Upon arriving on Grounds, every student learns about the University’s honor system. From that moment on, the concept of honor is almost omnipresent in our lives at the University. At convocation, we are inducted into the “Community of Trust” by signing an honor scroll. On exams, we sign a pledge that we have not given or received help. At graduation, we “wear the honors of Honor.”
While honor can sometimes seem like a series of rules not to be broken, University students enjoy freedoms within our community due to the existence of the honor system. We can leave our belongings in the library, knowing that they will be there when we return. We are trusted with take-home exams. Our word is taken seriously by professors and peers alike.
A challenge that the community and the Honor Committee face is achieving a balance between the lofty aspirations of the honor system (a community in which no one lies, cheats, or steals), and the difficult realities of enforcing and maintaining the Community of Trust.
Honor has recently introduced plans for a new program that will allow students who forget their method of payment to return to restaurants on the Corner and pay for their meal later.
The introduction of this program will formalize the aspirational breadth of the system, which reaches beyond Grounds to Charlottesville and the greater Albemarle County. Perhaps more importantly, it will serve as a reminder that the honor system exists to benefit the community rather than to act as a strictly disciplinary force.
Several restaurants on the Corner, such as Take It Away and Little Johns, have allowed students to pay later for some time. According to Tom Bowe, the owner of Take It Away, the policy works in the favor of merchants as well because “by the time we get to the point of paying, we have already made their order.”
Some might argue that the proposed policy is pointless, because store owners may act as they see fit on a case-by-case basis. However, it makes sense to formalize the practice, just as other aspects of the honor system (such as writing the Honor pledge) are formalized.
A serious concern for merchants when considering this initiative is accountability and keeping the practice within the University community. One possibility for implementing a system of accountability is to have students write down their computing i.d. numbers and sign on their honor that they will return and pay. After a certain amount of time (say a week), the restaurant could email students who had not yet returned to pay to remind them. This measure would make businesses that are wary of agreeing to partake in the initiative more comfortable that students would not abuse the system. It would also prevent members of the Charlottesville community who are not University students from taking advantage of the privilege.
Honor can seem both empowering and formidable, because the consequence of an honor violation — expulsion — is so serious. This “pay later” initiative demonstrates trust in the student body, making the system seem less daunting.
In the original Cavalier Daily article about this new initiative, Joe Martin (the Committee’s Vice Chair for Education) emphasized that students will not be charged with honor violations for forgetting to come back and pay. Instead, the Honor Committee will pay merchants back.
In recent years, the Honor Committee has signaled to the University community that it wants students to acquire ownership of the system. For example, this year, community members were invited to participate in interviews for new Honor Support Officers. This new initiative will serve as another reminder that while students are held to a high standard of conduct, they reap the benefits of this system by living in a community in which they are trusted and respected.
Honor is both an aspiration and a system with a concrete set of consequences. This balance is a difficult one to maintain. The question of whether or not the honor system exists as a punitive measure is one that has been relevant since its creation, and one that will remain important. It seems that with this new initiative, the Honor Committee is attempting to shift the balance in favor of presenting itself as an embodiment of the ideals of honor, as opposed to a mere enforcer of the honor code.
Mary Russo is an Opinion Columnist for The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at m.russo@cavalierdaily.com.
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