WE DON'T live in a community of trust, and our honor system doesn't foster the development of honest individuals. Those who say otherwise either are deluding themselves or maybe trying to attract new students to the University. In reality our honor system is valuable only on paper, as a tool of propaganda and a pretense of prestige. It's broken, and we need to fix it now or quit blabbering about how marvelous it is.
Let's assume for a moment that we here at the University enjoy blabbering about honor, as historically has been the case. So if we can't stop talking about our honor system any more than we can quit quoting Thomas Jefferson at every opportunity, we're left with no choice: we have to fix it. Doing so will require major changes in the attitudes of our students and faculty.
Our students are demolishing our honor code with the attitudes they harbor toward their own education. Sure, plagiarism and cheat sheets are individual thorns in the side of the ideal of honor, but attitude is the underlying problem.
Most students see their education here not as a pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake but as a steppingstone to a successful career. Sure, a few idealists here and there might have lofty ideals of honor, but they're sadly the exception rather than the rule. Pre-med students want to get into good medical schools, law students want to get into good law schools, and lots of others just want to graduate with nice-looking transcripts so that they can run for office or make money.
In most of these cases, students view their transcripts - the tangible objects that will make or break their futures - as more important than the acquisition of knowledge. This especially is true of students when they are taking classes to fulfill requirements that they do not feel will help them in their future careers. Here there often is little or no passion for learning, but a strong desire to get through tests and assignments quickly and with good grades.
An effective honor system can't exist where students put grades and career aspirations over their pursuit of knowledge. Honor in education hinges on the idea that students see cheating as detrimental to their own intellectual growth. But many students see intellectual growth as pointless in comparison to their GPAs. The threat of punishment is the only thing that prevents these students from cheating to improve their transcripts and their futures, which they see as more important than their acquisition of knowledge. For them, scholarship is a means to an end. They are bound not by honor, but by fear of the single sanction.
Students who follow an honor code out of fear of punishment don't develop into honest individuals. They may act honorably to avoid punishment, but at their core they are not honest people. If the threat of punishment were removed, there would be nothing to prevent them from dishonest behavior. Upon graduating from the University, students who have refrained from lying, cheating and stealing only because they didn't want to be single sanctioned will serve society no more honorably than those who attended schools that lacked honor codes.
Perhaps our professors realize that many of our students are not bound by thoughts of their intellectual growth. This would explain why many of them use our honor system as an instrument of fear to enforce suitable conduct among their pupils. In any case, it is evident from the behavior of our professors that most of them do not trust their students any farther than they could throw them.
At the beginning of each semester, many professors make a point to speak about the honor system and the consequences of cheating in their classes. They glare at their audiences and whisper the words "Honor Committee" as if they are invoking the name of some vengeful Gestapo. It is clear that they expect their students to be inclined toward lying and cheating, and that they feel they must make threats to prevent this from happening.
On every test and assignment of significance, students must write out and sign a pledge that proclaims their own innocence. Professors threaten students with zeroes for assignments that have not been pledged. If trust were a true part of our community, honor would not be a constant topic. Professors would not constantly threaten students and students would not perpetually be forced to sign statements pleading their innocence of offenses they are assumed likely to commit.
For an honor system to work, the primary goal of the students must be to learn, not to achieve high GPAs. Likewise, the faculty actually must trust students and not constantly threaten them with the consequences of lying, cheating and stealing. Professors must stop shoving the honor pledge down students' throats, even if it's only symbolic of the system's problems.
We either must reform our honor system or shut up about it forever. It's hard to say which will be more difficult.
(Anthony Dick is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com.)
Read More
WILLIAMS: The future of Virginia is on the ballot this fall
By Ryan Williams | 3 days agoHence, voters must make it their top priority to think critically and closely as they decide who their ballot will support this fall.
PARTING SHOT: On the art of walking and chewing gum
By Nathan Onibudo | 5 days agoStudent journalism, and maybe even life more generally, is about holding space for multiple conflicting truths.
PARTING SHOT: Confessions of a nepo baby
By Grace Thrush | 6 days agoWhile I can’t point to one specific “aha” moment where I finally started to dispel my self-consciousness and claim my pride for the paper, I got there gradually over the course of my term as managing editor.
