University of Virginia Library

10. TEN

The
Changing Honor System

THE UNIVERSITY'S FAR-FAMED Honor System has often been
described as the institution's most priceless possession.
Prof. Robert K. Gooch said in an address at Finals in 1965 that
he regarded it as "the finest thing about the university." He
added that "the great body of alumni are convinced that their
association with the Honor System was the most important,
the richest, the most permanently influential experience
which they had during their search for truth as students at
this institution."

Prof. George W. Spicer stated in the middle seventies: "I
was here for 40 years. . . . As far as my own classes were concerned,
as far as my own personal experience goes, there was
only one occasion in which I had reason to believe a student
had cheated." Prof. Arthur F. MacConochie said at about the
same time, "In 39 years of teaching I had only one black
sheep."

The Honor System at Virginia evolved over the years.
When founded in 1842 it consisted of a pledge by the student
that he had received no assistance on an examination. Later
the pledge was amended to forbid the giving of assistance to
another, but until the Civil War professors continued to keep
a watchful eye on the boys during all written tests.

It was during the years following the Civil War that the university's
Honor System, or Honor Spirit as some prefer to call
it, is believed to have reached its finest flower. The institution
was small and homogeneous, many of the students came from

preparatory schools that had honor systems, and there was no
further watching over them by the faculty during examinations.
The Honor Spirit, as part of the code of the honorable
gentleman, was probably more vitally alive during the closing
decades of the nineteenth century than at any other time.

The spirit remained much the same during the early and
middle years of the twentieth century. Enrollment was still
relatively small, although several times as large as it had been
in the late 1800s. Not until the period immediately following
World War II did enrollment pass the five-thousand mark,
and it soon fell to around three thousand five hundred upon
the graduation of many returned servicemen who had flocked
back to college. So the problems experienced by those who
sought to preserve the Honor System were still readily manageable.

Rules of procedure for enforcing the system were first codified
in 1909. They provided that anyone suspecting a breach
should confront the suspect and "demand . . . an explanation
of his conduct." (This, be it noted, is the exact opposite of
talebearing, the allegation sometimes made against the system.)
If the suspect's explanation was unsatisfactory, the accuser
or accusers were to demand that he leave college. He
had to do so at once or stand trial before the Honor Committee.
In 1909 the committee consisted of the presidents of the
five departments plus the vice-president of the department in
which the alleged offense occurred. The accused and the accuser
or accusers were allowed to have counsel from the student
body. Votes of five of the six Honor Committee members
were necessary for conviction, and from the verdict there was
no appeal. A change was made in 1917 to provide that the
participating vice-president should keep minutes of the proceedings.
In the event of acquittal the minutes were to be destroyed.

"Honor cards" were introduced in 1932, with each first-year
man signing a statement indicating his acceptance of the system.
It was done at small group meetings where there was an
opportunity for questions and a complete explanation.

Further changes came in 1934. It was recommended by the
committee that minutes of trials be kept by a professional stenographer,
if possible. A case resulting in a conviction could
be opened only upon production of new evidence. It also was

provided that all first-year men should hear an address at the
opening of the session explaining the Honor System. Furthermore,
members of the Honor Committee would meet the incoming
students in small groups and discuss the system in detail.
Explanation of the system appeared in early issues of
university publications.

Some years later the president of each department appointed
a "student adviser." These appointees consulted with
the accused and accusers before a problem was brought before
the Honor Committee, with a view to determining
whether there was sufficient evidence to justify a trial. The
committee felt that "by constant association with honor trials
the advisers would be in a position to offer valuable assistance."
After the dismissal of a student, the record of the proceedings
could be opened to possible employers, to another
college or university to which the offender might be applying,
or to the armed services or the government, in the event that
he was attempting to obtain a commission or an appointment.
Or the record might be seen by his parents. As a regular practice
the Honor Committee did what it could to aid any convicted
student who sought to enter another institution or to
obtain employment. Far from hounding the unfortunate after
his dismissal, the committee and the university authorities
were, and are, anxious to assist in his rehabilitation, and to
give him a chance to rise above his difficulties and become a
useful citizen.

It is important to note that the system at Virginia is entirely
in the hands of the students and that there can be no appeal
from their verdicts to the faculty, the administration, or the
Board of Visitors. Many believe that therein lies the principal
reason why the system has survived at the university while systems
operated along different lines were failing at so many
other institutions.

