THE HONOR system at the University is a bad thing. But it seems to be a fact of University life that isn't about to pack up and go. For that reason, we ought to watch the Honor Committee like hawks to guarantee it doesn't muck up and make a bad thing worse.
The Committee is discussing a proposal that would allow students who admit guilt after a case has been initiated to be readmitted into the University after two semesters of suspension and a class in ethics. This is known as "informed retraction." If Committee members are wearing their thinking caps, they'll soundly reject this proposal and thereby deny students the opportunity to vote - and come to a dumb conclusion - on it.
But first: Why is the honor system a bad thing? That's pretty simple: It does the one thing an honor system shouldn't do. It rewards cheaters and converts honest students to cheaters while tangibly harming those that remain honest.
Let me explain. By establishing the notion of a "community of trust," a community in which professors have a greater propensity to give take-home and unproctored exams, the risk of detection falls. Equivalently, the "cost" of cheating drops and the returns to cheating are therefore higher. This induces even more non-cheaters to cheat. Those cheaters who secure high spots on class curves unfairly contribute to bunching in the curve which diminishes the chance that an honest student would get his grade bumped up. At the end of the day, the honor system perversely rewards cheating and punishes honesty. In an ideal world, we wouldn't have such a backward honor system at all - one that rewards cheating and punishes honesty.
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But the informed retraction intensifies the problems that already exist in honor. A year of suspension that is noted on the student's academic record for the duration of the absence, but which is deleted upon reentry, is essentially the equivalent of a year of vacation. Many students wish to go abroad, and being asked to leave the University community for a year is the perfect opportunity to take up an academic semester in another country. Essentially, if you are guilty and you admit it before the investigative panel stage, under this proposal, the University community would put its foot down and take a strong stand. It would ask you to take a peaceful yearlong walk in the park.
Good job, Committee Rep. Brian Winterhaller: By even offering up this proposal, you admit that you think that there are acts of academic dishonesty that are tolerable. They are only serious enough to request the guilty party take a year off to boogie-woogie. It's true that for some a year away is financially draining and is indeed no metaphorical walk in the park. Pat yourself on the back again: That means that the yearlong suspension is a gift for the rich and a punishment to poor defendants. And if wealth is correlated with race, which it is, this proposal could very well have a built-in racial bias. It might punish blacks and Hispanics more than it punishes whites and Asians.
But the point is that this proposal contributes to making cheating even more profitable. If a defendant plays his cards right, an act of academic dishonesty will at worst get him a big vacation which only makes the incentives to cheat much more attractive. Cheaters' profits to cheating rise and the same symptoms result. More people cheat, and as a result, honest students are punished even more readily.
Here's a general rule for the Committee if it wishes to improve the situation. Don't make it easier to cheat and more rewarding to trample over honest students. If the Committee takes up this project, it would be able to take the honor system in the right direction, and it could forget about this misguided and rash proposal that would obliterate any meaning the single sanction has.
It is a commonly held principle that punishments should be commensurate with the crime. And giving student juries a range of sanctions from which to choose is not a bad idea. But making the only other option a one-year suspension makes the choice the accused faces abundantly clear. Don't roll the dice. Take the year. This hardly can be expected to inspire trepidation at the prospect of cheating among students.
The proposal, as it stands, does nothing to make the punishment appropriate to the nature of the crime. It just perverts even more an already perverted system.
(Jeffrey Eisenberg is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at jeisenberg@cavalierdaily.com.)
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