IT IS hard to maintain a successful honor system at a large, public university. The success of a system which seeks to uphold values of academic integrity depends upon its ability to continually encourage student commitment to those values. Consequently, the great project of this year's Honor Committee is to find creative new ways to encourage student ownership of the honor system.
First and foremost, this Committee hopes to find ways to protect and expand the privileges that University students enjoy as a result of living in a Community of Trust. As the Committee's Vice Chair for Community Relations, protecting and expanding student privileges is my primary focus. To that end, I have organized the Community Relations subcommittee of the Honor Committee to focus on expanding student benefits in three key areas.
First, we will be searching for ways to incentivize more frequent use of flex exams and take home exams at the undergraduate level. Allowing students to take exams alone at a time of their choosing is perhaps the most significant expression of faith in students' honesty available at the University. There are already some schools here where this level of trust is readily apparent. In the law school, almost all final exams are unproctored and taken by students on a day of their choosing inside a two week exam period. Students in the Commerce school enjoy similar freedom in unproctored test taking, and the community of trust has thrived there as a result.
Yet my experience suggests that the larger schools, where offering take-home and flex exams is more difficult, infrequently afford students this privilege. By working to ensure the future availability of technology to minimize these logistical challenges and engaging faculty on this issue, the Community Relations subcommittee hopes to find opportunities for take-home and unproctored exams wherever possible.
Second, the Community Relations subcommittee is looking for ways to reinforce the Honor Committee's relationship with local merchants. This relationship is already strong, and stories of students being trusted by local vendors to return to pay debts after forgetting their wallets are not uncommon. The Committee has long offered to help local merchants find students who have mistakenly written bad checks to encourage them to settle their debts. Additionally, the Office of the Dean of Students offers an "Honor loan" of up to six hundred dollars to University students to help pay expenses in a crunch.
To make sure that the Honor Committee's relationship with local merchants remains strong, the Community Relations subcommittee will endeavor this year to expand its outreach efforts in this regard. We hope to expand the Bad Check program to offer local merchants the opportunity to recover on student promises to pay through the Honor system. The subcommittee also plans to distribute informational materials about the services the Honor Committee offers around the area.
Third, the Community Relations ad-hoc committee will investigate ways to make sure that students' access to University facilities reflects the presumption of honesty they all enjoy. Of particular interest to me is the safety of students' belongings in high-traffic University libraries like Clemons. Also troubling are "lost ticket fees" in University parking garages, where students ought to be able to estimate their time of entering the parking garage when they have lost their tickets.
Undertaking these projects is ambitious and difficult. But it is exceedingly important for an honor system confronting an ever growing University population. My hope is that readers of this column will offer their help with our efforts. We need ideas for new and exciting student privileges. We need help spreading the word about the importance of this effort to the future of the honor system. And we need help from people who can make our aspirations a reality. Anyone who would like to help should contact me through the Honor Committee's Web site. .
In the end, the honor system is among the University's most valuable institutions. It sets us apart from our peers, and it colors the experience of students, faculty and local residents in a unique and liberating way. The system belongs to all of us, and it is our responsibility to our predecessors and our successors to ensure its upkeep. To enable honor to reach an ever expanding student population, please help expand the privileges that system affords.
Josh Hess is the Vice Chair for Community Relations for the Honor Committee and a Cavalier Daily contributing writer.
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