial administrators have JD’s from the Cornell Law School. Does intimidation play a role in the exercise of student rights?”
Matt’s research has focused on assessing the quality of campus justice.
“One of the reasons I came to Cornell was because I knew it was one of the largest research institutions in the world. There are so many resources that you can draw on here to explore any topic relating to any subject. I knew I wanted to become involved in research. It’s a great way to network with peers and professors, connect with the Cornell community, and expand your knowledge on a subject by using this great plethora of knowledge and resources.
“Similar to most college sophomores, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do after graduating. When I began research on this topic, I wanted to go into the field of law. I approached many professors. I asked, ‘Are there any projects available that would steer me in the right direction and allow me to explore the topic of law?’ One of the people I spoke with was Professor David Lipsky, the director of The Institute on Conflict Resolution.
“We scheduled a meeting, and spoke about various projects that were available as well as independent projects that needed someone to lead them. We went over many projects and decided that this one –The Fairness and Due Process of Campus Judicial Systems– was worth exploring and had major potential. Two other students had already done some background work on this topic, so we had a binder with some printouts from the internet of about ten different universities in the northeast. We knew where to start, but we did not know where we would end up.
“What we wanted to do was take this project to the next level—let’s go through all this information and see if we can define a project, a game plan, and a clear direction. We studied and reviewed this massive amount of information. The trick was: how are we going to take this information, break it down into pieces and say, this is why it is important to study and this is why it is important to us in particular. We have been working on this for about two years.
“Currently, I am writing my Honor’s Thesis on students’ awareness of their rights and if universities fairly practice the exercise of these rights. My pilot study consists of four schools—Pennsylvania State University, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and Ithaca College. I have created a web survey that will be distributed to student thought leaders. A student thought leader is defined as a student participating in a leadership position within a campus organization, appointed either by a student body election or by vote of his/her organizational peers.
“We included elected student officials, such as student governments and class councils. We also included organizations that are more voluntary and service-oriented, such as Habitat for Humanity, the school newspaper, and Amnesty International. We have a list of about twenty clubs and organizations that are constant across all four of these schools and representative of each university’s student body.”
