The Honor Committee presented an overview Sunday of the low number of investigations it dealt with last month. A lack of current investigations that has elicited questions about the implementation of the honor system.
Vice Chair for Investigations Andrew Siegel informed Committee members that there were seven investigations that led to seven Investigation Panels last month. Four were dropped and the remaining three were concluded quickly.
Siegel also stated there are "no active investigations" pending at this time.
Vice Chair for Trials Jay Trickett said the numbers in the report were "really unusual" and "fewer than usual" for the Honor Committee.
Trickett added that the number of honor violations fluctuates from year to year.
"I don't think there's any way to gauge what's causing this," Trickett said. "While the number seven is striking, it really may be meaningless."
Trickett said he does not believe that the numerical anomaly indicates more students' adherence to the honor system.
"I don't think that there's been any special educational effort this year that makes everyone laudable," Trickett said.
Vice Chair for Services A-J Aronstein said the burden of the case process faculty commonly cited as a reason for not reporting honor offenses. Aronstein added that the recent addition of the transformation proposal will do much to alleviate that problem, explaining that he believes it is not the low numbers in the past month's investigations that were significant, but rather the speed with which the cases were processed.
"We got those seven investigations done in 16 days," Aronstein said. "We're seeing that already [procedures for] investigations are much better."
Committee Chair Alison Tramba said the role of faculty members in reporting honor violations is extremely crucial to the enforcement of the honor system. The Honor Committee distributed surveys to faculty members last year and found an unexpected result.
"Our faculty surveys would indicate that faculty members are not bringing [up] cases with us as much as we would like to see," Tramba said.
Sam Leven, president of Hoos Against Single Sanction, also said he was not convinced there are any positive implications of the Honor Committee's report.
"It's just a statistical flux," Leven said. "It is not a reflection of any trend."
Leven added that he believes the increased unwillingness of professors and students to report honor violations contributed to the low numbers.
"There has not been any active action to effectively decrease honor offenses," Leven said. "I still hear regularly about unreported cheating and stealing."
Leven said he supported the Honor Committee's recent implementation of the transformation proposal, but only because it shifted the large responsibilities of honor reporting from the reporters to the Honor Committee.
"It will at the very least make the life of a reporter much easier," Leven said. "There's potential to make honor a much smoother process."
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