News > November 15, 2007

By Jae Haley | Managing editor

Some things are conflicting, some are perplexing and still yet, some are flat out surprising. Junior Charles Gibson’s personality is a summation of all three, producing a vivid and often startling mosaic of images and anecdotes that just don’t seem to add up in the neat way one would prefer.

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Junior Charles Gibson serves as the coordinator of the university’s judicial system’s Board of Investigators and Advisors. (Sophie Mullinax/Old Gold & Black)

Maybe he wants to surprise people. After all, Gibson always resisted walking the career path his parents had envisioned for him.

They pushed him toward math and science; Gibson chose music. Then, when his parents suggested the idea of going into law, Gibson opted for anything but.

Two years later: another Gibson turnaround.

After serving on the university’s judicial system’s Board of Investigators and Advisors, an organization of which he is now coordinator, Gibson decided law was actually the right fit for him.

“I was so resistant at first because that’s what people expected me to do, and I wanted to go against the grain,” he said.

As coordinator of the BIA, Gibson is the crux of an organization that seeks to uphold the honor code at the university.

Dealing primarily with students who have been accused of various academic honor, social honor or alcohol and drug related infractions, Gibson and the rest of the BIA assist fellow students as they proceed through the judicial system, or research a case in order to supply the Honors and Ethics Council with relevant facts in preparation for a hearing.

Gibson is indirectly or directly involved with the approximately 400 cases that pass through the university’s judicial system in a year.

Beets and Celery

Sure, Gibson and law go together like peas and carrots, but everything else is still a veritable hodgepodge, a grab bag, beets and … celery? Indeed, Gibson is hard to digest.

Consider his passion for music — classical and Christian gospel rank among his favorites — and his career goal of becoming a lawyer. So great is his love of music that he majored in music performance rather than the typical political science, history or English.

A musically gifted lawyer even sounds dissonant to the ear.

His opinion on the notorious “Wake Forest bubble” is equally as unusual compared with others’: most students complain about being suffocated by the close quarters but Gibson somehow finds a way to breathe.

The university encompassed a host of ideas unfamiliar to Gibson, who attended high school in metropolitan Atlanta, a city where more than 60 percent of the population is African American, according to the 2000 U.S. census.

“I’m not used to being the minority,” Gibson said, who is half African-American and half Mexican.

“I came here to put myself out of my comfort zones.”

This desire to see the world from different angles is perhaps the one thread that unites Gibson’s qualities and ideas that are seemingly at odds with one another, and the one which defines Gibson’s curious yet purposeful personality.

According to the judicial administrator Martha Pyle White, Gibson was born to be analytical.

His ability to challenge ideas, to seek the truth and still be comfortable in the unexpected is precisely what makes Gibson so surprising and unique among his peers, and what allows him to be a successful coordinator of the Board of Investigators and Advisors.

A life in the law

Two years of involvement with the BIA rekindled Gibson’s desire to pursue law and become a lawyer, but his interest was initially sparked by his uncle, an assistant dean for Columbia University’s School of Law.

Gibson remembered traveling to Georgetown University to see his uncle graduate from law school, and there, being immersed in the world of his future life’s passion.

“There were law books all around in my uncle’s apartment,” Gibson said. “I wanted to be a judge so bad, to wear a black robe and tell people they have to pay money and go to jail.”

Gibson began to cultivate his interest in law during high school, serving on his school’s honor council for two years. His involvement in the BIA since his freshman year cemented his decision to pursue a career in law.

Gibson was appointed as the BIA’s coordinator after serving just one year as an advisor.

As coordinator, he trains new members and oversees the 14 other advisers, assigning them to cases, all while still serving as an investigator and advisor.

Serving in a leadership role, Gibson is poised to live out his idea of ethics.

“He believes we’re all models for people that come after us,” said Susan Borwick, a faculty member on the Honors and Ethics council.

Dressed in blue jeans and a plain, grey T-shirt, one wouldn’t suspect such an unassuming appearance to be behind such a powerful group, the members of which greatly influence whether or not a convicted student will be suspended or expelled for his or her transgression.

