Disparate rates of case initiations against certain groups of students but an unbiased trial process still result in a disproportionate number of international students, African-American students, male students and athletes being dismissed from the University for honor offenses, according to a Faculty Advisory Committee report released by the Honor Committee last night.
The two committees conducted a statistical analysis of honor initiations and convictions between 1998 and 2003 last spring. Data from the 2000-2001 plagiarism cases initiated by Physics Prof. Lou Bloomfield was analyzed separately and provided a partial control group because the cases were "blindly initiated through computer-based, plagiarism-detecting software," according to the report.
Results showed that certain groups of students had significantly more cases initiated against them than other students. International students had nearly five times as many cases initiated against them as domestic students. The ratio of cases initiated against athletes to non-athletes was 4.27 to 1, African-Americans to Caucasians 3.38 to 1 and males to females 1.89 to 1.
"The most striking and discouraging result was that the initiation process appears to be flawed," FAC member Sherwood Frey said. "There seems to be very large differences in the initiation rates among various sub-groups within the University."
The FAC offered several plausible explanations for the disparities, including "spotlighting" against minorities, males and athletes, and "dimming" against majority students, meaning cases are not being initiated against them.
Honor Committee Chair Meghan Sullivan said these statistics are "going to require a broad response" from the Committee.
"It's something the Committee is going to have to spend a long time discussing," Sullivan said.
The report also found that the number of formal accusations in the Bloomfield cases outnumbered those for the overall 1998-2003 student data by a factor of 19.53, which may confirm that a majority of honor offenses are going undetected or not being reported.
While there may be bias in initiation rates, the report showed that after formal accusations are made, the trial process is not influenced by ethnicity, sex, international or athletic status. For example, rates of guilty verdicts for majority students and African-American students were 27 percent and 24 percent, respectively.
"I think the most gratifying part of the study was that once a case is initiated, it is treated without bias," Frey said.
Sullivan said this result was "good news" for the Committee.
"The Committee is very proud of that finding," she said. "In some sense, it validates the fairness of a lot of our procedures."
Sullivan added that the Committee hopes the finding will encourage more people to initiate cases.
At the end of its report, the FAC said it supports the honor system at the University and issued several recommendations to the Honor Committee.
"I would hope that the University community would see the results of the study as an opportunity to improve its commitment to the honor system and more as a call to action than a negative result," Frey said.
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