Many University community members believe the 1840 murder of Law Prof. John A.G. Davis was the catalyst that led students to create the honor pledge two years after that incident. Coy Barefoot, director of alumni relations and communications, said he has found evidence to the contrary. Barefoot's research, published in the latest edition of the University of Virginia magazine, claims the story relating Davis' murder and the creation of the honor pledge is simply a myth. Historic documents, including faculty meeting minutes and student diaries and letters, tell a different tale, Barefoot said.
Faculty attempted to deter cheating on exams in 1841 by prohibiting students from bringing any materials including blank or printed books and notes to an exam. Despite this attempt, however, faculty members continued to receive many reports of cheating, Barefoot said. At a historical July 4 faculty meeting in 1842, according to Barefoot's research, faculty voted students should be required to attach a pledge to their exams stating that on their honor they did not receive or give any type of assistance, thus forming the foundation of the present honor system. The 1842 pledge read: "I, A.B., do hereby certify that I have derived no assistance during the time of this examination from any sources whatever, whether oral, written or in print in giving the above answers."
Barefoot maintained that the only connection between the murder and the pledge is that the professor who proposed the pledge, Henry St. George Tucker, replaced Davis after he was murdered. Not one word in the historical documents indicates that Davis' death two years earlier had anything to do with the creation of the pledge, Barefoot noted.
"There is a connection," Barefoot said. "But it's not the way everyone thinks. The faculty created the honor pledge because students were cheating and it proved to be an effective tool to limit that."
According to Barefoot's research, the tale of Davis' murder is not the first connected with the creation of the honor system. In 1904, William M. Thornton, the first Engineering School dean, argued that the system began with Thomas Jefferson and claimed Jefferson had led an honorable life, encouraging students to follow his example. Additionally, Barefoot said, during the 1910s, it was widely believed that the origin of the University's honor system was derived from the College of William & Mary's matriculation pledge. It was not until 1950 that the story most commonly heard today was regularly told? when in a speech to first-year students, Law Prof. T. Munford Boyd proposed a historical link between Davis' murder and the honor pledge.
Explaining the history behind the pledge, the Honor Committee's Web site states that two years after the murder, "in an effort to ease tension between students and faculty," Tucker proposed the pledge, a claim Barefoot deemed inaccurate per his latest findings.
Honor Committee Chair Ben Cooper, however, does not fully accept Barefoot's discovery.
"I think it's debatable," Cooper said. "If you look at the timeline and look at what [Barefoot] said, it's not clear whether or not the shooting was an impetus."
He added that the Committee has never claimed that Davis' murder directly caused the creation of the honor pledge.
Barefoot continued to question the accepted theory, noting that Philip Alexander Bruce, who published a series of University-related books in 1920, did not even mention Davis' murder in his explanation of the honor pledge's history.
Barefoot's research, however, goes further than dispelling certain myths; he said it also raises questions regarding whether the honor system has been entirely student-run since its conception. It was actually an all-faculty committee, Barefoot said, that held the first trial in 1851, which resulted in the expulsion of a Medical School student charged with cheating. After the Civil War, as the pledge began to evolve into the honor code of that time, students began exercising further control of honor, according to Barefoot's research.
"This code of conduct became very important," Barefoot said. "It just was not in the classroom anymore."
Barefoot said it was not until 1912 that a student -- Churchill Humphrey -- presented the idea of a permanent Honor Committee solely comprised of the University's schools' student presidents, laying the foundation for today's honor system.
The students "fully realized their ownership over the honor system when they created the standing committee," Barefoot said. "You could argue that it was student-run but it wasn't realized." Barefoot, then, called into question just how long the Honor Committee has been completely student-run.
Former Committee Chair Carey Mignerey said his understanding of honor's history is largely in line with Barefoot's, but also noted that the term "student-run" can have various interpretations. Even when students are not directly involved in the system, it can still be "student-run," Mignerey said.
"It's hard to say that the system is or is not student-run," Mignerey said. "I think the tradition of students taking accountability has reached back 166 years ... from that perception, the students [have been] the fundamental decision makers."
Even if Barefoot's assertion -- that Davis' murder had nothing to do with the creation of the honor pledge -- is true, it may be more difficult to argue that it has no connection to the honor code or system, other sources said.
University Guide Service Chair Emily Whalen said the murder, although not necessarily a catalyst, did indeed play some role in the creation of the honor system.
"If the murder hadn't happened, when faculty presented idea of honor code, students would have been resistant to it," Whalen said, noting there was already a great deal of tension between students and faculty at the time. "The murder set the scene. It didn't inspire the code."
Whalen noted that when the code was created, it was not just a response to the murder but also centered on gentlemanly behavior that dealt with students gambling or swearing in front of women. As the University diversified, however, it became the code that is known today: one where students vow not to lie, cheat and steal, she said.
While one cannot disregard the significance of the shooting, Davis' murder was not the first instance of students misbehaving, University Guide Edward Bennet said. One professor was dragged on the Lawn and horsewhipped, Bennet said. Calathumping -- or general rowdiness and misbehavior -- was not an unusual occurrence among students, Whalen added.
"Students didn't care about the University," Cooper similarly noted. "They were here to have fun. They cheated ... They were rowdy."
History Prof. Phyllis Leffler added that acts of violence were very common around Grounds. She said pistol shootings and fires were not rare events.
Leffler also said while historical documents may not contain any evidence directly linking the murder to the creation of the honor pledge, it also cannot be substantiated that the two events were unrelated.
"There were a bunch of things where students weren't creating an [environment] of academic learning," Leffler said. "If you made students involved being responsible for one another, it would have a beneficial effect across the board."
University Guide Historian Phi Trinh also said the murder perhaps indirectly caused the pledge's creation. Whether it did or not, though, Trinh stressed how difficult it is for anyone to understand the past.
"History is always being redefined," Trinh said. "What we see as truth today may not be truth in the future"
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