Gibson’s T-shirt is new, purchased from the apparel shop at West Point Academy where he recently attended the annual National Conference on Ethics and America.

Gibson speaks and acts as if he’s been touched by an itch, constantly fidgeting in his seat and sneaking quick glances about the area to assess any changes in his situation.

His hands, never content resting in his lap, are usually in the air, molding it to express what his words cannot.

Gibson’s body language is that of a person always anticipating someone or something new and surprising in the very next minute.

Quite simply, Gibson wants to act, and is always ready to do so.

“It’s not enough to have the belief,” Borwick said. “You have to live it, and he understands that.”

In the heart of the matter

In approaching any case, Gibson follows two main principles: be direct and truthful, but also empathetic with the advisee.

“I tell the student if it looks bad and that this is what they can expect,” Gibson said.

“They have to be ready for the worst.”

Gibson has seen too many students shocked by a verdict because the adviser tried to protect him or her from the possible negative outcomes.

He pointedly avoids what he calls the “sugar-coating” technique. “The more you sugar coat, the more you stray from what you need to get at,” he said. “The more direct I am, the quicker we get things done.”

Honesty is just as important a virtue for the advisee as well. “(Gibson) wants students to be forthright about what they’ve done, but supports them at the same time,” said Charlene Cherutti, associate dean of judicial affairs.

Gibson said getting a student to be completely honest is often a struggle, especially if the truth is grounds for severe punishment from the university.

But, he said, a BIA member’s ultimate job is to find the truth in order to represent the case to the judicial panel from the perspective of the student.

To do so effectively requires an incredible amount of empathy, something that Gibson demonstrates in nearly everything he does, and which is exemplified in his skillful yet sympathetic treatment of the various sexual-assault related cases he has worked with in the past.

When approaching a case, Gibson said he asks himself how he would have reacted had he been in the student’s situation, though he said it was a challenge to think in such a way when he first became a BIA member, especially because many of his advisees were of a different race and socioeconomic background than he.

However, Gibson said his experiences at the university have allowed him to overcome the immediate differences.

“Even though we’re very different, the thing that ties us all together and the moral and ethical principles that everyone adheres to,” Gibson said.

Junior Ashleigh Parker(*), another BIA member and a close friend of Gibson’s, said he constantly works to instill this sense of empathy into the board.

“We’re all students here,” Parker said. “We don’t have to target someone just because they’ve made a mistake.”

To have knowledge from every students’ perspective is a goal Gibson constantly strives toward — this year he applied to be a facilitator for PREPARE, an on-campus group that spreads awareness of rape prevention and response, in order to better understand the minds of the victims and perpetrators of sexual assault cases, both of whom he has dealt with as an investigator and advisor.

“I felt like I needed to understand both sides,” Gibson said.

For a BIA member, a deep understanding of the person is essential in preventing one of the most serious pitfalls facing one in such a position.

“It’s so easy to assume someone is guilty; it’s so easy to judge a person,” Parker said.

Gibson tells the BIA that judging, however, is not in the job description, and that biases make an investigator and adviser less effective.

“He told us we can’t have preconceived notions about these people,” Parker said. “That’s not our goal; our goal is to help people as best we can.”

Shedding any personal biases or prejudices is so important to Gibson because that’s precisely why he chose to attend the university.

“I was ignorant myself, and I stereotyped,” he said. “I came here to understand those ideas that I’ve never had to experience before.”

It seems, then, that everything came full circle for Gibson at the university: he rediscovered his passion for law, dispelled many of his prejudices and he found the BIA, the outlet through which he accomplished both.

“It’s a perfect place for him to be,” Borwick said.

Some things actually do end up neatly is Gibson’s life, and that’s probably the biggest surprise of all.

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Correction, Nov 20 2007: The original and print versions of this article incorrectly refer to Asheleigh Parker as a sophomore. She is a junior. Go back.