What is the point of an honor code?
Is the point of an honor code for an institution to indicate its adherence to norms and principles? Did someone doubt the institution’s adherence? Why would anyone, especially the Academic Standards Committee, doubt the institution's honor?
If the point of an honor code is reaffirmation of an institution’s preferring virtues to vices, wouldn’t endorsement of healthy food and sensible diet do students more good than coming out in favor of honor?
Is the point of an honor code largely symbolism? Does one espouse an honor code to posture in favor of virtue – despite the fact that the existence or non-existence of the honor code says nothing about the advocate’s possession of any virtues? Given psychological transference, why shouldn’t we suppose that the faculty most eager to denounce vices are those most familiar with vicious practices? Other than their own experiences as undergraduates, whence do faculty derive their suspicions?
Is the point of an hour code to stem some upsurge in dishonor? If so, exactly what is the theory behind the panacea? Are we to suppose that deviance is increasing because deviants are ignorant of the views of faculty and administrators regarding honor or cheating?
If more than symbolic, an honor code must spell out standards for deviants. Does anyone who has read "The Integrity Principle" or the standards to which students are held imagine that either or both make explicit any standards?
I have students read "The Integrity Principle" and the standards for student conduct each year in Politics and Government 316 -- so students may see how much due process and how many rights they surrendered by attending a private school and especially this private school. The students always conclude that the standards basically say, "If Student Affairs wants to nail you, they always will find a pretext." Last time around, a philosophy major asked whether anyone in the room purported even to understand "The Integrity Principle." He was reassured when no one could say what the author(s) of "The Integrity Principle" might have meant to argue.
In short, students find the standards applicable to students to be so elastic as to be ex post facto laws and "The Integrity Principle" to be incoherent mush. Other than that, the standards of our incipient "Honor Code" are quite explicit.
The content of the NEW! IMPROVED! Honor Code is so nebulous that the Academic Standards Committee incorporated them by citation
"I am a member of the community of the University of Puget Sound, which is dedicated to developing its members’ academic abilities and personal integrity. I accept the responsibilities of my membership in this community and acknowledge that the purpose of this community demands that I conduct myself in accordance with Puget Sound’s policies of Academic and Student Integrity. As a student at the University of Puget Sound, I hereby pledge to conduct myself responsibly and honorably in my academic activities, to be fair, civil, and honest with all members of the Puget Sound community, and to respect their safety, rights, privileges, and property."
How nice to have that all cleared up!
Passing an honor code is like eating a worm. It does little good. It does little harm. It keeps faculty and committees busy. It provides purpose to the aimless and empty. It lets trustees feel useful.
6 comments:
The alleged requirement to be "honest" with all members of the community doesn't take into account power-relationships. A student may not want to, and should not feel compelled to, offer an honest opinion about a professor's tie. An un-tenured colleague may need to balance the "vice" of a trivial lie (expressed to a tenured colleague in passing) against the "virtue" of putting food on the table for her or his family. Perhaps there should be an Honor Code 1.2 for the powerful. As far as I know, students were not, for example, consulted about this honor code, aside from the one or two who sit on the Academic Standards Committee. Nor, indeed, was the faculty surveyed systematically and honestly about it. The Senate should reopen this case and have a full, civil, honest, and honorable discussion of the Honor Code.
Nebulous as the honor code may seem, the punishment for its violation is tangible, salient, and life changing for students.
To the extent that the honor pledge resembles a loyalty oath, I agree with you.
To the extent that having students agree with their own voices to be good citizens commits them to something (regardless of their subsequent behavior), I disagree with you.
I don’t see much harm in the committee’s decisions, so I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree with you.
While the loudest proponents of a particular set of virtues may be their most egregious defilers, that does not vitiate the virtues themselves. I guess on transference, I disagree with you more than agree.
The contention with which I most disagree in your posting is that Student Affairs is engaged in an ongoing game of “gotcha.” Student Affairs sometimes get it wrong, sometimes get stuck in regulatory muck, and otherwise display the feet of clay with which we are all equipped. But their principal objective really is to create a civil community. Any libertarian can point out their failures. But most libertarians I know want the civil society without the sweat required to mediate it. So I defend Student Affairs without defending their errors.
Muser makes an excellent point about the etiology of this honor code. Over these last years Faculty Senate committees have become more and more latent in their proposals and designs. The senators must get better at slowing down ventures foisted by committee insiders on an apparently napping Senate.
Muser's other point is even more important. How about honor among the faculty, especially those faculty who invoke civility every time they are exposed as intellectually empty?
Anonymous gently chides me for claiming that the honor and integrity codes are like eating worms -- largely inconsequent. She or he is correct. Students can be damaged for violations that they could not have guessed would be said to be covered by either.
My experience is that most students have little awareness of the integrity code or the honor code. That widespread ignorance MIGHT justify the Academic Standards Committee in publicizing honor and integrity policies but ONLY IF the ASC followed through. If the ASC trumpets integrity or honor, the ASC should define its terms.
Instead, the ASC blathers and the trustees enshrine the blather as policy. Unsuspecting students then are said to have been forewarned by policies of which they knew nothing. Which leads one to ask what "honor" or "integrity" might mean to the trustees or to the mebers of the ASC.
My reader and I agree on "The Honor Code" [THC] as equivalent to a loyalty oath or The Pledge of Allegiance. To that extent, we each see THC as shibboleth.
I do not see much point in "... having students agree with their own voices to be good citizens ..." when the students do not know what they are saying or agreeing to. Why not make such shibboleths truly academic -- have the students matriculate by reciting THC in Latin?
Both my correspondent and I agree that THC does little good or harm, although an anonymous interlocutor is correct that THC may do students much harm.
If my anonymous dissenter truly believes that it matters not for principles if their "... loudest proponents ... be their most egregious defilers, ..." he or she should follow the counsel of a former advisee and read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE anew. Few undergraduates are so daft that they cannot discover that they will be expected to practice what the professor merely preaches. [After all, we are called professors, not practicers.]
I accept the rebuke regarding Student Affairs. Let's restrict ourselves to what my students in P&G 316 have said and meant. Students object to The Integrity Code because "The Integrity Principle" is so vague and THC is so elastic that even the few students who know about either cannot anticipate applications.
I attribute no motives to the Students Affairs personnel. Indeed, I doubt that I know anything about most of them.
What I do know about faculty and staff concerning The Integrity Code [and thus, by transitivity, THC] is that if they never did anything that could have been said to violate either, they have yet to justify the labor of their mothers.
For a Bombay Blue Sapphire martini with bittered orange peel, I should happily regale anyone with my violations of either or both policies.
Will some member of the Academic Standards Committee reciprocate my candor by admitting that "The Honor Code" is not a code at all? Does the committee's usage of "code" reflect ignorance or euphemism? Indeed, is such shady usage fair, honorable, or civil?
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