Even in Non-Academic Misconducts (NAM), the Commerce and Engineering rivalry persists.
Presented to the Board of Trustees on Sept. 26, the University approved the Non-Academic Misconduct Annual Report. The report measures NAMs—which are departures from the Student Code of Conduct—from May 1, 2024, to April 30, 2025. There were 1,079 total NAM cases, with 93 per cent taking place in residence.
The report also looked at NAM cases by faculty, with Engineering and Commerce students two to three times more likely to be involved in a NAM case when comparing their offence rate to the percentage of the student population.
Arts and Science and Health Studies students, together making up 70 per cent of the student body, made up 39 per cent of NAM cases. Engineering students were about twice as likely to be involved in a NAM case, at roughly 15 per cent of the student body but 31 per cent of NAM cases. Commerce students were also overrepresented, at 9 per cent of the student body but 30 per cent of NAM cases. Together, they were responsible for a reported 61 per cent of cases, despite only making up roughly a quarter of the student body.
Despite requests from The Journal to speak with the Deans of Engineering and Commerce about how they plan to mitigate these numbers, the University provided a statement, adding that the numbers for each faculty can vary each year.
“Many cases involve multiple students due to group-related incidents, meaning the number of respondents from each faculty can vary annually,” the University wrote.
According to students, the culture in these programs could be playing a large role. Ethan Powell, Sci ’27, was a former FREC and EngSoc’s 2024–25 Director of External Relations. He explained in an interview with The Journal that engineering students have a strong culture, leading to events that could cause misconduct.
He cited GPA Bars, which are challenges that students can take part in to get patches for their engineering jackets, as a primary factor that could lead to more misconduct.
“There’s definitely misconduct sorts of events that are encouraged for all people in engineering to do, and it definitely surrounds the bar culture,” Powell said. “There are a lot of great bars that promote a lot of teamwork and collaboration—a good example of that is the fix and clean bar, where students go and clean elderly people’s houses and help them do chores […]. But people also create their own bars, and when you give that power to anyone, they make some rambunctious things.”
Specifically, he pointed to drinking bars as something that could be problematic for first-year students—especially given that they may be unfamiliar with drinking.
“When your first serious drinking is in this super high-energy environment where everyone is doing it around you, you kind of get the impression that ‘if I don’t drink a lot, then people are going to view me as weak or as not a real engineer.’”
The idea of faculty culture playing a role was also echoed in an interview with The Journal by Elizabeth Kim, Comm ’28. She explained that “party culture isn’t uncommon, and it’s not frowned upon in commerce.”
Alongside the culture, she added that within the commerce community specifically, finances could play a role too.
“Queen’s commerce is a more expensive program, thus attracting maybe a wealthier demographic. And so, I think that just having that monetary fund at their expense allows them to maybe go out and not worry about the financial barriers,” Kim said.
Powell explained that generally, in his eyes, the stronger the community, the more misconduct.
“Any super social program is going to have a lot of misconduct, because the more social gatherings there are, the more opportunity for large-scale misconduct and influence from other people.”
Tags
commerce versus engineering, NAM, non-academic misconduct, Non-Academic Misconduct Annual Report
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