Students Tried by Jury of Their Peers At Student Court Trial Held By Peers

When he started his work with the Berkeley High Student Court, trial coordinator Josh Daniels was worried that students wouldn’t take it seriously.

But the silence in the Old City Hall meeting room Wednesday as student lawyers addressed the student jury indicated a remarkably court-like formality.

“If you had a group of strangers around you, one of them grabbing you and pulling you back and forth, what would you do?” Berkeley High sophomore Victoria Session asked the jury.

Session, a student advocate, was arguing for a lighter consequence for the student offender, Adriana, who was appearing in court after yelling at security guards who forcibly tried to confiscate her cell phone when she used it during school hours.

“(The security guards) were all hovering around me, and I didn’t appreciate that,” Adriana told the jury. “I felt upset and violated.”

The court, now in its second year, assigns alternative consequences like community service to students who would otherwise be suspended but whose discipline records are relatively clean.

“We wanted an alternative that would pull them into the community, rather than push them out,” said Annie Johnston, a Berkeley High teacher who acts as a liaison between the student court and the high school administration.

A collaboration among teachers, students, administrators from Berkeley High and community volunteers, the court holds trials every other week.

Each trial is facilitated by a volunteer legal professional who acts as a judge. The volunteers are selected by Daniels, a UC Berkeley law student who runs the court with help from an advisory board of school board

members and other volunteers.

Recently, the student court—which has heard seven cases this semester and expects to hear 25 by the end of the term—has gained momentum.

Earlier this year, the program received $20,000 in local grant money, including $10,000 from the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund.

That has led to the addition of several paid positions and a college-level class about the sociology of high school discipline.

“Just the fact that we have a program coordinator who comes in every afternoon is an indicator that it’s been a huge success,” Johnston said.

A reduced number of suspensions is significant at a high school that has experienced up to about 450 suspensions in one year, said Daniels, who teaches a court procedures class required for student advocates.

“This way, they don’t miss school,” he said. “They take responsibility for their actions and it’s not considered punishment.”

An added benefit for students is that unlike suspension, the alternative consequence plan keeps a student offender’s record clean, said Julia Carter, a Berkeley High School junior who argued as a student advocate at a trial on Oct. 25.

“It’s a way for students who screwed up to get it off their record,” she said. “Kids make mistakes.”

After considering the circumstances of Adriana’s actions last week, the seven-student jury assigned her two student-court jury duties and referred her to general counseling.

Program coordinator David Luu, who manages the cases referred to the court, said he believes the process has a better chance of turning a student around than suspension does.

“To have your consequence plan crafted by someone who’s on your side is enlightening for a student,” he said.

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