Student-conduct administrators around the country are hailing restorative justice as the next big thing. A blend of mediation and restitution, it seeks to resolve a conflict by identifying the harms caused and devising, with suggestions from both victims and offenders, an agreement to repair them. That approach to discipline grabs campus officials…

Conduct officers have been moving away from the legalistic disciplinary systems that colleges built in the latter half of the 20th century on the belief that they'd lose lawsuits without them. Confident now that judges won't expect those systems to conform to the rules of criminal procedure, colleges are making hearings less like trials, and more…