At the request of the Judicial Advisory Board, the University Council recommended judicial code changes to NIU President John La Tourette at Wednesday’s council meeting.

The changes include the additions and alterations to some of NIU’s current judicial codes.

One addition would define sexual abuse as “assaulting, battering, or recklessly endangering any person in a situation involving sexual intimidation.”

It was also proposed that sexual abuse be defined in the code as “intentionally harassing, coercing, threatening or seriously embarrassing any person through conduct that a reasonable person would consider sexual intimidation.”

Under the recommendations, a registration tampering code would be added which allows disciplinary action be taken against students who tamper or attempt to tamper with any student’s registration or records.

Also added to an existing code was a proposal to have incidents involving academic misconduct be filed up to 13 months from the time the incident occurred.

On another code, the words “harassment of a group” were changed to “harassment on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability status.”

The Judicial Advisory Board, which wanted changes made in the code, could not get the changes passed directly by the University Council under the current constitution and bylaws, La Tourette said. However, The board reports through the University Council to the president, who makes the final decision.

La Tourette said this is the first time he heard of the judicial code change procedures.

“I’m going to have to check on how this has been handled in the past,” he said. “I don’t remember receiving anything like this in the past five years.”