During Orientation this year, I was asked to participate in a program on the Academic Honor Code. As I sat on stage with thoughtful students and colleagues, each describing our perspectives and obligations to each other, I could not help wondering if we were, indeed, doing all that we could to promote academic integrity in our community. This issue has always been important to me I have been both a dean who has advised students accused of such violations and a faculty member who has accused students of a breach of ethics in my classes. In addition, there is some evidence that the incidences of student cheating are growing. Nationwide statistics suggest that as many as 74 percent of high school students and 80 percent of college students report having cheated at least once. So, given the timing of that presentation and the opportunity to write a piece for The Dartmouth, I could not resist proposing three changes in the way we handle potential violations of the Honor Code.
A student found responsible by the Committee on Standards or by their own admission of violating the Honor Code must participate in an educational experience involving a faculty member of their choice. We are an educational institution, and as such should enable students to learn from their mistakes. Imagine a student, having been found responsible for plagiarism, sitting with a member of the faculty to discuss what happened, what it means to use someone else's words and how their writing habits will change in the future. Perhaps they would even read Posner's "The Little Book of Plagiarism" or Blum's "My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture" together, and talk about the responsibility that they both bear to honest scholarship. It is these kinds of conversations that Dartmouth should be known for, and there is no better way to invite someone who has made an error in judgment back to their commitment to honesty than to engage them in mutually beneficial dialogue.
A student who admits to a violation of the Honor Code should be eligible for immediate probation. As it stands now, there is little incentive for a student to admit a violation of the policy other than the hope that the adjudication placed upon them will be less for having admitted their error. Removing the fear of almost certain suspension allows students to start the process of redeeming themselves in their eyes and in the eyes of those who teach them right away. The added advantage of this proposal is that faculty members could, if they and the student chose, become part of the educational outcome. Currently, when students are suspended, that opportunity is lost.
Every student should be able to discuss and articulate their obligations under the Honor Code, but not until they have handed in their first assignment in their first-year writing course. Orientation programs about academic integrity are terrific, but until a student has been challenged with an actual writing assignment, test or research paper, the ideals of "a culture of integrity" are entirely hypothetical. Why not take advantage of a common experience (the first-year writing requirement, for example), to allow students to take ownership of this important value? Discussion of common scholarly values, and why it is that we even have an Honor Code in the first place, will certainly further students' understanding (and perhaps admiration) of why it is important to conduct independent academic work.
I might also suggest that we take the time to consider a public reminder of our commitment to this ideal. Why not ask students and faculty members to talk about their own commitment to independent work and post those statements in classrooms and meeting rooms across campus? All those who visited our campus would know that we not only hoped for such virtues to be instilled in those who studied here, but that a "culture of integrity" was shared by all and a part of our daily lives.
