Today, the University Board of Elections will release the results of student elections for the next academic year, including who will become the next Honor Committee representatives. With this transition in leadership, based on our conversations with candidates during endorsement interviews, Honor will likely take a stronger role in broader conversations happening around Grounds, aiming to serve as the collective moral compass of our school. We encourage the new Committee, instead, to first focus on strengthening its response to the moral precepts within its purview — lying, cheating and stealing.
Many candidates who interviewed with us prior to elections spoke of unconventional ways of promoting the ideal of the “community of trust” — a worthy goal. The challenge, they said, was in reaching out to students who are otherwise apathetic to the honor system. For many, the way to reach out to apathetic students is by inserting “honor” into other conversations — such as the larger discussion of sexual assault, or other moral issues.
Undeniably, the ideals that fall under the umbrella of the community of trust extend far beyond lying, cheating and stealing, and Honor may have a place in conversations outside that punitive domain. But the time for Honor to take on that role has not yet come. The students within Honor may be ready for Honor to have that role, since they already believe in the ideals Honor promotes and support a University-wide moral code. But for students who are apathetic to the moral code espoused by Honor or who are unpersuaded that the current system is effective or fair, Honor taking on a wider role will not diminish their apathy — nor will it promote a better community of trust.
Instead, new Committee representatives must first address ongoing criticisms of the internal system. These include the spotlighting of minority and international students and possible dimming of non-minority students in reporting rates, the relative lack of diversity in Honor (though this year’s support officer class was much more diverse than past ones) and inconsistent trial outcomes, among many others. Honor’s role is adjudicative in nature, and if it is not successfully adjudicating cases because of disproportionate reporting, jury nullification or other reasons, the Committee and student body are not ready for Honor to expand its vision beyond this adjudicative role.
If representatives hope for Honor to be the moral compass of the student body — no easy feat — they must first prove that their system can successfully handle the three tenets in its domain, which it currently does not. It has made significant improvements, of which the incorporation of the Informed Retraction is one. But there are many other improvements for Honor to make. Especially with the ongoing conversation surrounding the question of a multi-sanction system, Honor has much more to address before it can promote ideals greater than preventing lying, cheating and stealing.
It is ambitious to suggest that one system could singlehandedly define and uphold the moral standards of our school. In order to do this, Honor must address its internal problems and, perhaps most importantly, be more representative of the student body, since currently Honor consists mostly of students of the same background and ideology about what the moral code and role of Honor should be. Once Honor has successfully addressed these major issues, it may be able to make the jump to focusing on external moral questions. But that end would be better served by future Committees, and not this upcoming one. For this term, our new representatives would be wise to focus on existing issues — or risk alienating disenchanted students even more.
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