University of Virginia Library

The Honor System Through Two Decades Of Change

By DAVID BOWMAN

— Ed.)

There appears in retrospect to have
been a gradual but steady broadening of
the scope of the Honor System from the
V-12 incident of 1943-44 until a
pronouncement by the 1965-66 Honor
Committee of the universality of the
System's application. The Honor
Committees of the two decades, usually
with the support of the faculty and
administration, seem to have taken the
lead in eliminating "areas of gray" from
the System by attempting to bring the
jurisdiction of the Honor System more
into accord with the requirement of
complete honesty in all a student's
affairs—an ethical attitude which a
19th-century student versed in the
chivalric concept of personal honor
would not have comprehended.

The 1965-66 Committee, chaired by
George Morison, did indeed respond to
the challenge issued by a student in the
newspaper that it should be "the function
of the Honor Committee to save the
Honor System rather than to protect the
students." For the following open letter
from Morison's Committee appeared in
the December 14, 1965 Cavalier Daily:

This pronouncement seems incredible
just seven years later for two reasons.
First, never before had the scope of the
Honor System been defined in such
absolute and universal terms, at least in a
public statement by the Committee.
Second, there was apparently no

significant publicly vociferous response to
such a unilateral declaration by the
Honor Committee.

The 1965-66 Honor Committee also
culminated a trend since the V-12 affair
crisis to minimize consideration of
dishonorable intent as a requisite for the
rendering of a guilty verdict in honor
trials. In other words, there was little
emphasis put on the question of the
individual's intent to commit a
dishonorable act once it had been
established that a dishonest act had been
committed. The following excerpt from a
letter by the Committee explaining the
circumstances of a dismissal conveys this
attitude:

In a memorandum to Committee
members dated February 15, 1966,
Morrison suggests the adoption of
Princeton University's definition of
plagiarism.

It is not too surprising, therefore, that
more students are dismissed for honor
violations during the 1965-66 session (a
total of 21) than during any other year
since World War II. And the 1965-66
ended a five-year period of more
dismissals (a total of 77) than any other
five-year period since the war. One
cannot, however, attribute these high
figures solely to the sternness of members
of the Honor Committee during these
years. For during the five-year period
1961-62 to 1965-66, a remarkable 57
percent of honor dismissals occurred
without trials, i.e., the accused student
left voluntarily after the accusation,
thereby admitting his guilt. This high
percentage of dismissals without trials
(compare to 42% for 1956-57 to
1960-61, and 31% for 1966-67 to
1970-71) would seem to indicate that a
significant portion of the student
community shared the Committee's strict
interpretation of honor.

Geographic Restrictions

It is ironic, however, that the Honor
System should attain its greatest
jurisdictional breadth, and perhaps the
peak of its punitive effectiveness, on the
eve of a period of fundamental
degeneration of the "Honor Spirit"within
the student community as a whole. The
degeneration was reflected in part in the
May 1969 decisions by the 1968-69
Honor Committee, after long and intense
deliberation, to restrict the scope of the
System to "student life"—geographically
defined by the boundaries of
Charlottesville-Albemarle County—and to
eliminate entirely from the System's
jurisdiction the misrepresentation of
one's age in the purchasing of alcoholic
beverage. Despite the largely theoretical
qualification that a student inducing
reliance on his status as a University of
Virginia student to gain dishonorable
advantage was committing a breach of the
Honor System regardless of his
geographic location the May, 1969
pronouncement marked a substantial
reversal of the Morrison Committee's
definition for scope enunciated less than
five years before.

