I WANT TO thank the Board of Visitors. After the story last week about how the Board may have suggested some of the changes in the honor system that we will be voting on this spring, my initial reaction was that of smug satisfaction.
I've always thought that the honor system could not exist in its current form for much longer, and that it would only be a matter of time before some outside force took matters into its own hands. Maybe the faculty would become enraged by the inability of the system to find obvious cheaters guilty. Maybe the administration would react to faculty demands. But at some point, I felt the students would be deemed unfit to govern, and the system would be taken away.
The Board's action shows that instead of 10 years down the road, the intervention may have come three years prior. The situation was also handled almost as well as it could have been. The secretive nature of the proceedings wasn't necessary. The honor system is a matter of public interest, and the Board's opinion should be welcome. They govern the University from a perspective students don't see, and they have valid concerns that should be addressed.
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In spite of the private documents, the Board is essentially giving a warning, making a small effort to usurp student self-governance, in hopes that the students will get off their butts and actually take hold of the system.
The Board's concerns over the system aren't in the same vein as the Honor System Review Commission's stated concerns. The Board is worried about legal liability within the system, while the Commission appears to be aiming to strengthen the system. Yet, their goals coincide on many points.
Consider the problem of student juries. The Board asked for the elimination of all student juries, presumably in an effort to standardize verdicts. The Commission also recommended the elimination of all student juries, because of the phenomena of "jury nullification" - juries finding a student not guilty in spite of overwhelming evidence.
Couch today's honor system in real world terms. Sure, no innocent students are being kicked out of the University, and that's a good thing. The flip side, however, is that many students who have blatantly violated the honor code are staying in school, taking a degree and enjoying the benefits of that degree without having lived up to their responsibilities. All this because student juries have trouble administering punishment. A real world example would be scores of burglars being allowed to stay out of jail because juries felt bad about putting them away.
The students have been given an opportunity to fix the system on their own volition. They should not let it pass them by.
In meetings regarding the proposed changes to the system, students have consistently expressed reluctance toward the proposals. This opposition apparently is seated in some fear that some poor student may be framed by a villainous foe in a class, and be expelled from the University by a psychotic, conviction driven Honor Committee.
If students watched the system, they would see that the Committee itself is made up of students - in some cases, students who have had little experience within the system. They would see the numerous ways in which innocent students are weeded out of the system, almost always before they get to trial. They would see a system that can say with absolute confidence that no innocent student has been kicked out of the University as far back as anyone can remember.
Student observers would also see a system that often lets guilty students get away with offenses. Anyone who has taken high school government has heard of legitimacy, which our honor system presently lacks. If too many guilty students evade punishment, the entire community considers the system a joke. That's what we see now.
The Board saw this three years ago. They saw a system that had considerable flaws and needed to be fixed. But they let the students handle it.
If students want to maintain the principle of student self-governance surrounding honor, they need to govern. They need to take the proposals put forward by the Honor Committee seriously, and pass them. They need to take the stance that lying, cheating and stealing cannot be tolerated at this school.
If we don't, we will say to the entire University that we no longer believe in the honor code. We will say we are willing to tolerate academic dishonesty. We will sacrifice one of our University's most time honored traditions for the sake of a few deceitful students.
My guess is that the Board will take over from there.
(Brian Haluska's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at bjh5g@virginia.edu)
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