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Students sounded off on their opinions and challenged ambiguities in the proposed changes to two University of Wisconsin System conduct rules regarding both on- and off-campus behavior at an open forum Tuesday night.

The rules that will be changed deal directly with the conduct of students and visitors on campus. One of the recommended revisions is to add a section that would include a student?s off-campus conduct to UW?s jurisdiction, if deemed necessary.

The process of making amendments to Chapters UWS 17 and UWS 18 of the Wisconsin Administration Code has been in motion since early 2007. The Wisconsin Administration Code is the set of rules that every school in the UW System abides by.

Although the revisions will apply to the entire system, UW Assistant Dean Kevin Helmkamp said the forum was a UW-Madison sponsored event.

?We as a campus felt it was important to offer students and other members of the community the opportunity to have input on those changes,? Helmkamp said.

One of the biggest concerns of the small amount of students who were in attendance at the event was the ambiguity the revisions would allow. Suchita Shah, a senior at UW and a columnist for The Badger Herald, expressed concerns about the wording in the addition to Chapter UWS 17 that included off-campus misconduct.

The addition states that a student?s off-campus misconduct is punishable if it ?adversely affects substantial university interest.?

?To me, that seems awfully ambiguous and really subjective, and it doesn?t really define what that substantial university interest is,? Shah said. ?If this is going to have such serious ramifications, I think there needs to be a little more explanation and more of a skeleton of a framework versus just nothing.?

Helmkamp said the exact meaning of this language has not yet been decided, but student thoughts will be taken into consideration before it is.

Although he agreed with Shah?s concern, Assistant Dean Kipp Cox said in this specific context the language needs to be somewhat ambiguous to allow for decisions to be made on a case-by-case basis.

?If a student were to be charged off-campus, they could argue in their hearing that it is not in the substantial university interest,? Cox said. ?And they might prevail depending on what kind of case it is.?

Another concern was voiced about whether a criminal charge was enough for the university to take action or whether it required a conviction. According to Cox, the university cannot always wait for a conviction to be made by the courts.

Cox himself has some problems with the ambiguities of the conduct rules, he said. One of his main concerns is the definition of what a weapon is.

?I would like to be able to charge someone who beat someone with a baseball bat with a weapons violation in addition to assault,? Cox said.