IN 2001, physics professor Louis Bloomfield put the University's acclaimed community of trust to the test. He devised a computer program to detect plagiarism in term papers for his 100-level physics course. The result: 158 new cases before the Honor Committee. More recent studies have echoed Bloomfield's findings: Many University students cheat, and most go unpunished.
Before prospective students even enroll, they hear venerated accounts of the honor system from University guides. On tours, guides recount anecdotes of professors' leniency as examples of faculty-student trust. And, undeniably, the community of trust has become a foundation of the honor system and a hallmark of moral life at the University. Three quarters of students describe the honor code as "highly" or "very highly" effective. As a result, students expect an assumption of trust from professors and peers. The Honor Committee also emphasizes this trust. "The Committee has undertaken several efforts to ensure that the benefits of living in a community of trust are as widely publicized as possible," said Committee Chair Ben Cooper. Many students understand that such benefits would not work most places, but believe that student compliance to the University's honor code allows for unique privileges.
Unfortunately, the facts do not support these convictions. Even at Thomas Jefferson's prized institution, students still cheat. According to a 2005 survey at the University by Rutgers professor Don McCabe, sixteen percent of University students admitted to getting answers from someone who had taken a test. Almost a third had received "unpermitted help" on individual work. Roughly a third had plagiarized. These numbers resemble cheating rates at other schools with honor codes. When it comes to cheating, our University is not unique. Blind faith in the honor of students might create an artificial community of trust, but it shatters the hope of truly creating a fairer and more honorable environment.
The infrequency of guilty verdicts in honor trials reveals that cheating currently involves little risk at the University. In 2006, only ten students, out of over 20,000 graduate and undergraduate students, received guilty verdicts in honor trials. In 2005, just seventeen did. These verdicts do not even begin to reflect the number of students who admitted to cheating in the McCabe's study. This disparity shows potential cheaters that their actions will go unpunished and thereby encourages cheating.
In its 2006 report, the Honor Committee's ad hoc committee on the single sanction found that University students are "most likely" to cheat when working with other students in "unproctored" or "loosely proctored" environments but "very unlikely" to cheat while taking formal exams. Furthermore, students are "quite likely" to copy sentences from a text without citations, but rarely plagiarize an entire paper. Clearly, the results indicate that many students take risk into account when deciding whether or not to cheat.
Rather than assuming no student will cheat, professors and students must make cheating more difficult. Professors can forbid the removal of exams from the classroom, distribute multiple copies of exams, and prohibit students from looking at past term papers. They should carefully monitor test-takers, and check all pledged work for cheating. In a community that prizes trust between students and faculty, these policies might seem draconian. They disregard the traditional privileges and completely ignore students' pledges of integrity. However, they also add considerable risk to violating the honor code and, thereby, deter cheating.
Students must also make adjustments. The Honor Committee currently receives the vast majority of reports from professors and TAs. Students are in the best position to observe and hear about cheating. BUt when the uncomfortable decision arises, few choose to report these incidents. This attitude must change. "I think it is important for students to uphold the community of trust by not only holding themselves to its standards, but also holding others accountable," said Cooper. As Cooper suggests, a trustworthy environment does not just necessitate a verbal commitment to honor; at times, it requires action.
The reality of cheating on Grounds does not reflect a failure on the part of the University honor system. While not perfect, the entirely student-run process works impressively well. All schools face the problem of cheating. The University's emphasis on honor can only help. But stressing honor is different than pretending we already have a very honorable community. The current facade only reduces the risk of cheating by creating a false sense of trust. A community of trust is certainly an admirable goal for our University, but we must understand that it remains a goal. We are not there yet. And we have a long way to go.
Speeches, videos and booklets can sway hearts and minds, but they cannot sway every heart or every mind. If professors do not check papers for plagiarism, if they assign the flex exams without taking precautions, if they give identical tests to different sections, students will cheat. And when students fail to report their peers, they further encourage cheating. Rhetoric will not deter all potential cheaters. At some point, only the risk of consequences will be persuasive. In 2006, our honor system punished fewer than one in every thousand students. Unless the rest never violated the honor code, cheating currently paves a low-risk route to a higher GPA.
John Nelson's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at jnelson@cavalierdaily.com.
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