The Cavalier daily. :: Tuesday, May 20, 1969 :: University of Virginia Library

This Sesquicentennial year appears to be an
epochal one for the University. Coeducation
has finally asserted its (her) legitimacy, demonstrations
and confrontations replace reasoned
argument and discussion, and even the Lawn
has lost its verdant appearance. But what is
more serious than all of these, what is of the
greatest consequence to future students here, is
the acts of the Honor Committee in unabashedly
diluting the Honor System to the point of
impotence. As one who has been privileged to
claim having the finest honor system in the
country at his school, I cannot idly stand by
and permit the system to be raped of its
genuine honor.

We are now told that lying in order to
procure liquor is, in essence, not a lie; that
lying, stealing, and cheating is permissible
beyond the boundaries of Albemarle County, as
long as one's student status is not utilized in the
process, by making someone rely on the fact of
one's being a student to his detriment.
Tomorrow, perhaps next September, the
Committee may see fit to redefine "honor"
once again, and limit it further. The analogy
may be strained, but I am reminded of Alice in
Wonderland, with the Honor Committee
asserting that "honor is what we say it is,
nothing more and nothing less."

And why has the committee instituted these
reforms? It seems a random sample survey of
1% of the student body (90 students) showed
that students were unsure of what constituted
lying. 52% of those polled held this position.
Yet according to W.C. Guenther's Concepts of
Statistical Inference, any random sample poll
assumes a 95% reliability at best. Thus a 5%
error of 4.5 students could have changed the
bare majority of 52% to a decided minority of
47%. I thus challenge the reliability of such a
survey, but more than this, I cannot 11
people, distinguished and sincere as they most
assuredly are, to dictate when honor shall
change. At the minimum, a referendum should
be held to actually see what is the "shared
moral values of the student community." The
Honor Committee is elected to administrate,
not to legislate: This right properly belongs to
the student body, and no random sample poll
can substitute for the right to popular
participation by referendum.

The bulk of my argument, however, centers
on how the committee is attempting their
reform. You cannot legislate honor, and to say
that misstating one's age for alcohol is not lying
is to take a hypocritical posture that will
severely damage the integrity of the Honor
System. Honor, gentlemen, is honor, and not
even the most libertarian free-thinker can
dispute the fact that what is dishonorable in
Charlottesville is equally dishonorable elsewhere.
The Committee has chosen to react to a
relaxation in a students' consciences about
honor by simply eliminating certain areas of life
from the structures of the Honor Code. With
their authoritarian scalpel they have neatly
removed the difficult areas of the system. They
have, unfortunately, in doing so also removed
its heart, the essential spirit of honor that has
maintained the system for over a century.

I do not level these criticisms without
making a suggestion as to how a better solution
might be found. The Honor Committee says
there is no degree of honor, and here they err,
for in their omitting "social" lies from the
system they implicitly infer that some lies are
more honorable than others. The fact is that
lying to get liquor is lying, but is not so
dishonorable as for instance lying to a merchant
by giving a false name and address. There
should be a recognition of this simple fact, and
as a result there could be instituted a gradation
of penalties which could avoid inflicting
"capital punishment" for minor violations. Not
only would this strengthen the system by
eliminating the present hypocritical stance, but
fewer people would hesitate to turn offenders
in if they knew they weren't causing the end of
his academic life here.

This is only a suggestion, perhaps an
unsophisticated one, but one which will, in the
words of the student quoted in 1905 "lead to a
wider prevalence of the spirit of honor in our in
our student life in matters both small and
great." If the Committee does not change its
present position, I fear that the system of
honor we all seek to preserve will decay. It is
incumbent upon each of us, every student, that
we actively seek to sustain the Honor System,
and accordingly to express our feelings about
the current situation. If we falter in this, then
when the system has finally fallen, we will be in
the position of the man Mark Twain spoke of,
who murdered both his parents and then
pleaded for mercy of the court on the grounds
of being an orphan. Let us not bring that
ignominy upon the Honor System and upon
ourselves.