HYPOTHETICAL: You're driving along a rural road in the wrong direction. There's an exit 65 miles ahead and another in only one mile. Solution: Get off now and backtrack, figure out what went wrong sooner, not later. This is advice that the Honor Committee could benefit from.
If the Committee wants to do a great service to our community, it would undertake to do what hasn't been done in a few decades -- and what in the past has been done partially and unsuccessfully. It would compile a list and present publicly all of the offenses that violate the University's code of honor. Such a task would take hard work, a lot of discipline, and some profound thought.
As it stands, the Committee calls lying, cheating and stealing honor offenses. What that means is anybody's guess. For example, is carrying a fake ID lying? Is copying the back of the book cheating? Is downloading MP3s stealing? Is any of this serious enough to be incompatible with our community of trust? Who knows?
It is important for students to know those details. Conducting yourself with honor doesn't mean that you have to be a saint. Acting honorably means fulfilling your obligations. But if you don't know what your obligations are, how can you honorably discharge them? It's kind of like taking a test without any questions -- it's unreasonable and unfair.
If the Committee is to undertake this project, first they'll have to take a critical look at their constitution. In the Powers clause, the Committee is charged with determining and publicizing what an honor offense is in the view of the "current generation of University students." This is terribly circular. Their view depends on our view and our view is informed by their education initiatives. In other instances, our view is unclear. On a more absurd note, if you can conceive of a generation in which taking crib sheets into exams is fashionable, then you can conceive of an Honor Committee that is, by its own Powers clause, powerless to combat it. We could go on and on, but you see how terminally silly this is.
In an e-mail response, Chairman Thomas Hall observes, "This policy gives the honor system the flexibility it needs to adjust from year to year and student generation to student generation."
True -- a policy of avoiding policy brings flexibility. But at the same time that it keeps the wheels of the Committee in motion, it disables students. Could you imagine a worse fate than being brought up on stealing charges for downloading MP3s, being convicted, and never having known that it was or could be considered an honor offense? This possibility shows how unfair it is that the Committee could go on taking the easy road -- never delineating what is and isn't an honor offense -- while students act as guinea pigs and suffer. The burden should be the other way around. We elect our leaders so that they relieve some of our burdens through their leadership, not vice versa.
One possible danger in creating a list of offenses is that this could make the honor system more legalistic and exacting. But this is preferable to one that is unclear and therefore damaging to students.
Of course the Committee shouldn't be an all-powerful body with the authority to make sweeping decrees. The student jury is important and so is the view of the students in the context of their generation. But let's not confuse roles. It is the student jury that clarifies what our generation thinks. Meanwhile, we need clear standards of ethical conduct pronounced openly in our community. This is the Committee's job.
Think of the Committee as a legislature, the self-policing students as the executive branch, and the student jury as the judiciary. Legislators should legislate. If they didn't for fear of what the judiciary might think, they would hinder progress. Therefore, the Committee must be in the business of making rules and then publicizing them, even if their fate could be jury nullification.
Taking on this monumental project will be a bold step in the right direction. It will mean humiliation from time to time as student jurors veto the ideas of the Committee. But we don't elect our leaders to chicken out of tough projects.
A good first step will be to clearly define what lying, cheating and stealing are. It must be in crisp and concise language and cannot be circular. This will give student juries clear standards by which to adjudicate. Students will have guidelines for their conduct and that means more accountability for students, which means an elevation of the significance of honor.
This current Committee is competent and talented. That's why it would be a travesty if they don't realize that the stretch of road they're on is not going to take us where we need to go. Talk to the members, write them, phone them, whatever you can do. Tell them to take the exit already.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily.)
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