In 1971, a University student who stole cans of soda from a vending machine was charged with an honor offense, found guilty, and asked to leave the University. Public outcry led the Honor Committee to nullify the verdict the next day. Since then, students at the University have been engaged in a debate over the single sanction system, which continued Wednesday evening at the Honor Committee and Sustained Dialogue’s discussion.
Proponents of the single sanction argue it creates and preserves an ideal Community of Trust, in which people are deterred from lying, cheating and stealing because they believe these acts are intolerable in this community. And they know that a conviction for these violations would result in expulsion. Fear of expulsion could be a powerful deterrent, but an honor system should foster trust, not anxiety. As much as the single sanction is supposed to deter lying, cheating and stealing, it also deters student and faculty buy-in. Members of the community feel honor offenses can fall on a scale of severity, but the single-sanction cannot be a proportional response to offenses that fall on the lower end.
The jury in an Honor trial has the power to decide whether a student is guilty on the basis of act, knowledge and significance. Committee Chair Nicholas Hine said in his experience almost no trials end with a verdict of not guilty on the basis of significance. It is possible that many students would not report an honor offense in the first place, if they think those offenses are not significant enough to warrant expulsion. We could trust this informal system of deciding the significance of an act before it is even reported, or we could consider the possibility that the single sanction encourages potential reporters to categorize acts as insignificant too liberally.
Even if the single sanction did not impact reporting, another flaw is that it does not allow for nuances in the severity of student offenses. Sending your iClicker to lecture with a friend would get the same punishment as handing in a final paper which was completely copied from the Internet. It is possible that one jury could find the iClicker offense insignificant and impose no punishment, while a different jury could expel a student who committed the same offense. In a multiple-sanction system, the outcomes could move from two extreme ends toward a more tempered middle ground. Juries may never be completely consistent with their verdicts, but a variety of punishments could lessen the disparity of sanctions for similar actions.
It is also possible a jury’s finding on whether an act was significant could be influenced by the single sanction. Jury members after their trials are asked to answer questionnaires about whether their decisions would have been different if there were no single sanction. Most answer no, but some say yes. Though students have to say they would be willing to apply the single sanction in order to sit on a jury, it seems as though the theory of applying it is easier than the practice.
There are acts which would not be deemed significant enough for expulsion, but that does not mean they deserve no punishment whatsoever. Some acts are severe enough to conclude we do not want the student in our community anymore, but there should be a middle ground in which discipline is warranted, but so is a second chance. As University students, we are constantly engaged in a learning process, and lapses in judgment are bound to occur. But these lapses do not necessarily indicate a deficiency of character which merits permanent removal from the community. There should be room within the system to rehabilitate those who are convicted of certain Honor offenses.
Though the Informed Retraction partially addresses the issue by offering the option of taking a one-year absence before a case goes to trial, once a student gets to the trial phase, there is no longer any option for rehabilitation. In certain cases, a student should be offered the chance to mend their ways and be integrated back into the community, as sanctioned by that community.
Developing a multiple-sanction system is the best way to preserve the principles of honor that the Committee aims to uphold. Though the ideal principles of Honor are important, the system delivers concrete punishments that have serious, tangible and far-reaching consequences. It is time for a change that will ground the system in pragmatism rather than ideology, so that it does not become obsolete.
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