In earlier times students were expelled under the Honor
System for a variety of offenses. Dean William M. Thornton
writes in his Genesis of the Honor System (1904):

Even in 1901 there were those who seemed to think it acceptable,
under the Honor System, to answer "present" in
class for their friends at roll call, when the friends were not on
the premises. There appears to have been uncertainty at that
time as to the scope of the system since College Topics said in
1905: "We are glad that it [the Honor System] does hold sway
in the examination room, but why should it be limited to that
sphere?. . . . Why should its spirit not pervade all college life?
We believe that the present state of affairs can be remedied if
the sentiment of the student body demands it."

Down the years the problem of just what offenses should be
regarded as violations of the system has been debated, and in
1935 the written guidelines, later known as the "Blue Sheet,"
contained the following: "One of the greatest dangers to
which an Honor System can be exposed . . . is that of being
`overloaded' with offenses. To avoid this, it is essential that the
Honor System shall concern itself solely with those offenses
which are classified as dishonorable by the public opinion of
the student generation involved." At least as early as the second
decade of the century the students appeared to focus on
lying, cheating, and stealing as the three offenses that, by general
agreement, could not be tolerated at the University of
Virginia.

By 1955, however, doubts began to arise as to what constituted
lying. Students were going to the ABC stores to obtain
liquor and were giving false information concerning their
ages. Honor Committee Chairman Howard Gill stated that
such conduct constituted an honor offense, while others maintained
that "lying to obtain liquor was a violation of state law
but not of the code." The Cavalier Daily supported Gill, saying
that "if a breach is allowed to become an accepted practice, the
entire system will be placed in danger." Three years later the
paper reiterated this opinion and added that multiple use at
one meal of a contract cafeteria meal ticket was "clearly dishonorable."
It also stated that "the improper removal of books

from the various libraries of the university" is construable as
an honor violation.

There were ominous indications that long-established views
concerning the Honor System were changing, not only among
the students but among numerous younger members of the
faculty. A Raven Society committee for the College of Arts and
Sciences reported in the spring of 1961 that almost half of the
students interviewed favored grades of punishment for Honor
System violations. Furthermore, said the report, "it is felt that
many faculty members have neither a feeling for the spirit of
the Honor System nor confidence that it works." The Raven
committee went on to say that this "is particularly important
in view of the fact that many of the first-year courses are
taught by instructors new to the university." The foregoing
situation was to a major degree an outgrowth of the university's
rapidly increasing enrollment which brought in thousands
of students who had never experienced an honor system
before. This made the task of indoctrination at the
opening of each session doubly difficult. The Cavalier Daily,
echoing statements made since the 1920s, had declared in
1958 that "the Honor system can be preserved only if there is
action on the part of the administration to limit the size of the
university." Such action, as we have seen, came some years
later.

It became customary, beginning in 1958, for the Honor
Committee to send each member of the faculty just before
final examinations, a memorandum warning against "subjecting
students to unnecessary temptations." Among the practices
warned against were take-home quizzes, giving the same
quiz to more than one class section, and providing less than
"ample room" between students seated during an exam,
which "places the student in a delicate position."

The Honor Committee also issued a list of guidelines for
examinations in 1965, which was repeated in several successive
years, in order that students might "avoid circumstances
which could be construed as suspicious": (1) Don't take books,
notes, or unnecessary scratch paper into an examination
room; (2) exams should be taken in the location designated by
the professor; (3) while taking an exam, don't leave the room
for too long a period; (4) don't stare around an exam room
needlessly, for this could be interpreted as trying to copy another's

answers; (5) once you are through the exam leave the
immediate vicinity before you discuss the exam, because
someone who is not through may overhear you.

Lack of understanding of the Honor System "on the part of
many members of the student body, faculty, and university
community," was mentioned by a former member of the
Honor Committee as "the main problem." He also stressed
that another weakness lay in "the fact that new members of
the committee are not well-versed in the system."

Sharp disparagement of the system by students in the Law
School became a special problem. The Law School had become
"the `hot box' of the university, with very severe criticism
aimed at the Honor System," Scott Sykes, chairman-elect of
the Honor Committee, wrote President Shannon in 1961. A
committee from the Law School had just studied the system
and had interviewed approximately 10 percent of the school's
student body. Roughly 85 percent of those interviewed felt
that "codification of the Honor System is necessary, if not imperative"
because "the spirit of the Honor System here does
not correspond to the ideals and morals of the world outside
our doors." The report detected "a strong feeling that the
Honor System is overextended" and cited the illegal purchase
of liquor at ABC stores by students not twenty-one as "the
most prevalent example," with "many gray areas that have
grown up in recent years." Also, "A majority of the [law] students
consider the lack of an appeal [from conviction] one of
the greatest weaknesses." The report referred to "the failure
of the orientation program" and asked the amazing and truly
staggering question: "Since there is no honor in the world,
why try to force an old outdated concept of integrity on students
who are preparing to live in this modern world?"

