I ONCE witnessed an honor violation. In the fall of 2002, I was enrolled in Concepts of Physics, a "for non-science majors" course taken by hundreds of undergraduates anxious to put three hours of core requirements behind them. The final exam was administered in a large lecture hall in the physics building, with students seated side by side for the duration of the test. I was among the first to finish and, as I crossed the front of the room on my way out, I took a passing glance at the other students still at work. I was nearly to the door when my eye caught upon a girl in the third or fourth row. Her head was turned halfway to her right and she was staring directly at her neighbor's paper in what, I can only assume, was an intentional act of cheating. She looked up as I passed and we made eye contact. I like to think that, in that moment, she was terrified at having been caught in a crime that might have led to her expulsion from the University, but she probably thought little of it.
In an earlier time one could not talk about such things, for until the repeal of the non-toleration clause some 30 years ago, the failure to report an honor offense was itself an honor offense. But today, in an indication of how different the University has become, one can write publicly about having witnessed an honor offense and done nothing about it.
What is one supposed to do? The girl I caught cheating was completely unknown to me -- a nameless face in a packed lecture hall. This anonymity among students, a natural result of the University's growth in recent decades, is probably an important factor in the erosion of honor over the same period. It's hard to get upset about an act of cheating by an unknown person in whom you have placed no particular trust. In a more mundane sense, it's difficult to file an honor charge against a person whose name you don't know. My only option under the circumstances would have been to stop, turn around and interrupt the exam by demanding before the entire class that the cheater identify herself. And it's not farfetched to think that, in that event, the weight of social reproach would have borne more heavily on me than on her.
On Thursday, the University will find out whether a resolution moving the community towards ending the single sanction has been approved in a University-wide referendum. The repeal of the single sanction, it is hoped, will make honor more accessible to students who would be inclined to report violations but for their reluctance to expel a classmate. The opponents of this effort, including several past chairmen of the Honor Committee, have fought a pitched battle against it, claiming that the single sanction is critical to the character and integrity of the honor system and the student body generally.
The reality is that no institutional measure can save honor if the social norms of the University are not conducive to its survival. In its earliest incarnation, honor was a system by which students "vouched" for one another, agreeing simply to report misconduct with no formal accusatory procedures and no standing committee to pass on alleged violations. Today, honor has a substantial body of rules, procedures and institutional infrastructure, yet one rarely feels comfortable taking a peer to task for a violation of some institutional code of conduct. So much is clear from the 2002 Honor System Survey, in which 778 students were polled on their impressions of honor at the University. Of the respondents, 194 reported witnessing an honor offense, yet only four of those had initiated a case against the perpetrator.
This, perhaps, is the big difference between the University of today and that of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Then, honor was less an institution than a shared expectation among students drawn from the small social universe of the Southern aristocracy. Today, honor has more institutional muscle but less social strength among a large, diverse student body united by the modern belief in minding one's own business. It offends me to go to school with people who cheat, particularly people who would cheat rather crudely on an easy exam in a 100-level class. But in the end, it's hard to demand punishment of a person whose offense is not against your own personal interests but against some abstract code of good behavior that isn't widely shared anymore.
The simple truth is that honor starts with the students, not with the rules. If we use the single sanction to strip students of their discretion in sentencing convicted offenders, student juries will refuse to convict. If we strip students of their discretion in judging guilt or innocence by eliminating student juries, witnesses will refuse to report suspected offenders. And if we strip students of their discretion in reporting suspected offenders by restoring a non-toleration clause, we have to ask who, exactly, will report the non-reporters. The contending factions in any debate over honor reforms can twist themselves into a logical pretzel explaining why their rule changes will bring wayward students into line, but honor has always been a grassroots enterprise and it can only work in the way that students want it to work.
Perhaps the best we can hope for is that honor will continue to exert some moral influence on individual students, even if it fails as the social system of centuries past. This would be consistent with the 2002 survey data, which showed 70.3 percent of students feeling "somewhat positive" or "very positive" about the honor system despite their general apathy in reporting offenses. The modern student may be unwilling to police his peers, but honor appears to retain some sentimental appeal nonetheless.
The honor code, the Honor Committee and our accumulated mountain of honor mythology will never disappear, so it may be hard to tell when honor, as we know it, is finally in the grave. But we can at least hope that these trappings of honor will serve as a call to personal morality for those students who are still susceptible to moral appeals. There may yet be life for honor in the twenty first century, but it is probably time to admit that honor is dying as a system for punishing our peers.
Alec Solotorovsky's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at asolotorovsky@cavalierdaily.com.
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