Maximizing Student Participation in the Honor System

The practice of scholarship is based upon integrity towards oneself and one’s work. The Harvard College honor code should emphasize the commitment of students as individuals and as a group to pursuing their studies with integrity. With this emphasis, the honor system can aim not only to prevent or tame the most egregious cases of cheating but also to generate and uphold a high standard of trust in this academic atmosphere. The current honor code proposal does not call for enough student participation in the honor system: an improved proposal would include an honor board consisting of more than half college students and an explicit request for students to sign affirmations of integrity on their work.
If the honor code is to become as effective and community-based as possible, able to retain the faith and trust of undergraduates, it must stem in large part from the students ourselves. The planned honor board should be composed of a student majority: we, bound by and liable to be punished by the honor code, should guide its evolution and enforcement. If the honor code does not emerge from our commitment as a student body, it might devolve into another idiosyncratic, circumnavigable structure of the Harvard community.
An honor board comprised of mostly college students is an effective solution to the problem because it will increase undergraduate ownership over the honor code. We, currently immersed in the stresses of attending college, can realistically understand the struggles of our peers. As a member of my high school’s student-based honor council, I found that we were more meticulous in our dedication to fairness than a council of teachers would have been. We felt charged to uphold the standards of our community more so than just to adjudicate cases or carry out disciplinary action.
The honor code cannot devolve into a nominal or symbolic edifice. By choosing to explicitly lay out and codify this institution’s commitment to academic integrity, investing our unspoken rules of scholarship in a single document, the university runs the risk of watching such academic integrity wither if the honor code is not taken seriously. Student involvement in the honor system will uphold the value of the honor code to the Harvard student body.
Some students have expressed concerns about the “affirmation of integrity” that students might be required to sign on their work. These complaints make little sense. At worst, the requirement will burden students with a single extra sentence at the end of our written work. At best, the affirmations of integrity will provide a day-to-day structure for the honor code, reminding students of the rewards of turning in honorable work, rather than reserving invocation of the honor code for punitive situations.
If we create an honor code that is based largely on the input and commitment of students, we can more genuinely live in a community where our peers have explicitly devoted themselves to act with integrity. We will be able to engage with classmates who have promised before us and the university administration that they will respect the merit of our honest effort.  An honor code will provide us with added peace of mind and liberate us to produce our best scholarly work.