This editorial is part two of a two-part series. Please see yesterday’s Cavalier Daily or our website for part one of the feature, which focused primarily on the 2008 Semester at Sea trials and the issue of plagiarism. This section delves into the question of intent in honor trials and especially how that clause factors into plagiarism cases.
For a student to be convicted of an honor offense, the jury or adjudicating Honor Committee members must find the student at fault for act, intent and triviality. The definition of act in the organization’s bylaws is relatively straightforward, but intent and triviality can be more nebulous. The bylaws state that “‘Dishonest Intent’ shall mean, with respect to a particular Act, that the actor knew, or should have known, that the Act in question was or could have been considered Lying, Cheating, or Stealing. Ignorance of the scope of the Honor System shall not be considered a defense.”
The intuition behind such an elastic definition is clear, and its objective appreciable. Students should not be let off the hook for lying, cheating or stealing simply because they claim ignorance of the rules. In addition to being responsible for knowing what constitutes an honor offense, students ought be expected to know that an act of willful plagiarism, for instance, is wrong and subject to sanction by the Committee. On the other hand, the “should have known” operator is not carefully worded enough to convey this message. Ideally, a better clarified intent clause would specify that “should have known” applies to the rules in question, not the act itself. Consider a student who, on her honor, is given a list of permitted sources to use for a term paper. She does not double-check the list and thus mistakenly uses a prohibited source. That is a senseless gaffe, one that probably warrants a lower grade or perhaps even a zero for the assignment. Still, it is difficult to argue that such a student was dishonest. But the less precise the intent clause is, the more leverage it gives an enterprising counsel to convince student juries that errors of fact are grounds for a conviction.
Continuing with the plagiarism example, errors in citation are one such occasion where the lines for cheating, intent and triviality become more challenging to define. Additionally, citation rules and the use of sources seem likely to vary according to circumstance. Most students would probably assume that the guidelines for citing sources are less stringent for open-note, in-class exams than for research papers, for example. Familiarity with the appropriate way to reference information is important, of course, but is a mistake along these lines justification for dismissal from the University?
Students should be aware that certain acts are wrong by definition, but if someone makes an error that borders on plagiarism without meaning deceit, should that qualify as dishonest intent? The current clause does not explicate that point sufficiently.
Families for Honor is bringing important issues to light, and for Committee Chair Charles Harris’ part, he indicates that outside perspectives are welcomed by the Committee and considered useful for evaluating processes. Now is the time to follow through with that rhetoric and begin a conversation — both within the Committee and with the larger University community — about what should constitute dishonest intent for an honor offense.
Although Families for Honor and Barbara Schaedel, the organization’s founder, are free to raise their concerns with University administrators — including the president and Board of Visitors — officials should not have to become involved with this issue. Rather, Harris and the Committee ought to build upon last year’s moderate reforms and take on these more encompassing challenges. By doing so, they can both mitigate a systemic problem and engage the University community with the tradition of honor in a specific way that is relevant to students.
It would be a shame to miss out on that opportunity.
I’m thrilled to see the Cav Daily catching on. This has been my complaint about the Intent clause for years, though it’s largely been ignored. The intent clause, as written and applied by juries, has no purpose. No one is not guilty of intent, because by definition, a “mistake” is something that should not have happened, something where you “should have known” you were doing it wrong.
As this editorial properly conveys, the intent clause SHOULD have one clear purpose. Namely, a student cannot shirk his or her Honor responsibilities just because he or she did not know what the rules are, when they clearly should have known the rules (the whole idea of “ignorance of the law is no excuse”). Thus, a student who did not know citation of sources was necessary in a particular paper should clearly be found guilty, as citation is always necessary, and that lack of knowledge of the rules is unreasonable.
However, the editorial is correct that, as written, the intent clause also catches people who make what we in the legal world call “mistakes of fact,” which are supposed to be excused. If you believe you cited a work properly, and simply failed to proof-read your paper, is this really dishonesty? Surely it shows carelessness and warrants a lower grade, but dishonesty? A danger to our community of trust? An act worthy of expulsion? Should we really treat such a student the same as one who chooses not to cite sources properly? I think not.
