A little something about honor

As just another second-year student at the University, I feel bit in over my head commenting about the honor system. After all, the topic's been bantered about for generations. But for the sake of keeping tradition, I'll give it a shot.
Since this week is more about questions than answers, here a few to mull over. Are undergraduate students really qualified to judge their peers on issues of integrity? Does the (legally necessary) closed trial process create too little accountability? How does the Honor Committee handle conflict-of-interest when it arises? How should an appeals process be structured? Is there any allowance for outside input (legal, especially), or is the entire process to be genuinely student-run and supported?
This list goes on. The most central debate is of course over the nature of a single sanction. While I think there is a good deal of intrinsic value in this idea, it is my belief some sort of mechanism should be in place to handle the nature of triviality more clearly. In other words, while the idea of a single sanction should exist for clear, severe cases of misconduct, lesser offenses should be treated in a somewhat different manner. It is my belief that this won't undermine the community of trust ideal towards which we aspire. Most cases should be treated as they are currently; blatant plagiarism on a term paper, stealing from another student, or a clear instance of cheating on an exam should be punishable by dismissal from the University. So the merit of the single sanction remains intact. The only clarification would be that those cases deemed too “trivial” to result in immediate dismissal would be deferred to a separate sanctioning process. This would ensure that all crimes receive due process, and that students would feel less inclined to let smaller injustices occur out of fear for the extreme level of repercussions.
As for the smaller questions of honor, clearly people better qualified than myself will have to weigh in. One major challenge for understanding how to amend honor is that many students, myself included, know too little of the current process itself. The burden is always on us to educate ourselves, but certainly it would be in honor's best interests to try to elucidate students as to the true nature of honor at the University.