Faculty Senate authorizes exam proctoring, hears questions on White Plaza altercation

The 58th Faculty Senate approved amendments to Stanford’s open access policy to upload faculty research to the Stanford Digital Repository and endorsed new proctoring measures for in-person examinations at its April 23 meeting. Student representatives also pressed Provost Jenny Martinez about a Wednesday altercation in White Plaza. 

Both the open access and proctoring measures passed unanimously, formally authorizing in-person exam proctoring and updating publishing licenses. The proctoring measures now await formal action from the Office of the President.

Provost Jenny Martinez fielded questions about an incident Wednesday in White Plaza, when an unidentified Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier tackled Margil Sanchez Carmona ’28 after he stole a sign during a tabling event. According to Sanchez Carmona, the soldier grabbed him by the backpack, knocked him off his bike and put him in a chokehold. The University did not release a comment.

When pressed on the administration’s response, student privacy and safety, policy regarding the presence of external individuals on campus and potential communication with the District Attorney, Martinez offered few details, indicating only that the investigation process was ongoing. 

The questions were mainly raised by student representatives, including Undergraduate Senate (UGS) Chair David Sengthay ’26, UGS representative Dan Kubota ’27 and Graduate Student Council (GSC) representative Hannah Park-Kaufmann M.S. ’26, as well as environmental engineering professor Stephen Monismith, epidemiology professor Steven Goodman and comparative literature professor David Palumbo-Liu.

The Senate officially approved amendments to Stanford’s open access policy presented by education professor John Willinsky. On Nov. 19, 2020, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution establishing a policy under which Academic Council members grant Stanford a nonexclusive license to their scholarly articles and commit to deposit those works in the Stanford Digital Repository. Willinsky presented survey findings from 182 faculty members, noting that 91% were unaware of the existing policy, 72% had published some articles in open access, 94% supported the policy and 74% supported its extension to books.

The revised amendments proposed making the license non-exclusive with an opt-out provision and updating the policy language to encourage more faculty engagement. Willinsky outlined the roles of the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR), the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) and RIALTO, a system that tracks the percentage of faculty publications available as open access. Rochelle Lundy, director of the OSC, was present as a staff observer.

Multiple professor raised questions about how the proposed changes would affect faculty already committing their works to PubMed, NSF and NIH mandates. Willinsky noted that fewer than 10 cases per year involved journals restricting open access deposits, primarily in medicine and physics.

Computer science associate professor Keith Winstein questioned the tradeoff and ethics of negotiating lower publication costs with major publishers such as Elsevier and Springer if the Stanford library system buys subscription costs for journals.

A presentation by the Academic Integrity Working Group (AIWG) took place during the second half of the meeting. Faculty co-chair Jennifer Schwartz Poehlmann and student co-chair Xavier Arturo Millan ’26 presented the group’s findings and requests. 

The AIWG was formed in 2024 to study Stanford’s academic landscape and identify the scope of academic dishonesty, including its root causes and relationship to teaching practices. A multi-year pilot study of equitable proctoring practices launched in spring 2024 with seven courses. The group is scheduled to hand off oversight of the proctoring program to the Board on Conduct Affairs (BCA) in 2026–27.

The AIWG requested the Senate’s support in formalizing its proposed proctoring policy, which would allow proctoring in any in-person assessment, and for granting the BCA the power to establish and oversee proctoring policy. They also asked the Senate to support updates to the Honor Code and the Student Conduct Charter.

The UGS and the GSC have both already passed the Joint Bill on Proctoring Following the Conclusion of the AIWG Proctoring Pilot. 

The discussion drew comments from numerous senators.

Geophysics associate professor Dustin Schroeder hailed the pilot program’s broad support as a “triumph of co-governance,” noting that it was “shocking” but encouraging that the culture of cheating was being addressed and that all parties were asking the Senate to endorse the measures, which he urged senators to “unanimously pass.”

Business administration professor William P. Barnett raised concerns about organizational culture. He argued the university should make integrity expectations explicit rather than allow a culture of cynicism to persist.

Mathematics professor Brian Conrad cited multiple honor code violations, noting that the number of student-reported infractions was close to zero despite 191 cases of honor code violations in 2019–20 and 393 in 2020–21. He called the lack of student reports evidence of a “system broken.”

Winstein said that four years ago, “we didn’t believe the prevalence” of academic dishonesty. While he now sees the merits of proctoring exams due to the prevalence of AI, he raised “serious practical challenges” to classroom availability. He noted the difficulty of fitting a five-minute quiz into a proctored setting, citing the needs of remote students, athletes and students with accommodations and large class sizes in the computer science department as logistical concerns.

In response, electrical engineering department chair Mark Horowitz asked how Stanford can create an environment that broadly upholds integrity.

History professor Joel Cabrita noted that the expectation to move toward in-person exams is novel for fields like history that traditionally rely on take-home research papers. 

Discussion also touched on comparisons with peer institutions. Harvard and Yale require proctoring, while Stanford and Princeton historically have not. The presenters noted that Princeton is now exploring proctoring for all in-person exams.

During the presentation, senators addressed the role of PACE, a new initiative under the VPUE, and AIMES, an AI education program under the Center for Teaching and Learning, in supporting active engagement and evaluating whether course pedagogy affects academic integrity. The group also noted the Office of Accessible Education’s centralized testing center, the logistics of proctoring for student-athletes taking exams off campus and infrastructure needs around registration and learning technology systems. 

Earlier in the meeting, Provost Martinez delivered a brief report covering budget developments, including plans to increase the university’s share of sponsored research funding from 55% to 75% for some graduate students and seed grants for piloting AI tools.

The Senate honored three late faculty members – music professor Arthur P. Barnes, economics and business professor Donald John Roberts and biology professor Norman K. Wessells – with memorial resolutions. University President Jonathan Levin also highlighted the upcoming Admit Weekend and congratulated the men’s gymnastics team for its NCAA victory and various faculty for recent awards and recognition by major academic societies.

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