THE HONOR Committee is locked in an endless cycle of self-destruction. Governed by students, a large majority of those whom come to the Committee completely new for one-year terms, the Committee has virtually no institutional memory and is destined to make the same mistakes repeatedly. The 2008-2009 Honor Committee's decision to reconstitute the single sanction "ad hoc" is the quintessence of this destructive cycle.
Despite its designation as an "ad hoc," rather than permanent, subcommittee, I can only remember one or two Honor Committees since the fall of 2002 that did not have a single sanction ad hoc. Having personally served on two, the only positive thing I can say about the ad hoc is that it is relentless: relentless in its utter futility.
The ad hoc typically is given one or two goals. First, it seeks to encourage discussion and debate about the single sanction. Second, its members try to conjure up a superficially new but ultimately re-hashed alternative to the single sanction.
What is remarkable about this steadiness of purpose is that the ad hoc so consistently fails in both of these objectives. For the past several years, the debate over the single sanction has existed largely outside of the workings of the ad hoc. Competing student groups and The Cavalier Daily find, as they have since the 1960s, ample space to debate the merits of the single sanction without forums and panels organized by the ad hoc. My experience is that whatever efforts the sanction ad hoc does put into encouraging dialogue are really just drops in the bucket of community debate.
The ad-hoc is also a consistent failure as a policy-making body. Usually narrowly focused on proposing a fundamental change to the single sanction, the ad hoc simply refurbishes some previously failed proposal destined to fail again. The already tried informed retraction is an ad hoc favorite. Rarely is the ad hoc a venue for creative development of promising ideas to address complications associated with the single sanction without annihilating it.
This policy-making inadequacy is compelled by the very nature of the ad hoc. It is a locus of controversy that draws membership from the most ardent advocates on both sides of the single sanction. The ad hoc becomes something like WWI-style trench warfare: a staring contest between entrenched opponents with little hope of progress from either end.
It is a wonder, then, why the Honor Committee is so persistent in establishing the sanction ad hoc. One argument often trotted out is that the Committee has a mandate from the student body to continue the sanction ad hoc. What is the source of this mandate? Some say it is the large minority of student voters who have recently expressed support for "exploring alternatives" to the single sanction or submitting a multiple sanction system for a vote on a future ballot. The problem with this, though, is that it ignores countervailing indicia of student opinion. Students have also recently voted in large majorities to make changing the single sanction much more difficult. And in a 2008 survey of University students, only 33.9 percent of students listed ending the single sanction as one of their top three priorities for the Honor Committee.
It is fairly clear that there has been no sudden shift in student opinion against the single sanction. A significant minority of students have, for decades, supported ending it. Virginius Dabney's"Mr. Jefferson's University" tells us, for example, that in 1971 a straw poll of students indicated that 47 percent supported the single sanction and 37 percent opposed it. If there is no newfound momentum in opposition to the single sanction, it is difficult to understand why the Committee is insistent there is a sudden "mandate" for the ad hoc.
The mandate argument disarmed, it is apparent that there can only be two other explanations for the sanction ad hoc's continued existence. Perhaps it is a purely political instrument: a pressure valve that gives critics of the single sanction the illusion of influence so that they won't agitate outside the Committee's control. Or, in the alternative, it is a product of the Committee's institutional insecurity. Its members do not want to go too far in exercising their own judgment -- presumably the judgment for which they were elected -- about what is best for the Honor System.
If one wants to see the Committee tackle the myriad challenges which get brushed to the side when the 800-pound sanction ad hoc reemerges, this is a disheartening state of affairs.
It is particularly disheartening because the objectives of the sanction ad hoc can be pursued through mechanisms that are far more productive and less distracting. The 2007-2008 Honor Committee, for example, developed a proposal to accomplish many of the objectives of informed retraction though another ad hoc: the procedures ad hoc.
The procedures ad hoc offers a comparatively collaborative body that can find innovative new ways to address sanction-related complications. Indeed, the outgoing ad hoc left many ideas on the table that have never been directly considered by the Committee.
If the Honor Committee cannot come up with a novel purpose for the sanction ad hoc, it should permanently disband it. It is little more than a black hole of talent and testament to the Committee's institutional insecurity. In its place, the Committee should reconstitute the procedures ad hoc.
Josh Hess is a second-year student in the Law School and former Honor Committee vice chair for community relations.
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