Honor Committee members said they hope to have all of the 130 honor cases filed since last spring by a physics professor completed by Christmas, despite slow progress on investigations this summer.
Committee Chairman Thomas Hall said while the necessary Committee personnel were in town this summer, many investigated students could not be contacted for a number of reasons, including being out of the country on vacation.
Now 37 of the 130 cases have been investigated by Committee officers, 11 have been scheduled to go to trial and 26 were dropped without a trial. The Committee added eight more cases this summer to the total number of cases to be investigated. One student has been found guilty. Another student has left the University admitting guilt.
The Committee dedicated most of its efforts last spring investigating students who were scheduled to graduate in May. Now that most students are back in Charlottesville Committee officers hope to investigate cases at a pace of about 30 every two to three weeks.
Hall said the now internationally known cheating cases Physics Prof. Louis Bloomfield initiated against students in his PHYS 105 and 106 "How Things Work" class have made the Committee make some changes in its investigation process as well as its education efforts.
Instead of randomly assigning cases to Honor counsel and advisers, the Committee has created a pool of 20 advisers and 20 counsels led by one investigations coordinator to handle all of the Bloomfield cases. The effort attempts to streamline the investigation process and keep all investigations consistent.
Honor educators also are being told to be ready to handle questions concerning these cases as they meet with first-year and transfer students during orientation.
"We're preparing educators to answer things that weren't questions 10 years ago," Hall said. He added that he expects a lot of questions from new students wondering how to define electronic cheating as well as the status of the current cases.
Since filing the cases, Bloomfield said he has received a lot of interest from other professors and worldwide organizations for his program to catch cheating. The program compares every essay in the database for strings of six-word phrases that were exactly alike. Bloomfield received so many inquiries that he created a Web site where his program can be downloaded for free. The program has been downloaded over 1000 times since it went up and Bloomfield even received a request for a Japanese translation of the program.
Hall said the large amount of international attention these cases have received is the result of a renewed sense of interest in honor. "It's part of a larger nationwide trend where college professors have become frustrated with cheating nationally."
He said that recent publicity over these cases has been mostly positive. "They have mostly shown that the University takes cheating seriously and is going to enforce its honor system".
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