I applaud The Cavalier Daily's efforts to engage the University Community in substantive debate about possible improvements to our Honor System. Although I enjoyed yesterday's lead editorial suggesting we should modify the definitions of "intent" and "plagiarism" within the context of Honor, a more rigorous analysis demonstrates that applying Professor Briceland's suggestions to our system would seriously undermine the values that generations of University students have designed the Honor System to uphold.
When we came to the University, each of us agreed to comport ourselves in a fashion consistent with the University community's values of honor and integrity. The Honor System asks its juries to apply an objective standard in evaluating the merits of each case: Should the average, reasonable U.Va. student have known that the conduct in question might constitute an honor offense, given our common valuation of honor and integrity? Juries do not pass judgment on the moral character of the student in question; they only ask if the student's behavior is consistent with the values we have all agreed to uphold.
Your editorial suggested that the "should have known" phrase within the definition of intent makes it unjustly easy to find that a student intended to commit an honor offense. On the contrary, the "reasonable student" standard applied by juries protects students from effectively "unlimited" responsibility for alleged plagiarism by only holding students accountable for those offenses the jury believes a student at the University should know constitutes cheating. In contrast, not having the "should have known" standard would make guilty verdicts in the Honor System nearly impossible, because any student who claimed to be unaware of a rule would necessarily be afforded a defense. The University is exceptional because we, as students, have asked ourselves to conduct our behavior with a higher degree of integrity and responsibility than may be required at other schools. It is a blessing and it is a burden, one that we ask our Honor juries to define and apply.
M. Blaire Hawkins\nLAW I
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