The fact that any appreciable number of University of Virginia
law students openly expressed this superlatively cynical
view explains many of the problems experienced by the
Honor System in those years. Furthermore, a visiting professor
in the Law School dismissed the system as "a period piece
reflecting the supercilious style of class consciousness."

There was much criticism of the system also in the Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences. That school was growing rapidly,
and it had a larger and larger contingent of students from
institutions where honor systems were unknown. To a somewhat

lesser degree this situation prevailed in the Schools of
Medicine and Engineering.

The Honor Committee was expanded in 1961-62 from six
to nine members, with the presidents of the Schools of Architecture
and Commerce and the Graduate School of Business
Administration added. Two years later the president of the
School of Nursing became a member. A four-fifths vote was
necessary to convict.

Although more and more persons were beginning to feel
that the Honor System was being overextended, two Honor
Committee chairmen in the middle sixties were firm in taking
the opposite view. Chris Leventis, chairman for 1963-64, said
concerning the question whether students on vacation are covered
by the system, "We feel that if a student represents the
University of Virginia, no matter where he is, he is bound by
the Honor Committee." And George Morison, who succeeded
Leventis, stated that in his view, the system "pertains to all
phases of a student's life." Yet several older dormitory counselors
were quoted as saying that they understood the system
did not apply to any student on vacation.

Morison's Honor Committee recognized "no areas of `gray'
in the system." It also declared that "a student is considered a
representative of the university no matter where he may be
and no matter what the time of year. . . . A man could be held
responsible for an act committed in the middle of the summer
miles away from the university." While it was admirable to attempt
to hold the line in this fashion, the question was
whether it had become impossible.

One of those who felt that such broad interpretation of the
system's jurisdiction was self-defeating was Prof. Hardy C. Dillard.
"Although it may seem illogical to refrain from extending
it to all the manifold affairs of life, it is yet wiser to limit it
to academic matters, or, at least, to matters of honor which are
focused on the academic community," he said.

Some years before, Dillard also had expressed the view that
"after a half century of brooding" he had concluded that the
Honor System would ultimately collapse if graduated penalties
were introduced as a replacement for the single penalty of
expulsion. Supporting this view in 1966, the Cavalier Daily
said: "We must recognize that it would be unfair to the university
community to readmit one who has already violated the

trust of his peers. And the necessity with graduated penalties
of the Honor Committee's deciding not only guilt or innocence,
but also the degree of seriousness of the offense, would
place too great a subjective strain on the fairness of committee
members."

Hardy Dillard, a member of the Honor Committee in his
student days, also enunciated the thesis that a "consensus of
honor" should be the basis for decisions as to what was and
was not properly included under the Honor System. In other
words, those things that the students regarded as dishonorable
should be so regarded by the Honor Committee. Relying
to a considerable extent on this concept, the committee ruled
in 1968-69 that thereafter its jurisdiction would not extend
beyond the confines of Charlottesville and Albemarle County
and that "lying for liquor" would not be within the system's
purview. While it seems probable that the majority of students
were in agreement with this decision, there was considerable
doubt as to just what most Virginia students of that era could
agree upon as to the precise metes and bounds of the Honor
System. A large number of students objected to the committee's
exclusion of "lying for liquor," and a petition protesting
the ruling was signed by well over two thousand undergraduates.
There were less strong objections to the geographical
limitation. The committee's ruling with respect to misrepresentations
at the ABC stores was "motivated largely if not predominantly
by the probability that a first-year student dismissed
for that offense could lodge a successful appeal in
court against his dismissal for a non-University-related action,"
Shearer D. Bowman, `71, wrote in his history of the
Honor System. This line of reasoning was not made public, he
said, since the committee "was apparently afraid" to do so.

The time had come to reevaluate the system, in the opinion
of Theodore S. Halaby, a Harvard graduate and third-year
law student, who said he was "greatly impressed by the beneficial
effect the system has had on the university community."
Halaby objected to the single penalty and expressed the view
that there should be "degrees of guilt," as in our legal system.

