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Once again, our honor system proves unfair

Saturday’s public trial shows problems with outreach, single sanction

Honor has long received accusations of unfairly targeting international students. These criticisms — which focus on students and professors spotlighting such students — are well-founded, with adequate data demonstrating disproportionate reporting rates for these students. While the data are useful in confirming these suspicions, it’s difficult to understand how these inconsistencies actually play out for international students, since specific case details are generally unrevealed to the public. Saturday’s public honor trial, which resulted in a guilty verdict for a student from the United Kingdom, is a case study which illustrates just how the system disadvantages international students. Moreover, this case reveals just how problematic a single sanction system can be: in this instance, there was no room for the student jury to hand down a sentence that reflected the nature of the crime.

Engineering graduate student Georgina Hunt was charged with cheating on a makeup exam in her Defects and Microstructure in Materials class. She said she believed she could look at the original exam, which her professor distributed to the class over its email listserv, because she expected the make-up exam to be different. Her professor, Sean Agnew, contended she was not supposed to look at the original exam.

Understanding the consequences of an honor offense is fairly straightforward. Honor has an aggressive outreach arm that educates students on the single sanction as the punishment for lying, cheating or stealing. However, this education does not reach international students as effectively as undergraduates. Hunt, who was found guilty on Saturday, expressed a lack of understanding about the actual terms of the honor code; in particular, she made the point that graduate students, unlike undergraduates, do not have a formal convocation process in which they sign a pledge to not lie, cheat or steal. About 5 percent of undergraduates are international students versus approximately 30 percent of graduate students; this gap in outreach may contribute to the gap in reports of international and non-international students.

Additionally, where some students diverge from others in their understanding of the honor system is in their familiarity with acceptable testing practices. For example, Hunt was accused of demonstrating an intent to cheat by not taking full advantage of and leaving excess space on her “cheat sheet,” which University professors often allow students to prepare as an aid during exams. Hunt alleged that cheat sheets are not used in the U.K. so she did not view her actions as suspicious. A student jury that predominantly hails from the United States may be inherently skeptical of this defense.

Cultural differences were at play in more than one instance in this case. After the professor initially administered the exam to the rest of the class, he sent solutions to all the students, including Hunt, who the professor later told could look over past homeworks and exams. Hunt states that in a meeting with her professor before she took the final exam, she told him, “I ain’t not gonna look at [the original exam],” to which he replied positively. According to Hunt, the use of double negatives is common in the London and Essex area where she is from, so she sincerely meant she would refer to the exam that was originally administered.

This case depended largely on individual testimony. And while this is likely true of many cases, the ambiguous nature of Hunt’s interaction with her professor — which no jury could know the true details of unless they were in the room with the two parties — demonstrates that, even if the accused student is technically guilty, they may not truly undermine our community’s shared ideals. She may have committed the offense, but she also said she did not know what she did was wrong. While ignorance of the law is never an excuse, a lack of malintent in the normal court system usually results in lesser sentencing — e.g., the difference between manslaughter and murder. Our system, unfortunately, leaves no room for such distinctions. The verdict may not be unfair, but the sentencing certainly is.

Disproportionate reporting of international students is especially problematic since a guilty verdict often results in deportation, which is the case for Hunt unless she successfully appeals the decision or transfers to another U.S. school — a tall order for someone with a cheating charge on their record. Hunt’s experience at trial lends color to and affirms what many of us already know from looking at the data — that our honor system disproportionately affects some students, and that our sanctioning system, well-intended though it may be, is nothing short of draconian.

This article has been updated to include the fact that Hunt may appeal her decision.

Correction: This article previously referred to a difference between manslaughter and homicide, instead of manslaughter and murder.

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