[The Montana Professor 17.1, Fall 2006 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Daniel J. Taylor
Hiram A. Jones Professor and Chair of Classics
Lawrence University
Appleton, WI
taylord@lawrence.edu
The initials IHRTLUHC are pretty much permanently imprinted on the brain of each and every student who has matriculated at Lawrence University over the past four decades or so. The initials stand for "I hereby reaffirm the Lawrence University Honor Code," and they or the entire reaffirmation or a paraphrase thereof are required to be written by hand on every homework assignment, quiz, lab report, essay, exam, term paper, honors thesis, or anything else that will be factored into the final course grade. Moreover, the student must also add his or her signature to every reaffirmation. The honor code figures so prominently in our students' thinking that they sometimes reaffirm it on documents not requiring it. We faculty approve of such lapsus pennae, for they suggest that the code is constantly at work. After all, the honor code is intended to serve our students for the rest of their lives, or so some of us like to think.
The code itself is elegantly simple: "No Lawrence student will unfairly advance his or her own academic performance or in any way limit or impede the academic pursuits of other students of the Lawrence community." The actual wording has been revised slightly on two occasions (1970 and 1998) since its inception in the fall of 1962, but the gist has not. As Aeschylus puts it, "The words of truth are simple," and we agree. The academic life is certainly not a monastic existence, but it does hold its practitioners to a higher standard. Our Honor Code and the overall Honor System predicated upon it provide both students and faculty with extraordinary freedoms and conveniences and privileges, but they also impose considerable responsibility on us as well, especially upon the students who are in charge of the system. Yes, that's right; the Lawrence faculty have entrusted the administration of the Honor System to an Honor Council (q.v. infra) composed exclusively of students. That provision establishes a level of trust between faculty and students that is almost tangible, and it puts us in the forefront of institutions with honor codes. About 400 other colleges and universities operate with a more or less similar honor system, but those systems are almost invariably overseen by administrators and/or faculty. Not here. The students run the show, and they are proud to do so on behalf of the faculty. They also do an exceptional job. Here's how it all works.
Prospective students actually become acquainted with the Honor Code as they go through the process of learning about the college and applying for admission. The Honor Code is one of five major components in what we consider "the Lawrence difference," and our printed and online admissions literature therefore features it quite prominently; our admissions counselors likewise stress the Honor Code when speaking at admissions fairs, high schools, and with individual prospective students. So the Honor System in general and the Honor Code in particular are no surprise to incoming students; in fact, many students say that the Honor Code is one of the reasons why they chose to attend Lawrence in the first place. It's when they arrive on campus for Welcome Week, however, that the educational and informational blitzkrieg really begins.
Lawrence's signature course is Freshman Studies, a two-term course required of all new students. It's a course designed to acquaint students with the modes of inquiry characteristic of intellectual discourse at Lawrence, and it therefore emphasizes close reading, critical thinking, careful writing, and cogent discussion. Faculty and students together tackle seminal texts like Plato's Republic and Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; actors from London perform a Shakespearean play which the entire freshman class has read; and a major work of music and one of art complement the written texts. Students write papers of varying length and focus on almost each work studied in the course, which was originally designed back in the late forties by then president Nathan Marsh Pusey, who moved to the presidency of Harvard in 1952. Freshman Studies, unlike all other courses, actually begins during Welcome Week, and one of the first tasks undertaken is the signing of the Honor Pledge. Members of the Honor Council visit each section of Freshman Studies, review the Honor Code, explain how the Honor System works, and then have the students sign the Honor Pledge. "I hereby affirm that I understand and accept the responsibilities and stipulations of the Lawrence University Honor System." That pledge card is then filed away in the office of student academic services. The collective signing of the Honor Pledge in the Freshman Studies classroom is intended to serve as a symbolic act, a ritual if you will, that binds the students together in an act of communal significance. At this point, at least in theory, every student at Lawrence has affirmed his or her own personal commitment to the core value of the institution--academic integrity.
As the first written assignment or quiz of the fall term approaches, faculty reiterate the provisions of the Honor Code, and members of the Honor Council are invited into many other classes to review the system in general. The goal is to ensure that everyone is on the same page, and that means new faculty as well as new students, including transfers and international students. Few new members of the Lawrence community are fully prepared for the degree of freedom and openness that obtains here as a result of the Honor Code. Exams are rarely proctored, and take-home exams are common. Depending on what parameters are stated for any given exam, students may opt to take the exam in the privacy of their residence hall room, the quiet of the library, or the solitude of an empty classroom. During final exam week in the spring, savvy seniors often grab their exam, a couple of bluebooks, their iPod, and head for the shade of a maple tree on the green surrounding Main Hall. Indeed, Robert C. Buchanan, a 1962 graduate and a longtime member of the university's board of trustees, cannot imagine what finals would be like without the Honor Code and the operational ease that results.