I hope this editorial will start the process of bringing real attention to the intent clause. It needs to be changed, and the most frustrating thing of all is that it does not need to be changed dramatically. Just a few changes of wording could capture exactly what the intent clause is SUPPOSED to mean. You can’t shirk your responsibilities by being ignorant of the rules, but we’ll only punish those who are actually dishonest.
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For the sake of history, here is some discussion from September 2009:
Although Sam Leven spends much time saying intent IS an element of an Honor Offense, his conclusion on intent is: “Because the Intent Clause is ambiguous in many ways, however, adding intent to the definition of plagiarism would solve multiple problems.” The CURRENT UVa definition of plagiarism does NOT include an element of intent. In an upcoming paper on academic plagiarism, researchers survey definitions of plagiarism at universities on four continents, and find that NONE include intent as an element of plagiarism. In dealing with the PUNISHMENT phase AFTER plagiarism is found, intent IS a factor. Because UVa chooses to have only one punishment (expulsion) for an Honor Code violation, UVa would tinker with the definition of the “crime.” Apart from the general silliness of this approach against a background where other universities have a fairly uniform definition of plagiarism, the proposed UVa change would foster the concept of “inadvertent plagiarism” as exemplified in the Poshard matter at SIU.
from http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2009/09/university-of-virginia-to-change.html
A question in 2010 would simply be: how would the Routman matter come out under the proposed changes?
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Mr. Ebert,
The Routman matter has almost nothing to do with this. The problem people have with the Routman matter is that a careful analysis of her paper compared to the alleged “source” document showed THERE WAS NO PLAGIARISM at all, not intentional, not even inadvertent. The problem people have with the Routman case is that the process followed to convict her was so different than the process used on grounds at UVA, and it allowed a jury of biased professors, instead of unbiased students, to decide her fate. Intent has little to do with Ms. Routman.
This issue, on the other hand, gets to the heart of what the plagiarism changes were meant to address last year (which was primarily controversy involving some cases closed to the public, so not debated in detail like the Routman matter was). As you and Mr. Leven both correctly pointed out last year, despite your inexplicable arguing with each other over pointless semantics, the point of the re-definition was not to change how plagiarism is defined, per se, but rather how it is punished once it is found. The idea for changing the intent clause would apply the change which was made for plagiarism only last year to all forms of Honor code violations – namely, you may have lied, cheated, or stolen, but we’re willing to forgive you if it was done entirely by accident.
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Oh, I might add both of you (Mr. Ebert and Mr. Leven) should take a minute to actually think about what the other is saying before you fight each other. Both of you made yourselves look like idiots in last year’s discussion as you were actually arguing the same thing, yet because you chose different words, thought you were disagreeing and attacked each other.
Mr. Leven – To the average person, who hasn’t spent years involved in the Honor System like you did, an “Honor Offense” is the Act itself, not the three components. So, when you say “intent” is a component of the Honor Offense, to someone not familiar with our system, it sounds ridiculous. To them, the “Honor Offense” is the Act, and Intent and Triviality are just what determines how the offense is punished, if it is punished at all. That’s why Mr. Ebert went nuts when you kept saying intent is an element, since he’s not familiar with how our system works, so to him, what you were saying literally sounded nuts.
Mr. Ebert – You have to understand that Mr. Leven spend six years in the Honor System here, and is used to only talking with people who understand its terminology. The Honor Code here, by its OWN definitions, not by Mr. Leven’s choice, actually defines an “Honor Offense” as “An act of lying, cheating or stealing, done with dishonest intent, which is non-trivial.” In other words, in the Honor System’s own terminology, the act itself, the requisite intent, and the requisite non-triviality, are all ELEMENTS of an “Honor Offense,” and when any one of these things is lacking, by Honor’s terminology, it is not an “Honor Offense.” This is why Mr. Leven kept saying intent is an element, not because he viewed intent as part of the act, but rather because the System itself defines an Honor Offense as more than just the act. This may not be intuitive to you, but that’s how the wording works here, so for someone who’s been involved for so long, that usage of the terminology becomes obvious, and is why you two kept yelling past each other last year.
There, in sum, you two actually agree, now stop fighting and sounding like idiots to the rest of us.
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