"ON MY honor as a student, I have neither given nor received aid on this assignment or exam." This simple pledge should be quite familiar to all students, if for no other reason than the fact that it is posted in nearly every academic room in the University. The pledge is supposed to embody the concept of academic integrity, and by affixing it to nearly everything they hand in, students are supposed to have a constant reminder before their eyes of the oath to which they swore when they first came here at students.
In theory, this pledge is a wonderful idea, but like so many other components of the honor system, what began as a legitimate commitment to honor back in the 1840s has degenerated into a hollow, mechanical shell of its former self and become, for most, little more than a formality. If we are serious about giving new life to our dilapidated code of honor, we should begin down that path by reconstituting the one component of that system that students see every day: the pledge.
The first topic to address concerning the pledge is what it is not and should not be. By signing their applications, students formally bound themselves to the honor code. This commitment is always in effect.
However, contrary to prevailing thought, students are not required by the honor system to pledge every major assignment or exam they hand in. Nowhere in the Honor constitution or any University academic guideline is there such a rule, and as such the decision to pledge or not to pledge is, in theory, entirely up to the student.
This becomes more complicated, however, when professors take it upon themselves to enforce this "rule" and inform students that their work will not even be considered unless they sign the pledge. This is a scenario often repeated as professors sometimes wait until the last possible moment to remind students that they require the pledge, and thus students spend the last few precious seconds of their exams scribbling it out or hurriedly jot it down on the paper they've been working on for the last 12 hours as they stand in line to turn it in. For students who have spent the last few days worrying about their GPA, this untimely reminder that they are on their honor amounts to an empty formalism and a nuisance. This is exacerbated when professors decide to go to somewhat extreme lengths to perform their supposed enforcement duties. College third year Neil Hodges said that he had lost points on an exam for misspelling the word "received" in the pledge, and other examples aren't hard to find. Even if such absurdities are not widespread, stories of them are, and they only add to student ambivalence over the pledge.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are professors and teaching assistants who accord the honor system such minimal attention they do not even bother to remind students to pledge their honor commitment. The causes for this lack of faith are many and are indicative of larger issues in the system, but the only point that must be made here is that professor frustration has a potent impact on students' direct experiences with honor.
The key to solving these multiple disturbing tendencies among both students and faculty is a reevaluation of the role of the pledge in maintaining academic integrity.
To do this, we must take a hard look at the difference between the honor code and the rule against cheating. The two overlap but they are not congruent. The University, like every academic institution, prohibits cheating, and professors are free to take actions they deem appropriate should they catch violations of this rule.Concurrently, there exists the student honor code, which holds every student to be an honest and decent human being and promote and uphold a community of trust which is lost when the honor code is distilled to a simple ban on lying, cheating and stealing.
The pledge plays a very important and specific role in this system. It serves as an opportunity for students to reaffirm their commitment to academic integrity and thus to the honor code. However, the entire concept collapses if students pledge only because their professors insist upon it since the moral tug on the student's mind that forms the heart of the honor system will have been circumvented. Thus professors should confine themselves to reminding students of their commitments rather than trying to enforce honor as a statutory rule, because at the end of the day students' consciences will form a far greater safeguard to our community of trust than any penalty or sanction ever could.
A.J. Kornblith's column appears Mondays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at akornblith@cavalierdaily.com.
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