IN ALL this hubbub about the honor referendum to remove the
seriousness clause in instances of academic cheating, no one has touched on the real issue. The question is not whether the referendum should be put to ballot this week or next. The question is not whether or not the seriousness clause should be struck. The question is, when will the Honor Committee engage the University in some real discussion about what works, what doesn't and how to fix it?
The seriousness debate, if we can call it a debate, leads us directly to the crux of the honor system's problem: idealization. We all say traditions die hard at the University, but few of us realize the implications of those traditions. Students may not realize that the oft-touted and much-idealized "community of trust" is an oral tradition as much as "Grounds" and "first-year student." We like to say we live in a community of trust because it sounds important and traditional. Unfortunately, though, it just isn't true.
We all hear stories about the stouthearted student who received an extra Coke and taped an additional 60 cents to the soda machine to compensate, about conscientious retractors who confess 10 years after walking the Lawn. The first is an example of an ethical person - someone who would not cheat, honor code or not. The second is an example of someone who found a conscience somewhere along the line, but apparently wasn't impacted enough by the ubiquitous pledge to do the right thing when it mattered.
Students are no more ethical and honest here than at any other comparable institution. Students who cheat are people who don't think what they're doing is wrong. Students who exhibit strong ethical standards can thank their parents for raising them properly. Perhaps there are a few who have been affected by the honor system - who think twice about opening their notes during a closed-book, take-home exam because they signed the pledge on their admission applications. But it's not a big number, certainly not enough to base a system on.
Yet that's how the system works. It is predicated on the idea that we live in a community of trust. We can justify the single sanction by saying that anyone who acts dishonorably damages our community and must be expelled. The seriousness clause is meant to balance the power of the single sanction, but it also exposes a gaping hole in the system - the fact that a student who is found guilty can get off scot-free because a jury feels that his offense is not serious enough to expel him. But given compassionate students' general reluctance to expel, a middle ground is necessary.
In theory, the proposal to eradicate the seriousness criterion in instances of academic cheating would mean that if a person was found guilty, he would be expelled, regardless of the magnitude of his transgression. In practice, however, juries likely would be hesitant to expel students for minor indiscretions, and we would see more "not guilty" verdicts.
The system encountered a similar problem in 1996-97, before the seriousness vote was separated from act and intent. Juries used to vote on all three criteria at once, which allowed for confusion of parameters. Rather than focusing on whether or not a student is guilty and then voting on seriousness after a guilty verdict was handed down, sometimes a jury would find a student not guilty to avoid expelling him for a minor offense.
The system was changed after students passed a referendum in the spring 1997 elections. The referendum was on the fall 1996 ballot but failed to ignite enough voter sentiment (both supportive and non-supportive) to pass. After much discussion, including Cavalier Daily opinion pieces and University-wide forums, enough students felt invested to vote on the referendum to allow its passage.
Now back to 2000, and the Committee's impending referendum. Thanks to the Committee's constitution, which requires a two- to six-week buffer period between the Committee's acceptance of a proposal and that proposal's submission to referendum, the honor referendum will not be on the ballot today. Plans are still in the works to get the referendum on a run-off ballot or to hold a special election expressly to decide on the referendum.
If the Committee really has its finger on the pulse of the University community, it should know enough to postpone the referendum until it can adequately inform students of the proposal and engage us in meaningful dialogue about the system. Perhaps then we can stop avoiding the real questions at hand.
(Masha Herbst's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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