It's not just exams that are different, however, for the Honor Code shapes our campus culture to a degree often noticed by outsiders. In the Commons, for example, not only are coats strewn all over the entrance foyer, but so too are notebooks, lab books, and study materials of all sorts. Likewise, in the library, empty carrels are often crammed with notes for term papers in progress, many of which are in plain sight. Science labs feature honors and independent study projects in various stages of completion scattered all about. No one thinks twice about leaving the most valuable of notes and study aids on a library table or an easy chair in the Union lounge or anywhere else on campus. Our Honor Code proscribes cheating in any way, shape, or form, but it also insists that we not "in any way limit or impede the academic pursuits of other students." So, thanks to the Honor Code, there's an openness here that, quite frankly, we pretty much take for granted but that visitors notice and comment upon.
Lawrence University is a nationally selective, private, undergraduate, liberal arts college with a professional Conservatory of Music. We currently enroll about 1450 students, and obviously they are pretty good students. Like our peer institutions, we seek and attract academically and musically talented young men and women of high character who manifest a superior promise for success in a challenging and rigorous intellectual environment. We faculty and our students work hard, but we also enjoy a dynamic campus life replete with myriads of extracurricular activities of all sorts. For some of us, it approaches the idyllic. Nonetheless and despite all our efforts to explain the stipulations and to extol the value of the Honor System, some of our students do not abide by the Honor Code. Violations do occur. Generally speaking, those violations fall into four broad categories: 1) giving or receiving aid during an exam or otherwise cheating on an exam, 2) outright plagiarism or failure to distinguish between one's own work and material from another source, 3) misrepresenting the type or amount of work performed (e.g., by fabricating lab reports or reading lists), and 4) misusing university resources such as library materials, conservatory resources, or computers. It is the joint responsibility of students and faculty "to report all potential honor code violations," but it is the Honor Council that acts as a judicial body when suspected violations of the Honor Code have been reported.
The Honor Council consists of ten students, and they are charged with full authority for administering the Lawrence University Honor System. A dean of student academic services acts as an ex officio, non-voting advisor and record-keeper, but otherwise no faculty or administrators are involved whatsoever. The selection process can be quite complicated and even grueling, for a position on the Honor Council is obviously a distinct, campus-wide honor. Faculty and students nominate prospective members, and that nomination process is taken very seriously by all concerned. Every spring my colleagues and I glance over our class lists for all three terms--fall, winter, and spring--and identify particularly promising Honor Council candidates and pass along their names to the current Honor Council. Nominees must first submit a written application; they are then quizzed--"grilled" might be a better word--on their willingness and ability to serve; they participate in a group interview that includes a mock hearing, which is of course the equivalent of a try-out for a sports team; and those who earn the best marks find their names on a list of candidates for any open positions on the Honor Council; that list, however, usually contains twice as many names as there are open seats. At this time the Honor Council Selection Board, which consists of two students appointed by the elected student government, two faculty members, and two continuing members of the Honor Council, conducts in-depth interviews of each candidate and votes on the new members; at least a 2/3 majority is required for every successful candidate. All this takes time and energy, but that's the price that we willingly pay for the privilege of the Honor Code and a bona fide indication of how valuable we as a community deem the Honor Code.
The rigorous selection process is but a prelude to the actual work of the Honor Council. The general charge from the faculty to the Council is simply to administer the Lawrence University Honor System, but that charge encompasses five major tasks, three of which are, by explicit design, educational. Lawrence has always stressed the educational purposes more than the punitive provisions of the Honor Code. So the Council members must: (1) inform all new members of the Lawrence University community--and by "new members" we mean both new faculty and new staff as well as new students--about the philosophy and stipulations of the Honor System; (2) ensure that all new students sign the Honor Pledge; and (3) continue to educate the entire academic community about the Honor System. Those first two tasks are obviously concentrated in the early fall when the academic year commences, but the third continues throughout each term and the year. Faculty often request a classroom visit from an Honor Council member right before midterm exams or term paper due dates. We have learned from experience that students believe whatever we faculty tell them about the Honor Code but that they listen more carefully to their peers, i.e., members of the Honor Council. So these classroom visits are anything but insignificant. Most of us faculty also explicitly remind our students on our course syllabi or on quizzes and exams themselves or on instructions for term papers that the Honor Code is in effect at all times and that they are to reaffirm it at the end of whatever they are turning in for evaluation, and many of us explicitly inform them that we won't even read their work unless it is accompanied by an appropriately signed reaffirmation. Such reminders are often necessary in the case of freshmen but are always useful. The two other tasks assumed by the Honor Council are (4) to serve as the official body for adjudicating all suspected violations of the Honor Code that are reported to it, and (5) to monitor and review its own procedures and operations with a view to amending and altering them if necessary in accordance with the formal mechanisms for doing so. It is the former task that many faculty and students see as the major responsibility of the Honor Council.
