University of Virginia Library

Honor System Redefined

the Honor System properly applies only to activities related to the
student life of the University. As a guideline in connection with the
foregoing statement, the Committee wishes to make clear that student
life includes all actions of students in Charlottesville and Albemarle
County and in addition actions in other situations where a student acts
thinking that reliance will be placed on his status as a U.Va. student by
some only of those affected by his action. In the latter situations, such
thought will normally be assumed in relations between members of the
University community.

This view of the proper scope of the System stems from several
sources. An Honor System, such as that here at the University, which
requires that accusations be initiated by the individual students depends
for its continuance upon vigorous support by an overwhelming
percentage of the student body. The System is inevitably and
dangerously weakened to the extent that offenses seemingly within its
coverage are openly tolerated by a given student generation. The Honor
Committee believes that overwhelming student support does exist at
present with respect to all conduct within the immediate University
community of Charlottesville and Albemarle and conduct in other
situations away from the University where a students acts thinking that
his status as a Virginia student will influence the reliance of others. The
Committee does not believe, however, that such support exists as to
conduct unrelated to student life at Virginia.

These condlusions are based on a number of considerations. First, it
is the fact that in recent years the accusations that have come to the
Committee have invarlably been based on conduct that has occurred
within the University community or its immediate environs. The
Committee reluctantly rejects the comforting but, in its judgment,
unsound explanation that no violations are in fact occurring elsewhere
or that knowledge of such violations does not reach any student.
Second, there have been numerous communications by students to
Committee members to the effect that violations unrelated to student
life do not warrant an accusation. The apparent reason for this attitude
is that the University community does not have sufficient claim upon a
student to impose expulsion for actions unrelated to student life. Third,
despite some statements in very recent years that the System applies to
other than student life, the Committee believes, as the foregoing
historical summary reveals, that application of the System to student
life is consonant with its basic objectives as they have been conceived
for much the greater part of its existence. The primary thrust of the
Honor System has been the facilitation, encouragement, and protection
of an atmosphere of mutual trust and integrity in the University
community, and through participation in such a community, the
inculcation in community members of a pervasive sense of integrity.
This purpose is plainly served by the views described above.

But the most basic consideration for the Committee is its belief that
candid recognition of a limit on the System to those areas where:
willing, vigorous support exists, rather than lip service to an expansive
scope which in fact does not coincide with actual practice, substantially
strengthens the system

(2) This fall a random poll of students concerning the Honor System,
supervised by the University's Office of Institutional Analysis reflected a
large degree of uncertainty surrounding the nature and elements of the
offense of lying. The Committee believes that lying under the Honor
System is a knowing misrepresentation intended to induce reliance by
another. It should be made clear that the System is concerned with
willful misrepresentations about serious dealings by which a student
achieves an unfair advantage over another. Thus, spoofs, tall tales,
satire, bragging, exaggeration, social lies, etc. fall outside the System.
Similarly, a spontaneous misrepresentation, if immediately and
voluntarily withdrawn, is not considered to have intended to induce
reliance. Moreover, it should be understood that this restatement is not
intended to abrogate the existing convention that certain subjects, e.g.
amorous relations with the opposite sex, are not within the purview of
the System.

The reasons for limitation of lying along the lines developed above
are inherent in the nature of the System. Both the individual and the
community view a judgment of "guilty" as bespeaking a very grave
moral condemnation of the actor. Thus it is fundamental that the
System be limited to conduct which is genuinely reprehensible and
which clearly offends the shared moral values of the student
community.

III.

In conclusion, the Honor Committee wishes to make clear that by
these clarifications it has sought to reflect the current values of the
student community, which have long been the accepted measuring rod
for the reach of the System. In making these clarifications the
Committee has relied upon the information elicited by the random poll
of this past fall, the series of public hearings on the Honor System held
this spring, written proposals submitted to the Committee as a part of
these hearings and detailed deliberations by the Committee. It is
essential to the continued vitality of the System that substantial
segments of student opinion on such matters, or on any other aspects
of the System, continue to be made known to the Committee.

Finally, the inference should not be drawn from the making of these
clarifications that the Committee has concluded that no other
worthwhile contributions to the System could be made at the present
time. Up to now the lime available to this Committee simply has not
permitted the detailed consideration necessary to evaluation of many
other aspects of the System. If deliberation of other matters proves
impossible in the time remaining this year, it will be, as a minimum, this
Committee's recommendation to the incoming Honor Committee that
they pursue the examination initiated during the past year. It is this
Committee's hope that the explanation and discussion made herein will
provide a sound foundation for such future efforts.