As returning Brandeis students have finished settling back into campus, right away we have started to notice some of the changes that have been made over the summer—like the new Usdan Student Center and other cosmetic fixes around campus. 

It is the ongoing changes that can’t be seen, however, that this editorial board is most concerned about as the new term begins. 

For the past three academic years, the University administration has had the updated Rights and Responsibilities handbook ready for implementation by the start of the new fall semester. This year though, the publication of the handbook has been delayed, causing a reliance on the previous year’s edition during the interim. 

This editorial board is unsettled by the lack of an updated Rights and Responsibilities handbook by the beginning of the academic year. By now, the Class of 2018 and other new students have completed their orientation programming and are acquainted with our campus, with the rest of our student body and with a sense of what it means to be “Brandeisian.” We believe that sense of belonging and idea of our school’s standards include—from the very start—an understanding of its expectations for conduct.

In an email from Dean of Students Jamele Adams to the Brandeis student body, sent on Aug. 23, less than a week before classes started, an explanation for the delay of the revised handbook was given—the revisions in “sections regarding sexual misconduct and the special examiners process” were “so extensive that editing is not yet complete.” 

Adams wrote in his email to students that the Rights and Responsibilities handbook is “one of the most important sets of policies and procedures guiding your time at Brandeis.”

So we wonder—if the changes being made to the newest version of the handbook are so extensive that the editing process has delayed its publication significantly, is it some small injustice that students must abide by the 2013 to 2014 edition of the handbook in the time being? 

This board wonders what would happen if a case emerged in this interim period that would be more fairly dealt with according to the new edition of the handbook, and because of the delayed publication, must be dealt with according to the dated edition of the handbook. 

While this board is genuinely thankful that the administration has taken significant and public efforts to listen to students’ feedback about how the University handles reported sexual assaults and to use the feedback in their new policy, we are disheartened that the new handbook could not be more timely.