University of Virginia Library

David Giltinan

The Honor System:
Our Shrouded Moloch

Near the library, shooting his
tarnished moon over Memorial
Gym, we find the University's
visual comic relief, the Bird Man of
Alderman. Portions of his anatomy
erased thru ancient ritual, be
torches forward as if tripped, and
strains to fly with his preposterous
leaden wings. Cursed with inflexible
bronze presumptions of
unreachable pathos, his silly stilted
visage bends ones thoughts
inexorably to The Honor
System ...

At least he isn't a red brick
building.

Actually there are two Honor
Systems; the Platonic, or impossible,
and the Democratic, or
unbelievable. They complement
each other nicely, with the ethereal,
non-debatable principles of the first
obfuscating the very real barbarities
of the second.

Platonic, or 'Plantation' Honor
is a Quixotic potpourri of
antebellum ethical rhetoric. It
exists only in the propaganda mills
of the Admissions office, the
decaying memories of decrepit
alumni, and the Patronizing pitying
hearts of sportswriters seeking
something extraneous to say about
our football team.

Mindless Bliss

These apologists contend that
The Honor System reflects certain
phantasmago
civilized man-among whose
manifestations are not lying,
not cheating and not stealing. The
Hindu definition of Mindless Bliss,
'neti neti' (not this, not this) seems
roughly parallel.

Thus Honor per se becomes the
shrouded Moloch, transcendent and
unknowable, for to blaspheme The
System in terms of social contract
would undermine the
rationalizations behind its insatiable
cravings for human sacrifice.

These sacrifices are the exiles,
the unappealingly unwashed, the
spiritually deficient miscreants
whose absence reminds the rest of
us that we are, after all, a 'better
sort'.

Their fate contrasts ironically
with the 'redeemables' who get
drunk, for example, and beat
someone's face in. Admitting their
deeds, these remain "one of us" to
be chastened perhaps, but never
banished.

Those who fail to appreciate the
spiritual subtleties of Platonic
Honor are admonished to remain
quiet about it.

Brutal Fascination

The rigors of this doctrine, often
impressive to High School Seniors
and other Utopians, were summed
up by The Man himself in 1785. His
attitude possess, for the believers, a
certain brutal fascination, but is
even ignored by The System in real
life.

"It is of great importance to set
a resolution, not to be shaken,
never to tell an untruth. There is no
vice so mean, so pitiful, so
contemptible; and he who permits
himself to tell a lie once, finds it
easier to do so a second and third
time, till at length it becomes
habitual ..."

In addition to never telling a lie,
we recall that The Founder's virtues
included a sagacious appreciation of
the self-disciplinary potential of
college students (self-discipline
being one of The System's ready
cliches)

Riotous Indignities

To wit, in 1822, after the new
University had suffered riotous
indignities "animated by wine",
Jefferson wrote, "The article of
discipline is the most difficult in
American education ... I look to it
with dismay in our institution, as a
breaker ahead, which I am far from
confident we shall be able to
weather."

Within twenty years Jefferson's
most dire premonitions were
over-fullfilled, yet we are today
asked to believe that the legendary
murderous rabble of the 1840's,
stricken of conscience and weary of
pillage, suddenly discovered
(perhaps it was 'the right sort' of
murderous rabble) that it possessed
(you guessed it) Platonic Honor.

Thus nobly inspired, The
System has nevertheless been
subject to problems through the
ages. Among the more serious of
these, as the Corner merchants will
attest (off the record) is that it
doesn't work.

Library Pilfering

The pilfering at the library alone
would reduce Ghengis Khan to
gaping admiration. Indeed the
student who passes four years here
as neither the victim nor
benefactor of some type of perfidy
is a unique, if not anti-social,
fellow.

The system has responded, or
'evolved' to be sure, but in a
manner more reminiscent of J.V.
Stalin than T. Jefferson. Stalin, we
recall, to carry out the morally
questionable dictates of the
'People' Will' (HIS Moloch)
vigorously curbed such 'bourgeois
freedoms' as 'life', thus substituting
the propagandistic hoopla of sheer
ruthless enforcement for an ethical
foundation.

'Clarified' System

More precisely, the new
'Democratic' or 'clarified' Honor
System (1) maintains its traditional
pretensions of ineffability, (2)
hysterically clings to its 'morally
imperative' sentence of eternal
proscription, (3) yet now interprets
its Ideal Dogma, whose very purity
once theoretically justified its
vicious consequences, in accordance
with whatever the traffic will bear.

Thus we resolve not to lie
EXCEPT beyond Albemarle's
boundaries, to facilitate seduction,
EXCEPT when placing some
credulous bartender in peril of
losing his ABC license.

Cheap Toilet Paper

One is reminded of cheap, tinted
toilet paper which decays into
nothing, leaving indefinitely a
residue of poisonous dye, bereft of
substance, and useful only for
contamination and destruction.

The substance of The System,
questionable in the first place, but
at least coherent, has long since
vanished. What lingers is a Mad Dog
Tradition that admits of neither
mercy nor integrity.

This point is essential because
people ARE being purged,
academic careers ARE being
crippled, reputations ARE being
destroyed in a puerile reaction to
those whose taste precludes their
wallowing in the University's
present moral dung heap.

Illegal Fifth

Today we possess, or tolerate, a
quote ethical quote code whose
summum bonum is an illegal fifth
of liquor. Every person humiliated
or persecuted for 'transgressing'
such nonsense constitutes a
damning indictment of the role of
reason in our academical village.