IF ONE phrase is to be removed from the University's jargon, it ought to be "community of trust." It is almost always invoked to describe the importance of defending the Honor Committee's current rules, which we are told are vital to maintain lest we betray the legacy of Mr. Jefferson. Unfortunately, there never has been a time when we could describe the University community as possessing abundant, meaningful "trust." I doubt that ever will be the case so long as the single sanction continues to guarantee that honor offenses only are punished with expulsion.
Opposition to the "community of trust" is grounded foremost in my desire not to give students an unrealistic expectation of our University community. I feel terrible for idealistic first years who heard so much about our "community of trust," believed it to be as true as it was noble and then promptly had their things stolen from a library. Sure, some of these thefts must be the work of non-students. Yet the fact remains that the Committee has dismissed students in the past who were caught stealing, showing that this offense is not unknown among our kind. Go ahead and ask some friends if they ever have had something stolen from them while at the University - odds are you have a couple, who probably never suspected this from our esteemed community. Having an ideal of a normative "community of trust" to work toward is admirable, but our progression toward that ideal currently involves perhaps more stumbling than necessary.
It would be nice to attribute the presence of theft to the decayed morals of our postmodern era and move on, but theft has been a problem at the University for decades. In 1963, a student wrote a letter to The Cavalier Daily explaining his frustration after his items vanished from a coat rack in Newcomb Hall. "The matter [of theft] is universally shrugged off as hopeless," he wrote, "...Let us after years of illusion realize the hypocrisy inherent in a childish faith in these ideals." Of course, the existence of the Honor Committee is an implicit recognition that theft exists. But that breaches of honor long have been "shrugged off as hopeless" seems to indicate that our age-old method for chasing a "community of trust" needs some reconsideration.
The ideal "trust" we aim for stands in sharp contrast to the very real suspicion with which our students are viewed by many. Consider Student Council's program to distribute one free bottle of water to students at football games. At this year's first game against William & Mary, students could present their University IDs and receive a bottle after having their hands marked with a permanent marker. It is a small matter, but if the Council thought students could be trusted not to scam one another out of bottled water, wouldn't presenting the ID alone suffice?
There have been anti-dishonesty measures in classrooms, as well. I have heard teaching assistants announce that anyone who wishes to use the restroom during an exam needs to raise his hand and wait to be escorted by a TA. Can't you just feel the trust? Many parties suspect that a threatening number of dishonorable knaves live among the student body. It is sad to say their lack of trust seems justified.
What is there to do? The Honor Committee has had its hands full this semester attacking The Cavalier Daily for a single sentence. I hope addressing real problems with statistical support is next on the agenda. According to Honor's 2008 survey of the student body, 85 percent of students who witnessed an honor offense said they did not report it. Honor's educational staff deserves credit - the student body knows what constitutes an offense. They simply refuse to act on that knowledge. Why?
Sixty-two percent of respondents said they would be deterred from reporting an offense because they are uneasy about the idea of causing another student's dismissal. Fifty-nine percent also said they would be deterred by the offense's seriousness - or more likely, lack thereof.
Put simply, many students will not report lying, cheating, or stealing at least in part because they do not want to see a situation as ridiculous as the case from 1971 in which a first-year student was given the single sanction - a verdict later nullified - for stealing a can of soda. Considering that the aforementioned 2008 survey found 28 percent of students believed they had witnessed an offense, we have a serious issue if only a fraction of those are being reported. If more offenses were reported, one can imagine that fewer offenses would occur. If the single sanction were removed, the survey data leads one to believe honor would see more reports. Considering both of these facts at once, it appears we could have a vastly more efficient honor system given the option of multiple sanctions.
Defenders of the single sanction say there can be "no degrees of honor." If they truly believe this, then I hope they take a stand against Honor's criterion of 'significance' and lobby to expel disgraced soda thieves. Alternatively, Honor can devise responses somewhat proportional to offenses. For those of us living in reality, a sanction other than expulsion would remove a serious hindrance from the process and help us take steps toward living in a community where we can more reasonably trust our fellow students.
Sam Carrigan's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at s.carrigan@cavalierdaily.com.
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