The approach to Honor Committee trials was becoming increasingly
legalistic. A visiting law professor raised the possibility
that "the total absence of any appeal from the Honor
Committee's decision violates due process of law." Dean of Admissions

100. Students and their dates slither about in the mud as a
favorite Easters diversion in 1974.

Marvin Perry had insisted that the Honor System
and especially honor trials be kept "from a dry and spiritless
legalistic system rather than a living expression of a spirit of
honor," but the Honor Committee of 1967-68 thought otherwise.
It initiated a movement "toward a more `legalistic'
Honor System," according to Bowman, "paralleling `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.' "

In two Cavalier Daily articles Carroll Ladt examined the
workings of the Honor System as of 1968. After describing
cheating on quizzes and examinations, and widespread skepticism,
if not opposition, on the part of graduate students, law
students, and some faculty, he concluded that more intensive
orientation was essential to the system's preservation.

The Honor System was attacked in 1969 by the Radical Student
Union, a pro-Marxist group. Joel Gardner, a fourth-year
honor student in the College, said the organization "hit a new
high in absurdity" with its assault. The RSU had said that we
have finally come to see our "farcical" Honor System as one of
the two greatest irrelevancies in the pursuit of knowledge, the
other being the grading system. It added that the system generates
an élitist feeling among university students, causing
them to look down on their "common neighbors." Rather
similar criticisms of the Honor System were being voiced by
certain clergymen in the community.

The students voted in 1969 by 1,779 to 941 that the system
should be altered to cover the university administration, faculty,
coaches, and staff. The suggestion got nowhere. The persons
concerned would have had to agree, and the Honor
Committee would have had to be revamped.

A number of significant changes in the system were made
in 1969 and 1970. First came the Honor Committee's decision
to permit an appeal from a guilty verdict "upon a showing of
good cause," as contrasted with its previous position that no
appeal was possible except when substantial new evidence was
produced. Another change permitted the accused in honor
trials to retain the services of a local attorney. Such an attorney
was allowed to sit in on trials, but not to act as "oral advocate."

And there was also the important announcement that the
question of "intent" should be carefully weighed. In other
words, even though the student committed a violation of the
code, if he did not have "dishonorable intent," he could be
adjudged not guilty. An example would be the commission of
an offense by a person who was drunk and not fully aware of
what he was doing.

Problems that plagued the Honor Committee during the
sixties grew out of what some might term fine-spun distinctions.
For example, a law professor explained: "A student accompanied
by an eager and experienced companion of the
opposite sex, not his wife, to a motel, is not breaching the
Honor System when he signs the register with a false name; a
student, whether so accompanied or not, who registers at a
motel under a false name to bilk the proprietor of the rent,
is." The foregoing was published several times as guidance for
students.

The turmoil on college campuses in the late sixties and early
seventies and the consequent weakening of traditional concepts
and values had their impact at Virginia and elsewhere.
This disorganization and disruption increased the problems
of the university's Honor Committee.

Yet it is noteworthy that, despite this situation and greatly
increased enrollment at Virginia, there were fewer dismissals
annually under the Honor System from 1967-68 through
1970-71 than between 1960-61 and 1966-67. For the later
period, the number expelled under the system each year
ranged from three to ten, whereas for the earlier, dismissals
ranged from eleven to twenty-one. Enrollment had more than
doubled between 1960 and 1971, so that the falling off in expulsions
is extraordinary. An interesting aspect of the dismissals
over this period is that a larger and larger percentage were
expelled for academic offenses, that is, cheating and plagiarism,
and a smaller and smaller proportion for other offenses.
This would seem to indicate that student opinion was leaning
more and more away from regarding nonacademic offenses
as honor violations worthy of permanent dismissal. One is also
driven to the conclusion that since the number of expulsions
dropped, despite much higher enrollment, the system was not
working as effectively as formerly.

Student opinion was responsible in 1971 for a reversal by

the Honor Committee of a guilty verdict. A first-year student
was ordered dismissed for stealing several drinks from an
open vending machine. There was such a strong and immediate
adverse reaction that the Honor Committee met again,
reversed the verdict, and stated that "the current student generation
does not consider this act so reprehensible as to warrant
permanent dismissal." It was the first time that such a
reversal had taken place. Justification was seen in the words of
the Honor System's "Blue Sheet": "The Honor System shall
concern itself solely with those offenses which are classified as
dishonorable by the public opinion of the student generation
involved." A few months later a straw poll of 1,100 students
chosen at random by the Honor Committee resulted in a return
of 750 ballots, and a 93 percent vote for maintenance of
"an honor system." There was much less unanimity among the
respondents as to what the system's precise metes and bounds
should be. There was a 47 percent vote in favor of the single
sanction, that is, dismissal for any conviction, as against 37
percent who favored graduated penalties.

