Warning to hard-core U.Va. traditionalists: What follows may upset you. Simply put, the University is changing—and has been for decades. So, too, is the Honor System. While polls find that students endorse an honor system in concept, they appear less willing to hold each other accountable, preferring to leave the heavy lifting to an increasingly skeptical faculty. Meanwhile, fueled in part by a high-profile public trial last fall, critics charge that students’ unwillingness to impose the single sanction—permanent expulsion—allows some guilty students to go unpunished. Clearly, U.Va.’s Honor System is in danger of suffering irreparable damage.
If it is to remain viable, a hard-headed, clear-eyed, realistic discussion of honor’s future is essential. To many alumni, the Honor System is the most unassailable of the University’s core values, a dearly treasured element of the best years of their lives. It created the revered “community of trust,” safeguarded by the sanction for those who dared violate it. Of course, community was easier when students were relatively fewer in number, and living within fairly well-defined borders.
Today’s University is a different place. Some figures: In 1958, overall enrollment declined by 44 students, to 4,620. That wouldn’t happen again for 33 years, until the student population plateaued in the low 18,000s for about a decade. Enrollment growth has since resumed, topping 20,000 for the first time in 2004. With the population boom, the University has also increased its geographical footprint, blurring the lines between town and gown. Charlottesville is no longer a sleepy Southern town, and the Grounds no longer an insular enclave.
Beyond population, societal attitudes have shifted. Today’s U.Va. students appear increasingly unwilling to police their peers. In a 2001 survey, only 15 percent claimed that they would not report witnessing a hypothetical “clear honor violation.” But of those who said they were aware of an actual violation, 95.4 percent admitted they did not initiate an honor investigation.
Student jurors hear evidence in last fall’s rare public honor trial. The jury acquitted two students—despite finding that they had intentionally cheated.
Meghan Sullivan (Col ’05), who chaired the Honor Committee in 2004-2005, told Inside UVA, the faculty and staff newsletter: “Students are very service-minded. They want to do well. But they don’t want to grapple with ethically messy issues. … When it comes down to making hard decisions, students back away.”
That reluctance came to the fore last fall, when two students accused of collaborating on a homework assignment opted for a rare public honor trial. Jurors found them guilty of intentionally cheating, but in a separate vote found their actions did not merit expulsion—thus acquitting them. “I think a lot of people are unwilling to hold someone accountable for an honor offense unless it’s a serious one,” one juror told the Cavalier Daily. “It was just a homework assignment. While they did it, to me, it’s not enough to expel them from the University.” Added another, “I really think they deserve some sort of minor punishment. So in that sense, I really think the Honor System doesn’t work. … But I am happy they weren’t expelled because I don’t think their actions deserve expulsion.”
Additional sanction options have long been discussed, occasionally proposed and consistently voted down. However, in a spring 2004 referendum, 59 percent of students asked the Honor Committee to investigate a multiple-sanction system, and in the wake of the open honor trial, the Cavalier Daily endorsed the idea in an editorial. “The only conclusion to draw is that in some cases the single sanction actually acts as a shield that makes it easier to lie, cheat or steal,” it said. “It is on the back of this fact, not philosophical arguments, that it becomes clear that a multiple sanction system is absolutely necessary.”
Honor Chair David Hobbs
Current Honor Committee chairman David Hobbs says a multiple-sanction proposal will appear on a ballot either this spring or fall, but added that the committee also is mulling less-dramatic procedural reforms.
Students’ reluctance to police themselves has left much of the enforcement burden to faculty. A 2004 report by the Honor Committee’s faculty advisory panel found that as many as 86 percent of honor cases in a given year are initiated by faculty or graduate-student instructors. (Hobbs says a more typical number is around 70 percent to 80 percent.)
Alarmed faculty members have questioned the Honor System’s vitality. Last spring, the Faculty Senate voted unanimously to recommend reinstatement of the “non-toleration clause” that requires students to report honor violations that they become aware of, or be liable for an honor violation themselves. The senators, too, called for further discussion of multiple sanctions.
The most scathing faculty attack came from the professor who has likely initiated more honor cases than any other person in University history: physics professor Louis Bloomfield, whose plagiarism-detection computer program led to accusations in April 2001 that 158 students in his introductory “How Things Work” class had cheated. In remarks to the Faculty Senate two years later, he declared that students have abdicated their responsibility for self-governance in matters of honor, and said that faculty members “should never have accepted” either the responsibility of initiating honor cases (once reserved for students only) or the repeal of the non-toleration clause. If he found similar cheating again, Bloomfield said he would not pursue charges through the Honor System, calling honor cases “time sinks” leading to “careericide.”
While the outlook for the Honor System—at least as it stands now—appears bleak, all is not lost.
Student and faculty polls—and the University’s Board of Visitors—consistently show solid support for the continued existence of a student-run honor system. Likewise, the same Faculty Senate report that advocated restoration of the non-toleration clause deemed the system “a fundamental cornerstone of the University of Virginia” and worthy of preservation.
Alumni agree. In 1998, the Alumni Association issued an appeal for donations to establish an endowment to support the Honor System. Thousands responded; today, the $2 million fund primarily helps educate incoming students, supporting production of the introductory On My Honor video, honor receptions at schools, the training of honor educators, graduate-student honor orientation, honor-related guest speakers and educational forums, and diversity initiatives. Funds also offset the Honor Committee’s legal expenses and fulfill other committee requests above and beyond the substantial funding the University provides. Despite surpassing the original fund-raising goal, donations continue to come in. “It was something that resonated with everybody,” says John B. “Jack” Syer, the association’s former president.
Even Bloomfield remains open to the possibility of an honor renaissance. “I would love to have an Honor System,” he said. “The students should fix it.”
With that in mind, we asked students, faculty and alumni for their ideas on restoring honor on Grounds. A half dozen responded; their essays follow.
Comments
There are no comments for this article yet. Begin the discussion below!
Leave a Comment