The Honor Committee is considering revising its policies which deal with “bad debt” — which could be anything from bad checks to failure to pay rent. In recent years, the Committee has seen an increased number of bad debt cases. Committee Chair Nicholas Hine said the Committee wants to avoid a situation in which landlords use the threat of an honor charge to pressure tenants to pay rent, particularly when rent may be legitimately disputed.
Failure to pay rent, or any other kind of bill, could be considered stealing. The Committee has recognized that it must be able to draw a distinction between students who do not pay a bill because they intend to take advantage of the service provider, and students who do not pay a bill simply because they cannot afford it.
There may be cases when students deserve to be brought up on Honor charges for failure to pay a debt. For instance, checking out books from the library and not returning them, or a student charging textbooks and not paying the bill, could be considered forms of theft. While a student who simply forgets to pay a late fee is guilty of nothing more than an oversight, a student who did not return a book and refused to pay fines despite multiple reminders could be convicted of stealing, since he is effectively taking possession of property which does not belong to him. Such a case could be assessed by a jury during an Honor trial.
Offenses like these damage the ideals of trust and fairness within the University community, which the honor code is designed to protect. Theft of University resources is not fair to the vast majority of students who pay their dues for them, and gives administrators more reason to distrust students in general. The Honor Committee ought to retain the power to remove students whose acts of stealing undermine the principles of the Community of Trust.
But when third parties like landlords can use the honor system to pursue action against tenants who don’t pay rent, the principles of the system collapse. Landlords are professional businesspeople whose ultimate goal is to make money, and they should not be able use a system that is meant to promote trust among the University community for their own gain.
As students of the University, we agree to abide by a code that exists separately from Virginia law. Landlords are not members of the Community of Trust, which ultimately precludes them from reporting their tenants for honor offenses. A dispute between a tenant and a landlord over rent charges is a matter for a civil court. Such courts are better suited to handle these matters because they lie outside the University community, and because the Honor Committee does not have the expertise necessary to deal with the complex legal questions of lease agreements.
Not paying rent cannot necessarily be categorized as theft without consideration of all the circumstances of the relationship between the landlord and the tenant. If a landlord has not provided vital services to the tenant, such as heat or plumbing repair, for example, the tenant’s refusal to pay rent could be justified.
The Honor Committee has customarily served as a middle-man for debt cases, sending letters to students urging them to pay the debts. But as Hine said, this practice presumes a student is guilty of theft before any investigation happens, which corrupts the principles of justice and fairness within Honor’s proceedings.
The Honor Committee has made it a goal to expand the principles of honor to reach a wider range of community members. But when Honor’s reach extends outside the community, the result could be self-undermining. Honor does not exist for the benefit of business; it exists for the benefit of the University and the students who owe a duty of honest conduct to their community. Such a duty does not have a price.
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