An academic honor code that all Dartmouth students would abide by and protect is a most noble and idealistic concept. And like most noble and idealistic concepts, it isn't much more than that. Most people are well aware that the trust placed by the community on students is frequently breached without much importance being attached to the action. And yet we hesitate to refer to these incidents in public because we would like to hold on to that beautiful notion of a body of students abiding by a set of principles even when the threat of dishonest acts being exposed is largely absent.
The myth is too good to be broken. I've heard a lot of things at Dartmouth come under attack, but never the question of whether our system is doing a good job of ensuring that the academic honor principle is adhered to. The subject is taboo. Dartmouth students don't cheat. They are good, morally upright men and women of honor.
But these good, morally upright men and women stole my ID and used it to buy potato chips from the vending machines in Collis. These models of virtue have been found stealing bicycles, cheating on exams and breaking into dorm rooms. Forgive me if I suspect that there are those among my good, morally upright peers who decide to take an extra half hour or a prolonged peek into the textbook for one of their closed book, timed, take home exams.
The problem would not be too bad if cheating in academic affairs were restricted to those select few who are inclined toward dishonesty in other spheres. There are only a few of these. The fact is that most students have gone through a form of reasoning similar to the one described above and have made the conclusion that some of their fellow students have been dishonest. This permits them to be a little dishonest without feeling too bad, especially when they feel that everyone else has entertained a similar train of thought and are engaged in similar practices.
They would be at a disadvantage if they are going by the rules while everyone else is taking liberties. The reasoning assures them that it is only fair to cheat. In other words, in the absence of proctoring exams or by other means assuring the student population that a substantially large percentage of students are honest, there is a vicious cycle at work which will involve an extraordinarily large number of students in dishonest practices.
If Dartmouth as a community is convinced that students will adhere to a principle which they have sworn to abide by, even in the absence of external monitoring, then why not extend this concept to areas outside academic affairs? I propose the DBA Honor Principle: All members of the Dartmouth student community agree to truthfully and honestly state at the end of the term how much of their DBA has been used up; the validine office will from now on discontinue the practice of keeping track of student DBAs.
But this will never happen. Because now we are dealing with something as tangible as money, and its presence or absence makes itself felt. Much more than the presence or absence of an extra half hour on a fellow student's take home exam.
The main reason we feel free to let students monitor themselves in academic affairs, but feel obliged to monitor them everywhere else, is that we fail to rank dishonesty in academic affairs with dishonesty in more concrete areas. This is so because the presence of dishonesty in academic affairs is less acutely felt than in the other areas. We would never force students to leave their bikes unlocked on some honor principle which says Dartmouth students won't steal bikes.
Yet, this is precisely what we do everyday in academic affairs. We force people to leave their academic performance "unlocked" based on a promise that others won't tamper with it by increasing class averages or grading curves through having been dishonest.
The whole idea of letting students monitor themselves with regards to questions of integrity in academic affairs should be reconsidered. It does not necessarily have to be abandoned. An alternative would be to bring it more to the forefront of student perception. Currently, it is something that is vaguely at the back of many students' minds -- a principle that can be abandoned when convenient without too much pain involved.
People should be made conscious of its importance to the point that breaching its implicit trust would be a major step, not a minor one as it is now. In addition, steps should be taken to assure the community that most students do, in fact, adhere to the Honor Principle and that one is not among the disadvantaged minority if one chooses to abide by its guidelines.
After all, the Academic Honor Principle is a noble and idealistic concept. And any steps to make it work would be welcome.