An examination and evaluation of
statistical records on enrollment and
dismissals is of value in tracing the nature
and extent of the System's degeneration
after 1965. Below are listed the numbers
of Honor Committee dismissals for each
academic session from 1960-61 to
1970-71 (as of May 1, 1971):

                     

1960-61	14
1961-62	13
1962-63	15
1963-64	17
1964-65	11
1965-66	21
1966-67	13
1967-68	10
1968-69	7
1969-70	3
1970-71	9

And yet enrollment figures show an
increase of over 135% during this same
decade, from 4599 student in the fall of
1960 to 10,852 in the fall of 1970.
Unless one is willing to argue that there
was during this decade, and particularly
after 1966, a marked decrease in
incidences of dishonorable behavior
within the University student
community, then the negative correlation
between a rising enrollment and fewer
dismissals would seem to imply some
negative conclusions about the evolving
statue of the Honor System in the latter
half of the decade. There is considerable
evidence derived from dismissal records
moreover, to justify the assertion that
from 1956 to 1971 there occurred a
gradual but consistent narrowing of the
de facto scope of the Honor System
which proceeded independently of, or
perhaps in spite of, public statements by
the Honor Committee. Of 55 dismissals
from 1956-57 to 1960-61, 56 percent
involved academic offenses, i.e. cheating
and plagiarism; from 1961-62 to 1965-66,
62 percent of Honor Committee
dismissals involved academic offenses;
from 1966-67 to May 1, 1971, 81 percent
of dismissals involved academic
violations.

The reasons for this degeneration in
overall effectiveness of the Honor System
which became increasingly obvious after
1966 are certainly many, complex and
interrelated. And a successful discussion
of these multifarious influences would
most likely involve a broad-ranging
analysis of the ethical, religious,
economic, and political dispositions of
recent generations of University students.
The present writer will only point briefly
to a definite trend of at least a decade's
duration towards the increasing
complexity, institutionalization, and
frustration index of American
life—University life certainly included,
the consequent widespread lack of any
intense feeling of loyalty on the part of
the individual to his community or to its
seemingly remote institutions, and
therefore a contemporary emphasis among
students on personal liberty and freedom

of action. Related to and part of this
trend has been an increasing emphasis by
American youth on social equity, or
personal interaction and its ethical values,
i.e. on a "situational" or relativistic
approach to ethics, which assigns great
importance to sensitivity, warmth, and
communication, to the disparagement of
the rather static and chauvinistic concept
of inner-directed personal integrity and
honor.

Effects of Expansion

Yet I would contend that the
evolution of the Honor System at the
University of Virginia during the 1960's
must be viewed primarily against the
background of dramatic annual
increments in enrollment which begin in
the fall of 1963. The nine years from
1962-63 to 1970-71 brought a 124
percent increase in the size of the student
body. The issue of University expansion
emerged as a focal point for discussion
within the University community in the
spring of 1963—never to submerge again
for long, after President Shannon's public
announcement of a prospective
enrollment of 10,000 by 1975. A March
13 Cavalier Daily editorial stated that
"we believe the question of enrollment is
the most serious which faces the
University today." 1965-66 Honor
Committee Chariman George Morison
himself summarized before the
University's Board of Visitors in June of
1965 the potential dangers of an
expansion to 10,000.

In October of 1966 a large
student-faculty group was called into
existence by the Honor Committee to
determine "if the System is sufficiently
well-ordered and well-conceived that it
can stand the rigors of expansion and
growth." And an April 4, 1967 Cavalier
Daily editorial remarked that "The
implications of such a sudden rise [to
12,000 by 1975, announced in February
of 1966]—not to mention Reclor Frank
L. Rogers suggestion of a total enrollment
of 15,000 by 1980 when the newly
acquired Birdwood tract is utilized—are
staggering."

It would be meaningless to debate
whether changing ethical views or
physical growth and expansion have
exerted a greater adverse effect on the
University's Honor System. One must
acknowledge, I think, that the both
forces have worked, separately and in
mutual interaction, to cripple the Honor
System as it existed in the late 1950's and
early 1960's. Certainly the established
forms of social interaction and the
traditional ethical values of a community
cannot survive such dramatic physical
expansion as the University of Virginia
has experienced in the past decade
without broad-ranging adjustment if not
comprehensive alteration. But
historically it has been physical expansion
in conjunction with an increasing moral
and heterogeneity in the student body
which has rendered invalid Hardy
Dillard's "consensus of honor" rationale
for the Honor System, particularly in
view of the stringent single penalty of
permanent dismissal.