The judicial procedures governing the conduct of an inquiry into a suspected violation of the Honor Code are clearly spelled out step-by-step in the student handbook and elsewhere. (Readers of this essay can find the factual information I am reporting here and much more, including FAQs, online at <http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/student_acad/honor_council>.) They begin, obviously, with someone suspecting that some violation has occurred. That "someone," as noted above, may be either a faculty member or a student since maintaining the Honor Code is a joint responsibility shared by every member of our academic community, but suspecting something and reporting it officially are two different matters entirely. In 2005 the Honor Council conducted a survey that confirmed what we all thought--students don't report other students. In fact, 68% of the students responding reported that they had suspected other students of violating the Honor Code in some way at least once (once 14%, a few times 37%, several times 14%, many times 3%), but 97.5% acknowledged that they had never reported a violation to the Honor Council. Those latter uniformly claim that they didn't have the proof or just weren't sure that an actual violation had occurred. So de facto it is the faculty who report suspected violations, and most suspected violations involve plagiarism in one form or another. If a freshman from a small town in the midwest uses "motor car" and "post a letter" in the same sentence in an essay on William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, or if the topic sentence in the first paragraph of a senior's term paper begins with "In our previous papers," even the most naïve or inexperienced professor will have his or her suspicions aroused. In any case the procedures allow for an initial, informal discussion among the professor, a dean of student academic services, and the chair or a co-chair of the Honor Council, which may confirm or disconfirm the suspicion. Such discussions are not necessarily construed as official reports and do not automatically commit the professor to submitting an actual report, but most of them do result in a formal allegation of a violation to the Honor Council. From the moment a suspected violation has been reported, the judicial procedures kick in, absolute confidentiality obtains, and the matter remains the exclusive province of the Honor Council. It will be the members of the Honor Council, not the faculty member involved or any dean, who will determine whether a violation has actually occurred and, if so, what sanctions will apply.
The formal judicial procedures themselves are quite straightforward. A dean of student academic services and the Honor Council chair or co-chair first discuss the incident with those involved, and if the student, now referred to as the respondent, admits that the violation reported by the faculty member, now called the complainant, did occur, then the respondent can request an immediate sanctioning conference (q.v. infra) and skip the hearing; otherwise, all parties concerned, including witnesses if any, are informed by letter of the time and place of the hearing. The respondent may automatically and without explanation strike one member of the Council from serving on the five member panel that will hear the case and may also select another member to serve as a procedural advisor (PA); if the respondent does not exercise the latter right, the chair assigns a PA. The PA's role is to meet with the respondent before the hearing, explain what is going to happen, and answer any questions the respondent may have; the PA also assists the respondent with procedural issues and questions throughout the hearing. The chair, who does not vote, convenes the hearing, which is recorded in the event of an appeal; both complainant and respondent present opening statements; evidence, including testimony from any witnesses, is presented, and the Council asks questions of both the complainant and the respondent; after all the Council's questions have been answered, both sides offer closing statements. At this stage in the proceedings the Council breaks for final deliberations.
The Council deliberates in private in order to render a decision; its deliberations are not recorded. The Council first votes on whether a violation of the Honor Code has occurred; if that vote is affirmative, then the Council votes on the specific sanction and in so doing takes into consideration any previous violations committed or warnings received by the respondent. Once a decision has been reached, it must be committed to writing in the form of a letter right then and there, and the respondent must be informed in that letter that the decision may be appealed to the President of the University. The Council reconvenes and reads the letter aloud; the respondent is expected to hear the decision, and the complainant may choose to hear it also. Unless the student appeals, the case is closed except for the formalities. The written decision must always be formally sent to the student and, when appropriate, to the professor, and a copy is placed in a confidential file; the decision itself will be added to the database of precedents. Since the Honor Code and the Honor System are so integral to our campus climate--indeed, to our institutional identity--the results of all Honor Council hearings and decisions are, by student and faculty mandate, published in the Lawrentian, our student newspaper, in the succeeding term. Needless to say, those summaries in no way identify any individuals involved in the cases, but everyone on campus can read what violations occurred and what sanctions were applied. Publication is a matter of both information and education.
