The Honor Committee's ad hoc Committee on the Investigation of the Single Sanction released its report on the single sanction at last Sunday's meeting. The report concludes that there is a decreasing trend in the number of honor offenses committed over the last five years.
"This leads us to conclusion that the single sanction seems to be deterring honor offenses at large," ad hoc committee member Matt Miller said.
The report was comprised of the results from a survey on cheating rates administered by academic integrity expert Don McCabe, additional questions added to McCabe's survey on student opinion of the single sanction and a compilation of post-trial juror surveys.
The ad hoc committee analyzed surveys given to jurors after trials between 2001 and 2005. One of the questions on the survey asked jurors who voted "not guilty" if they would have acted differently had the sanction been less severe.
Of the 332 jurors who voted "not guilty" in trials with "not guilty" verdicts, 27 percent would have changed their vote had the sanction been less severe.
Moreover, according to the report, the number of "regreters," those who would have voted differently had there been a lesser sanction, has been decreasing over the last five years.
During the same period, there was an increasing trend in "not guilty" verdicts and no trend in number of reports or accusations.
According to Hobbs, this leads the committee to believe that there has been a decline in cheating rates which can be attributed to the single sanction.
"We have been able to trace it to the single sanction but not a specific aspect of the single sanction," Hobbs said.
Hobbs added that it is unlikely the trends were caused by other factors such as greater unwillingness to convict students on the part of jurors.
"I think that would have been represented on the post-trial jury reports and it was not," Hobbs said.
The McCabe survey, which was also administered in 1990 and 1995, compared cheating rates at the University with that of other institutions.
"He found that we have lower cheating rates than schools without honor codes and comparable cheating rates to schools with honor codes, with both single sanction and multiple sanction systems," Hobbs said.
The questions on the single sanction added to the McCabe survey asked students if they would report an honor case if they witnessed a clear violation.
Of the 257 third and fourth-year students surveyed, 39 percent indicated that they would be likely to or absolutely would report a case, 27 percent would be unlikely to or absolutely would not report a case and 34 percent were not sure.
When asked what factors would discourage them from reporting an honor offense, 67 percent of those surveyed indicated that uneasiness about causing dismissal would likely or definitely deter them from reporting a case, five percent said would be deterred because they do not believe in the honor system and 33 percent because they do not believe in the single sanction.
The ad hoc committee was formed in response to a referendum on the 2005 spring ballot in which nearly 60 percent of the student body voted that the Honor Committee should pursue alternatives to the single sanction.
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