The Faculty Senate's Academic Affairs Committee recently established a Subcommittee on Honor to sustain a dialogue about faculty and student concerns with the honor system, according to Faculty Senate Chair Marcia Childress.
"The overarching goal has been to broker communication from many points of view about honor," Childress said. "Mostly its purpose has been to foster this conversation and have some pretty candid discussion among all the different groups."
Architecture Prof. Kenneth Schwartz is spearheading the new subcommittee, and he said the members hope to offer insight on the honor system.
"Our goal is to see if we can help the students to strengthen honor at U.Va.," Schwartz said. "Faculty members are a critically important part in that system."
The subcommittee is comprised of Academic Affairs Committee members, a Student Council representative, a representative from the Faculty Advisory Committee of the Honor Committee, a representative from the student body at large, Vice President for Student Affairs Pat Lampkin, Honor Committee Chair Meghan Sullivan, a representative from the Arts and Sciences Dean's office and a representative from the Board of Visitors.
"Student members and faculty members have all been very valuable," Schwartz said. "We have talked about issues of single sanction and the importance of student self-governance to try to understand the issue of single sanction and the perceived problems of single sanction that the faculty see."
The new subcommittee has held two meetings, and Childress said the subcommittee is just beginning to define what role it will take in the current discussion surrounding the honor system.
"Part of what we want to do is make space for student discussions that are going on," Childress said.
The subcommittee currently is engaging in a dialogue about the history of the honor system, Childress said.
"The system has a long history of tradition and of change," Childress said. "It is not now what it was."
The subcommittee also is considering the role of the faculty in the student-run honor system, Childress said.
"We recognize that it is a student-run system, and we support it," she said. "There are faculty and student concerns" with the system.
Since faculty members are interested in their role in the honor system, Childress said the subcommittee is focusing on how to ensure faculty members are informed about the workings of the honor system. In an effort to make certain faculty members aware of the honor deliberations, Childress said the Faculty Senate might survey faculty members later this year to gauge their level of understanding.
"There is an awful lot of hearsay," Childress said. "We're hoping to get a better sense of how faculty across schools feels about the honor system."
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