STEVE Gilday is a victim on several levels. First, he is a victim of his own poor judgment, which led him to falsify an academic document (albeit not for the purpose of cheating) and then to lie about it under pressure from a professor. Although he apologized for doing so and admitted his guilt a mere two hours later, a jury of his peers decided at Sunday's open honor trial that this latter action merited a verdict of guilty, and Gilday now faces expulsion under the single sanction.
But beyond his own lack of common sense, Gilday should be able to point to another culprit equally responsible for his misfortune: the all-or-nothing sentencing procedures of the honor system. Gilday was certainly guilty of the lying he was accused of, even if the commission was more an error of judgment than a malicious breach of the community of trust. But his punishment did not match his crime, and as we probe this rare glimpse into the inner workings of the honor system, we must recognize that the system which meted out that punishment is not capable of preserving this University's honor.
Gilday was charged with both cheating on an exam he had submitted for a reassessment and lying about the incident. The story was long and convoluted, but the jury determined that the changes he had made to his test, which constituted making an exact copy of the final page that had been damaged, did not amount to convictable cheating. The crime he was found guilty of committing was falsely telling his professor that the exam he handed in was the original copy when questioned. In the e-mail he sent to his professor soon afterwards, which was included in the trial's official evidence packet, Gilday said he intended to "set the record straight once and for all" and make amends for his "incredibly stupid and dishonest act."
Gilday's defense against the charge of lying was that while he was guilty, his confession was offered "in the spirit of a conscientious retraction," as said during his trial. Thinking that the matter would be resolved among only himself, his professor and his teaching assistant, he did not file an official conscientious retraction with the Committee. In an interview, Honor Vice Chair for Services Trevor McFadden, who also chaired Sunday's trial, said that a conscientious retraction must be filed "before the student has reason to believe that he has come under suspicion." If this and other requirements are met, the conscientious retraction can serve as a student's full defense at trial. McFadden explained that "a conscientious retraction is not a get-out-of-jail-free card" but, rather, a way to "re-establish your integrity and your honor."
These sentiments are certainly admirable, but the idea that self-protection doesn't enter into the mental calculus of a student considering filing a retraction is naïve. Students who have made an honest mistake that can be clearly proven, as Gilday did, should be able to protect themselves by coming forward. At the trial, his defense echoed this argument. He argued that in light of his prompt apology, his behavior could be tolerated by the community of trust and that while he deserved some punishment, he did not deserve expulsion.
McFadden explained that after voting on act and intent, the jury votes on the incident's seriousness, and at this phase they "consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances," such as Gilday's apology. But considering that their only options are either to expel the student or to let him go free of punishment, such circumstances seem to have either too much or too little effect on the outcome of a trial. In this case, the mitigating circumstances were not enough to save Gilday, whereas in the open honor trial held last semester, they were enough to let two students who were clearly guilty of some level of collaboration completely off the hook.
This open trial laid bare the poverty of the logic behind the single sanction. Whatever its deterrent effects are or its contribution to an amorphous sense of "honor," the sanction is an unwarranted blemish on what I observed to be an otherwise extraordinarily well-run and fair trial process. The loose parliamentary structure of the proceedings gave the jury ample opportunity to determine the facts of the case, but such information is wasted because it can only lead them to two final conclusions: Expel or do nothing. A gradient of punishments, even of severe punishments, would be a far fairer and more effective way to ensure that the truly guilty are punished and the only slightly guilty are not disciplined too harshly. As Gilday's case has illustrated all too well, the circumstances surrounding a seemingly simple act of lying, cheating or stealing are seldom black or white, and the sentences we use to punish those actions certainly should not be.
A.J. Kornblith's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at akornblith@cavalierdaily.com.
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