Shift of Emphasis

The Honor System established itself in
the 19th century when the University of
Virginia possessed a decidedly
undergraduate orientation. During the
past two decades, however, there has
been a significant shift by the
administration towards emphasis on
graduate and professional study. From
the fall of 1964 to the fall of 1970, total
graduate and professional enrollment
increased by 77 percent (from 2410 to
4265), while total undergraduate
enrollment increased by 57 percent (from
4190 to 6576). And yet from 1956 to
1971 there was a remarkable numerical
consistency in the dismissals of graduate
students: 3 from 1956-57 to 1960-61; 4
from 1961-62 to 1965-66; 3 from
1966-67 to May 1, 1971. Honor
Committees over the years have
recognized and acknowledged a higher
degree of difficulty involved in the
orientation of new graduate students than
in the orientation of first-year
undergraduates. Leaving aside here any
attempt to explain the differences in
attitudes toward the Honor System
between graduate and undergraduate
students, this writer has reached the
definite conclusion that the more
pronounced the University's relative
stress on graduate and professional study
has become, in parallel fashion the
University-wide effectiveness of the
Honor System has diminished
accordingly.

Procedural Revisions

The 1967-68 Honor Committee, under
the able chairmanship of Pete Gray,
initiated two procedural revisions
indicative of a new "emphasis on fairness
to the accused" in honor trials; published
a pamphlet attempting to clarify what
constitutes plagiarism; grappled with
long-standing problems in the Library and
within the sphere of athletics; and
devoted its final attentions in the spring
to pondering the possible effects of
coeducation on the Honor System.
Controversy over the question of transfer
of a student athletic cards and of
admission to athletic contests of students
who have forgotten their athletic cards
had been growing since the mid-1950's,
and student-administration cooperation
over several years led to the distribution
in September of 1967 for the first time of
plastic-covered photo—I.D. cards, which
in turn led to the establishment in the
spring of 1968 of a student vouching
system for admission to athletic contests.
The problem of books "disappearing"
from Alderman Library had achieved
significant proportions at least by 1956;
and the consistent worsening of the
situation from the time culminated with
the institution in February of 1968 of the
present library check-out system.
Whether such a check-out system was
necessary because of a failure of the
Honor System to operate in the Library is
still a matter of debate. In May, 1968,
twelve-page study entitled "Report of the
Honor Committee on the Possible Effects
of Coeducation on the University of
Virginia Honor System" was based almost
entirely on the empirical study Student
Dishonesty and Its Control in College
conducted by William J. Bowers of
Columbia University and "generally
recognized as the most comprehensive
and authoritative work now existing of its
kind." The Honor Committee Report
reached a definite conclusion:

In a letter dated February 4, 1969,
1968-69 Chairman Larry Attaffer
characterized his Committee's approach
to the System:

The 1968-69 Honor Committee was
deluged with legalistic critiques of the
System, engaged in intensive
self-evaluation in the form of open
hearings and a small random sample poll,
and witnessed in the spring the most
highly publicized and hotly contested
campaigns for the presidency of the
College in the University's history to that
date. Attaffer's Committee never seems
to have questioned seriously the viability
of the single sanction, and their

deliberations found expression in the
decisions of May, 1969 to restrict the
Systems scope to Charlottesville-Albemarle
County and to exclude lying
for liquor in toto from jurisdiction.

The 1968-69 Committee was from its
assumption of office in a position of
being "damned if it did and damned if it
didn't" with regard to changes in the
System. The spring, 1969 College office
elections clearly demonstrated the deep
divisions of opinion within the student
body concerning the Honor System.
These campaigns were unusual in that an
independent candidate challenged the
customary two candidates from the
fraternity-oriented political caucuses
Skull and Keys and Sceptre Society; and
that 70.5 percent of a College enrollment
of 3455 cast ballots in the two-day
elections; while during the previous
decade College officer elections had been
determined each year by 40 to 50 percent
of the College's enrollment. But the
long-term significance of the spring, 1969
campaigns lay not in the challenge of an
independent candidate per se (in 1959
there had been a three-way race for the
College presidency, and the independent
challenge had been defeated by three
votes), but in the fact that for the first
time a candidate deeply opposed to the
status-quo was making a serious bid for
election. A March 2, 1956 Cavalier Daily
editorial had characterized the attitude

toward elections to the Honor Committee
which prevailed until 1969:

