In light of the recent cheating scandal at Harvard University, the strength of collegiate honor principles throughout the country has been thrown into question, specifically at top-tier institutions. Compared to the academic honor codes of its peers, the College's Academic Honor Principle differs by allowing students to take unproctored exams and assuming academic integrity.
Harvard, which does not have an honor principle, is currently investigating more than 100 students suspected of cheating on a take-home exam for a government class last spring. Though some students and faculty members disagree about the effectiveness of Dartmouth's honor code, many said they approved of the system.
Dartmouth, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania are the only Ivy League institutions that base their academic integrity guidelines on trust. The College does not plan to reconsider its honor principle in light of Harvard's investigations, according to Director of Judicial Affairs Nathan Miller.
The College's policy, implemented in 1962, directs professors to assume that students do not plagiarize, cheat or collaborate without permission or turn in the same work for multiple classes unless there is reason to suspect otherwise.
The majority of the College's annual honor principle violations result from students' poor time management, rather than ignorance of the principle, Miller said.
Several students interviewed by The Dartmouth said they had never read the principle, though others said the principle is ingrained in campus culture.
"Every student is definitely thinking about it," Olivia Durr '13 said. "I don't think they know exactly what it means or the details of it, but I know all my friends have really taken it seriously."
Dartmouth's "notoriously wide" honor principle acknowledges that students can distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behavior, according to psychology professor John Pfister.
The principle's language avoids specifics so students can focus on its meaning, Pfister said.
Julian MacMillan '14 said that the principle's impacts on the College's academic climate are not uniformly positive. MacMillan cited instances in which students were afraid to collaborate on assignments for fear of violating the principle, which MacMillan said, can lead to a standoffish classroom atmosphere.
MacMillan also said that he began to appreciate the importance of collaboration after a government professor encouraged students to work together.
"I learned much more than I could have on my own that way," he said. "If that sort of approach was taken across the board, I think that students would be better off rather than trying to compete with each other to get ahead of the curve."
Math students, who can attend office hours and walk-in tutorials, are encouraged to collaborate while working on homework problems, according to math professor Scott Pauls.
"Baked into the Culture"
An honor principle's existence does not guarantee its success, according to Linda Trevino, a professor of organizational behavior and ethics at Pennsylvania State University who has researched the effectiveness of honor principles in higher education. "Whether and how much students buy into it, all of that is what matters," she said. "There are a lot of schools that have a code in name, but students scoff at it, or it's not practiced. It depends so much on whether it's baked into the culture."
Director of the Dartmouth Ethics Institute Aine Donovan said promulgation is the key component to the success of an honor principle, which she described as a commitment between students and a college.
"An honor code is a relationship, a relationship you have with a community," she said.
To Pfister, Dartmouth's principle is most effective when it fosters dialogue, and simply installing an honor principle will not lessen instances of cheating.
"Honor codes are not a Band-Aid," he said. "They're a long term discussion."
Orientation events and first-year residential education programming are examples of the College's increased dialogue about the principle, according to Pfister. The expanded conversation, however, has not resulted in fewer honor principle violations, Pfister, who sees one to two honor principle violations each year, said.
Miller said that between 20 and 30 honor principle violations occur each year.
Campus culture surrounding the honor code cannot be strengthened through administrative policy, according to Pauls.
"It has to arise organically in the student body," he said. "There's very little one can do that's top down. We can write as many policies as we'd like and give as many examples, but until it's incorporated, it's not going to do much."
The College should be more rigorous about requiring students who violate the honor principle to separate from the College, biology professor Roger Sloboda said. The standard consequence for honor principle violations is suspension, according to Miller.
"I think some kids take it really serious here, and [for] some kids it's just not even on their radar," Sloboda said.
The College could strengthen the principle by continually reminding students of it, Pfister said. Ways to accomplish this include posting the principle in lecture halls and requiring students to sign it at the beginning of a course.
Donovan recommended that professors reiterate the principle when they assign papers or distribute exams.
"People get lazy and forgetful and all sorts of things, and it's important to constantly bring up those issues," she said.
Cheating at the College
Major cheating scandals have occasionally affected Dartmouth over the years. In 2000, the College investigated 78 students nearly half of an introductory computer science course taught by a visiting professor for cheating on an assignment.
The professor, Rex Dwyer, told students that they could use any resource, including the Internet, to code a program but failed to restrict students' access to a solution on the course's webpage, according to Scot Drysdale, the computer science professor who hired Dwyer.
The College eventually dropped the case against the students because it could not determine which students intentionally cheated, Drysdale said.
Since then, the computer science department has tried to be increasingly explicit on what collaboration and resources are allowed, according to Drysdale.
"Part of the problem in the case was that the expectations were not clear and there were contradictory messages," he said. "People in some cases quite rightly misunderstood."
When Joseph Loftus '15 was trained to be a computer science section leader, he said professors emphasized the honor principle.
"I guess you always have to keep the honor code in the back of your mind," he said. "It helps guide your answer when you're trying to help students."
Clear Expectations
Several students said that professors should clarify their expectations regarding the honor principle, though Miller said that is not required.
"Even if a faculty member doesn't say one word about the honor principle, the honor principle still applies," Miller said. "It's part of your contract with the College."
Faculty guidance plays a role in student integrity, but some professors do not acknowledge this responsibility, Pfister said.
"When I hear faculty lament that we don't have a culture of integrity, I want to ask them, What have you done to not make it so?'" Pfister said. "What have you contributed?"
Though Drysdale said he explains how the principle applies to his course on the first day of class, he assumes that students hear about the honor principle for the first time during Orientation.
Biology professor Elizabeth Smith said she issues guidelines for individual assignments in her classes. For example, students can discuss data with lab partners, but when they write the lab reports, they must work individually and produce graphs separately.
Ambiguity about which resources students can use during projects and examinations can lead to tricky situations, government professor Michael Herron said.
To combat this, Herron eliminated the use of all calculators, including those with only basic functions, in his statistics course.
Peer Institutions
Harvard's College Committee on Academic Integrity has discussed implementing an honor principle similar to Dartmouth's, according to Terah Lyons, a Harvard junior who serves on the committee.
Lyons said that Dartmouth students should feel privileged to be trusted enough to take unproctored exams.
"If there's anything we can do to foster a community on campus of more genuine intellectualism, I think that's a really good thing," she said.
This fall, Lyons said each of her professors began the semester by detailing their expectations.
"The only thing that people almost unanimously thought after the cheating scandal was, They're really not telling us much about the collaboration policies, and we want to know more about them so we can avoid this ever happening again,'" she said. "I think that lack of knowledge is the problem for most students."
Princeton has an honor principle similar to Dartmouth's. The principle includes guidelines on acknowledgment of original work, tutoring and publication of course-related materials.
Princeton's Honor System was a student initiative, while Dartmouth's was adopted by way of a faculty vote. Princeton student involvement in creating the principle has encouraged most to take it seriously, according to Antonia Hyman, a Princeton senior and chair of the school's Honor Committee.
