The Honor system frequently was the subject of intense debate and scrutiny on Grounds the past four years. It received national attention last spring when the Bloomfield trials made headlines around the country. Controversial referenda on reform in 2001 and informed retraction in 2002 brought students to spring elections in record numbers.
The Honor Committee withstood lawsuits, struggled with spotlighting and faculty involvement and, with the open Honor trial last fall, was subject to public scrutiny.
In a 2002 survey sponsored by the Committee, close to two thirds of 778 respondents said they had participated in a conversation about the Honor system in the past semester. Many of these discussions centered on events and themes unique to the 1999-2003 Committees.
The Bloomfield cases
Physics Prof. Louis Bloomfield created a computer program in the spring of 2001 capable of identifying matching sequences of words in documents. In April, he applied the program to papers from the past five semesters and identified 122 possible cases of plagiarism, a number that later increased to 158.
The Committee instantly was faced with an influx of initiations testing its capability to process cases, and was thrown into the national and international spotlight.
"It was major, major, major national news," 2000-2002 Honor Chair Thomas Hall said. He was invited to speak on CNN and contacted by major news venues across the globe.
Students at the University were watching the Committee more closely than anyone as a system normally in the background garnered new interest.
"A lot of students saw it as a major test to the Honor system -- certainly faculty did," Hall said. "A lot of people were watching to see how the Committee would respond."
It took close to a year for the Committee to complete the investigations and trials initiated by Bloomfield, but the system eventually withstood the onslaught of cases.
"The Honor system really is stronger because of the Bloomfield cases," 2002-2003 Honor Chair Christopher Smith said.
Bloomfield agreed that the cases made students more conscious of the Honor system.
"It heightened awareness, that the community of trust is real and that it takes constant attention and nurturing," Bloomfield said. "It's not on autopilot."
Single sanction
As the Bloomfield cases wound to a close in spring 2002, the Honor system remained in the news as the issue of the single sanction emerged.
Committee members said the idea of ending the single sanction generally comes up every four to six years, and has always been voted down.
"The single sanction always brings out heated debate among students, faculty and alumni," Hall said.
In 2002, two Committee members made proposals to end the single sanction, but the Committee narrowly voted them down. The referendum, which introduced an informed retraction clause which would have allowed students to take a leave of absence from the University after being charged with an Honor offense, was added to the spring ballot after a group of students gathered almost 2000 signatures on a petition for its inclusion.
Students affirmed the single sanction by a 60 percent majority. Still, debate continued into the following year.
"The single sanction is and will always remain part of the continuing dialogue among students," Smith said. "It is always going to be a major issue."
Reform proposals
The year before the single sanction debate piqued student interest, reform measures proposed by a review commission, convened the summer before the 2000-2001 school year, also sparked discussion.
Four proposals to amend the Committee's constitution made their way onto the spring 2001 ballot -- the elimination of random student juries, the reduction of the margin required for conviction in an Honor offense from four-fifths to two-thirds, the elimination of the seriousness clause in cases involving academic cheating and a change in the role of counsel from representing to assisting.
"I would characterize them as generally a more conservative view of the Honor system," Hall said. "The feeling of the [review commission] was the random student juries had run amok and that we needed to introduce more consistency into the system."
The months leading up to the spring elections were full of controversy over the reforms, including an allegation by an ex-Committee member that the Board of Visitors pushed the reforms in exchange for representing the Committee in a lawsuit.
"The proposals were very controversial -- there was a lot of student discussion about it," Hall said. "A lot of people were really passionate about it one way or the other."
Three referenda were eventually defeated in the 2001 elections. The only one to pass was the proposal altering the role of counsel.
Spotlighting
Yearly statistics released by the Committee show that minority students consistently are charged with Honor offenses out of proportion with their representation at the University. Furthermore, minority students are underrepresented on the Committee and in the system's officer pools. Impacted particularly hard in past years have been racial minorities, athletes and international students.
"It's not easy to break down the stereotype that only white, Greek people get involved in the Honor system," Hall said.
The summer before 1999, the Committee made a paradigm shift in the way they addressed spotlighting, Smith said.
"Before that, we had always said it was a problem with the community at large and not a problem in the Honor system," he said. "After 1999, we basically said, anything that involves the Honor system is our problem and we're going to work to address that."
The Committee began actively recruiting from minority organizations, strengthened its Diversity Advisory Board and initiated a diversity training program run by a professional consultant for Committee members.
"There has most definitely been increased awareness and my hope is that increased awareness has led to improvement," Smith said.
Former Black Student Alliance President Tyler Scriven said spotlighting is a more complex issue than simply recruiting minorities.
"They always discuss recruitment, but I really believe that when you're truly doing something to recruit minorities and promote diversity that you do them almost subconsciously," Scriven said. "In that aspect, I don't think the Honor Committee has come very far at all. It's not going to change until the entire community changes."
Lawsuits
During the 1999-2000 school year, three lawsuits were brought against the Committee. One plaintiff alleged racial bias, another that she was not notified she could be charged with an Honor offense for writing bad checks and in the third and most publicized case, Maurice Goodreau charged that the Committee revoked his degree too long after his guilty verdict in an Honor trial.
"Seeing legal challenges to the Honor system in the press might affect students' perceptions of the Honor system in a negative way," Hall said.
Nevertheless, none of the three lawsuits went to trial. A claim last year that the Committee did not have jurisdiction to process cases because the students left the University after they committed Honor violations also was defeated.
"Once again, we prevailed in litigation," Smith said. "To this date, the Honor system hasn't lost a case. It's just a manifestation of the strength and fairness of our procedures."
Open Honor trial
Last fall, Adam Boyd's open Honor trial provided an opportunity for students to see the Honor system in action, as well as generated even more discussion about the system in the midst of the Bloomfield cases.
"It brought students into a process that normally remains closed," Smith said. "It helped to educate students about the Honor system, and I hope it showed students that the Honor system bends over backward to be fair to students."
Third-year Law student Seth Wood, counsel to Adam Boyd, said he did not see significant benefits to the open trial.
"I didn't see it as really altering anything," Wood said. "Ultimately, it was a case about one guy. I don't think anyone came out of there thinking the Honor system was either satanic or angelic. They just watched."
Smith said he is proud of the system the open trial brought to light.
"In the last four years, the Honor system has made significant strides and faced significant challenges," he said. "But as it stands today, the Honor system is stronger than it has been in recent history"
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