Yet in April of 1969 anti-traditionalist
independent Charles Murdock declared
himself to be in favor of "more
'court-room type' procedure", restricting
the System's scope to the legalistic
definition of "legitimate University
interests," and the College President's
being a political activist. Murdock
garnered 35 percent of an electorate of
2438, although Skull and Keys nominee
Whit Clement did win the election with a
44.5 percent plurality.

Lying for Liquor

The 1969-70 Honor Committee was at
first preoccupied with interpreting and
justifying the two changes in the System
announced by Attaffer's Committee in
May of 1969. It is ironic that a change
without precedent in the System's
history—i.e., the institution of geographic
limitations on jurisdiction—should have
stimulated much less public controversy
than a change—i.e., the exclusion of lying
for liquor from jurisdiction—which in fact
was supported by much greater precedent
than the opposite stance in effect from
1955 to 1969. The somewhat
embarrassing question of how to response
to the 2000 signatures on petitions
protesting the liquor ruling forced the
1969-70 Committee to concern itself
with the questions of student initiated
change in the System and the developing
of reliable means of interpreting student
opinion—problems which have not to this
day been satisfactorily solved.

In October of 1969 the Committee
was confronted by a scholarship athlete
accused of plagiarism, during whose trial
a widespread lack of support for an even
understanding of the Honor System
among recruited athletes became
apparent. In his orientation address of
1960, Harrison Flippen had foreseen such
a potential threat:

And in a presentation before the
University's Board of Visitor's in June of
1965, Hardy Dillard had concerned
himself with problems which could arise
from extensive recruitment of athletes:

By second semester, however, the
1969-70 Honor Committee was
preoccupied in sorting the probable
requirements which a court of law might
see current standards of the Due Process
and constitutionality as imposing on the
Honor System. Codification of the
System's procedural standards has always
advanced more quickly than codification
of the scope. In recent years there has
been an accelerating evolution of the
honor trial from a rather "inquisitorial"
judicial proceeding to a more
"adversarial" proceeding, as defense
counsel have insisted that they must not
only clarify the facts of the case to the
Honor Committee, but that they must
also be at liberty to present and to argue
the case to the best advantage of the
accused. This represents a major aspect of
a general trend toward a more "legalistic"
Honor System, which has paralleled what
law student Rick Levin called in 1971 a
"clear trend" in contemporary legal
opinion concerning educational
institutions "for the courts to hold a
student's interest in pursuing his
educational opportunities to be more
than a privilege, and to recognize
educational opportunity as an emerging
right." The monolithic severity of the
single penalty has forced more
"legalistic" in their administration to the
System, to the point of allowing
professional attorneys to appear in honor
trials as non-oral advocates, and of
concerning themselves with the
presentation of psychiatric testimony and
lie-detector evidence in trials.

New Trials

At least since the 1934 revisions, the
Honor System has allowed for the
reopening of a case after an original
verdict of guilty upon the presentation of
"substantial new evidence", which might
lead to a complete re-trial of the case. In
order to maintain intact the scope and
penalty of the System, the 1969-70
Committee felt constrained to extend the
ground for appellate review to include
"good cause", which has come in practice
to include any procedural malfunction in
an honor trial that seems in retrospect to
have constituted a "fatal"—as opposed to
"harmless"—error adverse to the accused.
This March, 1970 revision stipulated that
if "good cause" is in fact demonstrated in
a hearing before Honor Committee
members who did not sit on the original
trial, then the accused is to be granted a
complete retrial before this second
Committee.

Thus concludes our discussion of the
evolution of the Honor System over its
century-and-a-quarter existence. One
sympathetic to the idea of an honor system
such as the University of Virginia has
enjoyed, however, must nonetheless
subscribe to one of the following two
views, which appeared in separate issues
of The Cavalier Daily in 1969.

Either:

Or: