Third-year College student Genny Freed assumed the position of Honor Committee chair April 6, following her election to the position at the Committee’s annual Graves Mountain Lodge Retreat March 27-29. Freed shared her priorities of increasing Honors’ engagement with the student body, increasing the number of co-sponsorships and further integrating the ideals of the honor code in students' lives.
Freed became involved in Honor during her first year as an investigator/counsel and was later promoted to senior investigator/counsel in her second year. This year, she served as an Honor representative for the College and as the vice chair for sanctions. The vice chair for sanctions is responsible for sanctioning administration, completion and compliance.
The Honor Committee is a student self-governance organization that is responsible for running the honor system at the University and enforcing the honor code by sanctioning those who violate it. The Committee takes cases of students accused of lying, cheating or stealing.
One goal Freed has for her term is to ensure that honor is better integrated into students' lives more broadly — specifically, she mentioned focusing on shifting the student body’s perspective on Honor from being merely a disciplinary system to being a more prominent academic and ideological resource for students.
“[It is] really important for students to have a more complete understanding of Honor,” Freed said. “I think the way to do that [is by] having Honor be viewed by the student body, [as not just] punitive … but something that can also be a resource for students [which can] help deter contributing factors to future honor offenses.”
Freed outlined multiple strategies to shift the student perspective on Honor. She said she plans for the Committee to increase community outreach efforts with both the school representatives and with the vice chair for the undergraduate community. The vice chair for the undergraduate community is a position that is currently held by third-year College student Cody Scarce, who is responsible for overseeing the support officer educator pool. The support officer educator pool is the group of support officers whose primary responsibility is to educate the community on the ideals and processes of Honor.
Freed also discussed her hope to increase engagement and outreach by entering into more co-sponsorships with Contracted Independent Organizations. Co-sponsorships offer opportunities for CIOs to host events funded by Honor, with the intention of mutually benefitting the CIO and the Committee.
Freed said that to achieve this increased presence in the University community, the honor support officer training class can be changed — she said the class currently ends with a final exam. Instead, the incoming support officers would craft presentations about honor and the Community of Trust and contact different CIOs to ask to present to their organizations.
Beyond the influence of the Committee on the University community itself, Freed also discussed her goals to make internal processes more efficient. She emphasized her priority to increase both the efficiency and the transparency of the case processing procedures.
“We can improve case processing efficiency by getting better statistics and increasing our transparency on where parts of the case process may be taking a little longer than they need to be,” Freed said.
Freed said that she will increase the efficiency of case processing by reimplementing the position of investigation coordinator. The investigation coordinator is a position that is permitted by the Committee's bylaws, who works to support the vice chair for investigations — a position currently held by third-year College student Annie Linley. The vice chair for investigations is responsible for overseeing all cases that are currently under investigation.
Freed specifically said she wants to reimplement the position of investigation coordinator to be filled by a current support officer who is familiar with the case processing procedures. She said this position would be able to help the vice chair for investigations in answering questions from support officers and monitoring case timelines.
The reimplementation of the investigation coordinator is also one way for the Committee to help alleviate the excess workload of the vice chair for investigations, Freed said. She noted the extra support from the investigation coordinator is especially important due to the increased number of alleged honor violation reports the Committee saw last term. The Committee adjudicated 105 cases during the 2025-26 term, which was an increase from 78 cases in the 2024-25 term.
Another internal goal of Freed’s is to further establish timelines and commitments students must follow while processing their cases. She said this would make case processing more timely, and to incentivize the timelines, she will potentially implement consequences if these deadlines are not met.
“Another issue we've seen this past term was both student and reporter non-responsiveness,” Freed said. “It would be helpful to create more explicit guidelines for the executive committee on how we're going to be making decisions on addressing potential consequences for cases where we are seeing repeated or consistent lack of participation.”
Looking back to the way Honor can interact with the community, Freed said she wants to increase transparency in the case sanctioning process while still maintaining student and reporter confidentiality. She specifically mentioned her plan to publish more comprehensive resources for students regarding the Committee's case processing procedures, list of possible sanctions and the frequency with which those sanctions are utilized.
Freed noted the XYZ case studies that the Committee publishes on its website as one resource that is already available for students to learn more about the Honor case process. The XYZ case studies are written by students at the end of their sanctioning process to summarize their interactions with the Honor Committee and reflect on the sanctioning process. This procedure allows students to voice their own opinions on the sanctioning process before reintegrating with the Community of Trust.
Freed said it is important to increase the transparency of Honor because of her belief that the biggest threat to the honor system at the University is a loss of trust between faculty and students. Freed said that the loss of trust is in part due to the era of the single-sanction system and uncertainty in the years following the implementation of the multi-sanction system in 2023. She said that community outreach is one way trust can be rebuilt between the Committee and the University community.
“Multi-sanction means … we're saying that we trust students to learn and grow from their honor offense and meaningfully recommit to and contribute to life at the University,” Freed said. “I think there's kind of this preconceived notion of honor, and I think for students, it can almost feel a little outdated at times and hard to relate to. I think multi-sanction reinvigorates [the notion of Honor].”
Looking at her upcoming term as a whole, Freed said she would find success in her time as chair if she feels the Committee has humanized itself to the University community.
“[To me, a successful term means] being able to look back and [feel] like the Committee has taken meaningful steps towards humanizing honor as a process, and also having broadened students' understanding of the expansion of the community of trust and … [how honor] … translates into a principle that is with you for the rest of your life,” Freed said.
The new Committee will have its first meeting Sunday in Newcomb Hall 480 at 7:00 p.m. Students and community members can attend the meeting during open session in person or on Zoom. Meeting Zoom links are accessible via the Committee’s website.
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