The specific sanction involved in any given case can range from a warning to separation from the university. A warning is reserved for instances where no violation is judged to have occurred, but the respondent's actions were questionable. The most frequently applied sanctions involve grades: the Council can mandate specific grades, e.g., a lowered grade or a zero or an F on the assignment, paper, exam, or whatever; the Council can likewise mandate a specific grade, including a grade of F, or a ceiling or a one- or two-letter grade reduction for the course grade as well; and it can even combine the two types of sanction, i.e., a zero on the assignment and an F in the course. It bears repeating that in such instances the Council specifies the grade, not the professor. In view of the educational mission of the Council, it often applies educational sanctions in addition to those involving grades, i.e., required sessions on proper means of citation in the Center for Teaching and Learning or a paper rewrite using proper citation. An egregious or second violation can result in a recommendation for suspension from the university with loss of all academic credit for the term in which the hearing occurred (and sometimes the next); the most serious penalty is separation, which is an indefinite suspension. Recommendations for both suspension and separation are made by the Council to the Faculty Subcommittee on Administration, which renders the final decision. The sanctioning conference mentioned above, which allows the respondent to skip the hearing, is afforded first-time violators only; it is less formal, involves fewer Council members, and allows for the same sanctions. As its name implies, however, it does allow the complainant and the respondent to confer and to accept the sanction determined by the Council, and so the sanction does not admit of appeal; if no such agreement is forthcoming, the case proceeds to a hearing. The Honor Council is not limited to the sanctions enumerated here, which are the normal ones, for its charge is open-ended in that respect. No matter what the sanction, however, it is serious, and it's no wonder that the Council's business is taken seriously by the entire Lawrence community.
Introspection has been integral to the liberal arts ever since Socrates intoned, "The unexamined life is not worth living," and our Honor Council is constantly examining itself and its procedures. That task is part of its charge, of course, but it would do so anyway. Amending or revising the Honor Code is rarely contemplated and not just because it requires a 2/3 vote of both the faculty and the student body. Questioning it, however, is an ongoing enterprise. Currently, three issues are figuring prominently in campus discussions: the degree of compliance, the severity of the sanctions, and what we call exam parameters. Although some faculty and students believe that abuse of the Honor Code is more widespread than we commonly suppose, Libby Hermanson, '06, co-chair of the Honor Council during her senior year, begs to differ: "I firmly believe that the number of students who live up to expectations greatly exceeds that of students who abuse the system." We average only about 12 hearings per annum. Complaints about the harshness of the sanctions are hardly new, but they are also unfounded. A recent staff editorial in the Lawrentian noted that some schools "employ much stricter measures when dealing with honor code issues," and as Dr. Martha Hemwall, a dean of student academic services who advises the Honor Council, observes, "We're toward the lenient side, nationally, and that's largely because we focus on education more than punishment." Exam parameters are those restrictions, stated or unstated, that apply to the taking of exams. For example, if the professor does not specifically state either orally or on the exam itself that the exam must be taken in the classroom, can a student choose, on his or her own initiative, to take it elsewhere? Or is that action undermining the integrity of the exam? I usually specify that students can take my exams anywhere in Main Hall, e.g., in an empty classroom or the student lounge or the humanities computing lab, but they must remain in Main Hall so that I can find them if need be. Odds are that we here at Lawrence will be discussing exam parameters much more in the ensuing academic year or two, and I would not be surprised if we faculty were encouraged or even enjoined to specify any and all relevant exam parameters on every exam we give. Our Honor System serves us well, but our Honor Council keeps trying to make it better.
The Lawrence University Honor Code, its overall Honor System, and its hardworking Honor Council are a collective source of pride for all Lawrentians--past, present, and future. The three sentences that constitute the heart and soul of our commitment to the core value of this institution and of our own personal lives are short and sweet but ever so meaningful:
Moreover, that Lawrentian staff editorial hit the nail right on the head when it concluded, "I, H, R, T, L, U, H, and C are not insignificant or unimportant letters; they represent a unique, long-standing academic tradition at Lawrence that each student is individually responsible for upholding." Our students have done and still do a good job of upholding our Honor Code, and we hope that the Code, mutatis mutandis, continues to direct them as they aspire to lead, as our mission statement puts it, the "lives of service, achievement, leadership, and personal fulfillment" for which Lawrence seeks to prepare them.
[The Montana Professor 17.1, Fall 2006 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]