The Other Side of Honor

The word “honor” describes a two-way relationship between an individual and his society. The individual commits to uphold a certain standard of conduct, and his society rewards this commitment with increased esteem and privileges. In short, an individual behaves honorably because he expects to be treated as such. Unfortunately, the Academic Integrity Committee’s current honor code draft is rather one-sided. It asks students to reaffirm their honor without granting them the privileges that honor entails. A better honor code would pair the current draft’s “affirmation of integrity” with increased student autonomy and self-governance. These measures would both improve student perceptions of the code and ensure a greater reduction in academic dishonesty than affirmations alone.
According to a 1985 study by Brian Melendez, traditional honor codes rely on four mechanisms. Students sign statements of integrity on each major assignment and take responsibility to report suspected cases of dishonesty; in return they receive the privilege of taking unproctored exams and serving on student-dominated judiciaries. Donald McCabe and Linda Trevino’s 1993 study suggests that honor codes are successful in part because they shift responsibility to maintain community standards from faculty and administrators to students. The authors found that students at schools with honors codes were significantly less likely to engage in academic dishonesty than students at schools without them. Meanwhile, a 2002 follow-up revealed that “modified” honor codes like the one currently proposed were less successful in reducing dishonesty than traditional ones.
The proposed inclusion of some students on an honor board is a step in the right direction, but this proposal does not go far enough. While Princeton’s Honor Committee is composed entirely of students, Harvard’s current proposal allots half of the seats to faculty and administration. The draft suggests that all student positions will be unelected, furthering the likelihood that student voices will be drowned out by the faculty and administration. At the very least, the honor code should be revised to amplify the student voice on this issue.
Yet, even these reforms would not raise the current draft to its full potential. The most successful honor codes recognize that the social and academic are tightly intertwined. The California Institute of Technology’s requirement that “no member of the Caltech community…take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community,” is exemplary of this commitment to community-wide ethics. As the school’s honor code handbook explains, “the Honor System is not an administrative creation intended to … marginally decrease the chance of student cheating. A fundamental aspect of the Honor System is that the responsibility students display in their conduct must be met by trust from others.”
Concurrent with Caltech’s broad based commitment to ethics is an expansion in student self-governance. In addition to an all-student Board of Control that adjudicates cases of academic dishonesty, the school is also governed by a student-dominated Conduct Review Committee, which adjudicates virtually all other violations of the Honor System. The adoption of similar institutions at Harvard would bring about more holistic cultural changes than the current proposal, with increased student engagement.
Harvard students should take advantage of the current moment between the code’s proposal and implementation to demand the increased privileges and responsibilities of a true honor code. If students are to reaffirm their commitment to academic integrity, they deserve the respect that such affirmations entail. Whether in the classroom or in the broader community, Harvard students are ready to take greater responsibility for their self-governance. Without these reforms, the cultural shifts the Academic Integrity Committee desires are unlikely to come about.