IMAGINE if the presidential election process lasted only one week. On Oct. 27, the candidates would announce their intention to run. Then during the next week the citizens of the U.S. would learn as much as they could about the candidates before voting on Nov. 2. This cramming session in no way would prepare the country for an informed and educated decision about such an important issue.
In much the same way, students at the University would not have learned enough about the seriousness clause in honor cases with only one week's preparation before a referendum election. Fortunately, the Honor Committee decided Monday, March 27 to end plans of a school-wide vote and thus avoided a potential disaster.
For months the Committee had been debating about the seriousness clause in cases of academic cheating. Along the way various debates clouded over the core concern. The first was whether the Committee should hold the referendum election or allow Student Council to do so, as is the usual procedure. This in itself took away much-needed attention to the issue of the seriousness clause itself.
Then debate arose over whether the voting should take place over the Internet or by written ballot. By the time they decided to use paper ballots, the core issue of the seriousness clause had been placed on the backburner without thought for its importance in the University community.
Dwelling on Council relations and how to hold the election caused too many distractions. The task at hand should have been to educate students on the importance of the seriousness clause in academic cheating and what kind of impact the potential result of the vote could have been. The University is lucky that the Committee made the decision to abandon the referendum and thus avoided a situation that could have been embarrassing for them.
If the Committee hadn't decided to pull the referendum, a plethora of problems could have arisen. With only a week to decide before the election, students could have chosen any of three wrong paths. Those genuinely concerned about the vote might have made a noble attempt to learn all they could about the seriousness clause and its impact on the University. They wouldn't have had enough time in their cram session, however, to fully understand what they were voting on in order to make an informed decision.
Other students might have realized that a week is a pitiful amount of time to make an educated decision on such a serious issue and would have voted blindly. But inevitably the largest group of students wouldn't have voted at all. A week isn't even enough time to get the word out that there's going to be an election, much less make sure each student understand what the election is about.
At the same time this was going on, the newly elected Committee was preparing to take office. Many members of the outgoing Committee didn't want to leave the newly elected members with such a controversial issue. Vice Chairman for Services Cordel Faulk said in an interview, "From the beginning, the wording of the constitutional amendment was misleading and the author's sense of timing was worse than a $5 New York City Rolex ... and we decided to pass a tabula rasa ... over to the new committee." Had the Committee not decided to scrap the plans for the referendum, there's no telling how far the negative outcomes could have reached.
The very thing the Committee lost sight of is the reason their decision to drop the referendum was a good one. The seriousness clause is the only insurance students have in cases of academic cheating. Now that the referendum has been dropped, the clause remains that a student only can be convicted of academic cheating -- and thus removed from the University -- if his or her offense is deemed serious enough to violate the University's community of trust.
Thankfully, the Committee forgot the whole ordeal. Had students voted on and passed the seriousness clause unaware of the consequences, the outcome could have been regretful. Without the seriousness clause, a student who glances at someone else's assignment would meet the same fate as someone who plagiarizes an entire term paper. Both students would be expelled from the University, and the first student wouldn't get a second chance to make up for his slight mistake.
A presidential election that is a mere week long will never happen. Thankfully, it looks as if students at the University won't have to decide on an issue as important as the seriousness clause with virtually no information on the subject. As it stands now students still have a bit of insurance in the clause should they slip up and violate the honor code. Hopefully the Committee won't slip up again and approach a serious issue with such a lack of preparation.
(Brandon Almond is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.)
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