Student conduct plays an integral role in the functioning of an institution and the moral development of students. As multiple models of student conduct exist, such as the Model Student Conduct Code or a Restorative Justice Approach, it is critical to have an understanding of the various structures and how to choose the most effective structure for addressing the diversifying needs of the campus community. Most college and university campuses use the Model Student Conduct Code (Dannells, 1997) which tends to place a heavy emphasis on authority and is more legalistic which creates an “adversarial environment” (Lowery & Dannells, 2004) on college and university campuses. It can be argued that the traditional student conduct code does not make space for individuals to engage in dialogue and for learning to take place. The focus of this dissertation is to understand the experiences of facilitators as they develop, implement, and use restorative justice models on college and university campuses, which provide a guiding framework for dialogue between victims/harmed parties and offenders/respondents and may be better suited as a means of managing bias and hate-motivated incidents. Restorative practices have been implemented in criminal justice, and K-12 environments and are seen by some as an antidote to overly legalistic campus conduct processes (Karp, 2004). This phenomenological research explores the experiences of individuals who have facilitated a campus-based restorative process and how that experience may impact their view of and the opportunities to improve campus climate through the lens of Critical Race Theory and Models of Moral development. Through this study, conduct and other campus administrators can gain valuable information on how restorative processes are developed, how facilitators gained and maintained institutional support, and how successful facilitators find the process in meeting their goals of student learning. Campus administrators will also gain insight on the perceived effectiveness of restorative practices as a tool for managing incidents of bias and the perception of the campus climate.

The reported number of hate crimes in New Jersey continues to remain high despite the enforcement of laws against perpetrators. The purpose of this correlational panel study was to test Shaw & McKay's theory of social disorganization by examining the relationship between demographic diversity and hate crime rates. This study focused on analyzing the relationship between the level of diversity, residential mobility, unemployment, family disruption, proximity to urban areas, and population density in all 21 New Jersey counties and hate crime rates. The existing data of Federal Bureau of Investigations' hate crime rates and the U.S. Census Bureau's demographic diversity, operationalized as the percentage of Whites over all other races, and social disorganization from 21 between the years 2007 through 2011, for a total sample size of 105 cases of reported hate crimes. Results of the multiple linear regression analysis indicate that ethnic diversity did not significantly predict hate crimes (p = 0.81), residential mobility (p < 0.001), and population density (p < 0.001) had positive effects on hate crime rates. Concentrated disadvantage (p = 0.01), characterized by the number of reported unemployment rates, had a negative effect on hate crime rates. The results of the study supported social disorganization theory in reference to residential mobility and population density. Law enforcement agencies can use the results of this study to combat hate crimes in areas with a high level of residential mobility and population density.

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