At the conclusion of Sunday's open Honor trial, third-year Engineering student Steve Gilday was found not guilty of cheating but guilty of lying in regard to the legitimacy of a test he had submitted for a re-grade. The honor case was initiated against Gilday late last semester by his BIOL 310 professor, Laura Galloway.
Cavalier Daily: How did you feel when you were informed by the Honor Committee that there was an honor case initiated against you?
Gilday: I was surprised at the beginning. I thought [the incident] was a relatively minor one. Obviously my professor and I had totally different views of the incident. When she brought the case to Honor, I was more shocked than anything else.
How was the investigation period?
I would say that the investigation went very smoothly. The incident was kept between the professor, the TA [Francis Kilkenny] and me. I think that they do try to do their best to speed things along, to do things fairly, but to have to wait [over three] months as a student here, that's a lot over your head. It can be distracting at times when you have to do your schoolwork and think about [honor charges] at the same time.
What did you think about the actual trial proceedings?
I think the trail was very straightforward. I was pleased with the professionalism exhibited by the Honor Committee, for the most part.
Why did you decide to make your honor trial open and available to the public?
I believe that all honor trials should be open. I think it's always good for the public to see the workings of [honor trials]. I had nothing to hide. I didn't cheat, like I said, and the jury agreed. I had admitted every previous act that could be considered as lying--I was not trying to cover anything up. I did not try to hype the event. It is somewhat embarrassing to be convicted of an honor offense, even if you're not guilty; it leaves a mark on your record. Like I said earlier, the reason I chose an open honor trial is simply on principle. I think that all trials should be open for the sake of fairness, to add some transparency to the process.
An issue that was debated between the counsel for the accused and the council for the community was whether or not the e-mail you sent to your professor apologizing for misleading her about the authenticity of the resubmitted test. Did you ever consider making an official conscientious retraction, through the Honor Committee?
At the time, I didn't even know the details of how to make a conscientious retraction. The majority of people, unless they have read over the [Honor] bylaws, are ignorant of how to go about doing that. One important thing to consider when considering a conscientious retraction is that the retraction has to be made by a student in good faith before the student believes he or she is at risk of being brought before Honor. There's no way I could have known [Galloway] was going to go to the Honor Committee. It's ridiculous to claim that I was apologizing solely to provide a defense before a coming honor trial. I wasn't looking ahead to planning my defense for an honor trial ... I thought it was personally between me and her. I think any honorable person who has misled another should apologize. So I did, right then and there -- I didn't think that I should hold off on this apology to go to the Honor Committee and make it official.
You have said that you think the simultaneous presentation of the lying and cheating charges had an adverse effect on the jury's verdict.
[It] made for complications in defining the boundary between the two issues. It's hard to justify that I had lied to my professor about this incident when the jury ruled that the incident had never occurred, that I never cheated. It seems illogical ... I think the jury could have been confused about the line between the two issues. The facts about both incidents were presented all at once. It could have been beneficial to try the incidents in separate cases. I think things are much different now that the cheating is out of the way. Had the case gone to trial with only the charge of lying, I think the verdict may have been different."
How do you feel about the verdict?
I was shocked--a little worried about my future and my academic career. I was angry to some degree about the verdict; I was upset that a jury of my peers and the Honor Committee in general was willing to expel a conscientious student like me for what I considered a relatively minor incident and something I had already apologized for. That just seems unfair to me and extremely harsh.
Are you going to appeal the guilty verdict?
I am planning on filing an expedited appeal on the grounds of unfairness or timeliness of the trial. I have issues in mind that I think are very relevant to my appeal and that I think could have had a drastic impact on the way the trial panned out. I think I have good grounds to appeal, and I think that the Honor Committee is reasonable, and once they read my appeal, [they will see] that there were some flaws along the way that could have changed the outcome of my trial. I'm definitely not the type of student who will just slink away from U.Va. I'm going to fight for what I think I deserve.
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