The Seven Society, always a zealous supporter of the Honor
System, provided the funds for publication of a special issue
of the Cavalier Daily devoted entirely to the system. It appeared
Mar. 13, 1972, and contained valuable analyses and
discussions. Prof. T. Braxton Woody, who had delivered a
much-admired address on the Honor System to the first-year
students for a number of years, was presented with a special
award by the Sevens for his contribution to the "continuing
growth and vitality" of the system. But he soon stopped giving
the address. "The Honor System was just not what it used to
be, and I began to feel that I just could not give that same talk
again," said Woody.

The Honor Committee voted 7 to 4 in 1972 not to introduce
a two-penalty system. Such a system had been suggested
by a group of law students, and the four committee members
who voted in favor of it were all graduate students. Two weeks
later a student poll returned a 68 percent vote in favor of retention
of the single sanction, 3,717 for and 1,748 against.
Gordon Peerman, who had just been elected president of the
College, said he had consistently taken the position that if any
changes came in the Honor System "they should come in
scope instead of sanction." The Honor Committee voted

unanimously the following year to retain the existing scope
and sanction.

"Several thousand books were missing before the [check]
system was enacted [at Alderman Library]", the Cavalier Daily
said. "Many of the books were undoubtedly purloined. . . . We
have a roughly analogous situation in the Newcomb Hall cafeteria
. . . `Thefts numbered in the hundreds per day,' [and protective
measures had to be instituted]."

The dispersion of the student body, especially its upperclassmen,
in housing far from the Grounds, was noted by
Honor Committee Chairman Peerman as a major reason for
the difficulties being experienced with the Honor System. He
stressed the need for interpreting the system "both as something
of value to the individual and to the university community"
and stated that the increasing numbers of students who
are not provided with adequate facilities are the crux of the
problem. "You can't fabricate community," he said. "We're
simply going to have to provide residential facilities for the
students. It is impossible to maintain any kind of community
for students who feel no more profound relationship to the
university than that of simply attending classes."

Another aspect of this problem is seen in the removal of the
Law School from Clark Hall to the North Grounds, where it
has become more and more isolated and out of the main
stream. Placing of the Graduate School of Business Administration
on the North Grounds had a similar effect.

Not only so, but students in the Graduate Schools of Arts
and Sciences, now numbering several thousand, were not indoctrinated
in the principles of the Honor System as were the
first-year undergraduates, Ben Ackerley, Honor Committee
Chairman in 1964-65, told the Board of Visitors. "The expanding
enrollment, especially in the graduate schools, is
making it doubly difficult for the Honor Committee to orientate
everyone," said Ackerley. "Effective orientation is still
being maintained with first-year students through the dormitory
complex, but no such control is available for graduate
students."

Although incoming faculty members were under instructions
from the president to attend the orientation session of
the Honor Committee, difficulty was being experienced in getting
them to obey this injunction. In 1974, for example, only

about 25 out of 240 new faculty members went to the briefing.
Those who did not were urged to respond to the committee's
next invitation.

Gray areas of the Honor System were being handled increasingly
by the student Judiciary Committee which, with the
university's mounting enrollment, became much more active
in the seventies. Five to ten trials were being held each semester.
An example of a gray area would be misuse of student
identification cards to obtain admittance to sports events. The
committee was concerned with student misbehavior, much of
it unrelated to the Honor System.

The trend toward greater legalization of Honor Committee
trials, brought about by law students and such organizations
as the American Civil Liberties Union, caused the committee
to rule in 1973 that a written statement of accusation would
be required in all cases. This was in order to "further insure
due process," the committee explained. Such a written statement
was no substitute for the original verbal confrontation
and accusation, it was emphasized.

A film on the Honor System was provided by the Seven Society.
It was paid for with a check for $47,777.77, buried seven
inches from one of the goal posts at Scott Stadium and exhumed
just before the University of North Carolina football
game.

Testimony to the honorable conduct of students in repaying
loans to the Seven Society and Ivey F. Lewis loan funds was
given in 1974 by Dean of Students Robert T. Canevari, who
was in charge of both operations. Neither fund requires any
security for loans. The record of repayment in both cases was
almost 100 per cent.

It is obvious that the University of Virginia's Honor System
in 1974 was by no means identical with the system that functioned
there for more than half of the twentieth century, not
to mention the one that was in operation in the nineteenth
century. The Honor Spirit that dominated a student body
ranging in number from fewer than one thousand to some
three thousand five hundred could hardly be unaffected by
the stresses and strains induced by a skyrocketing enrollment
several times as great. The more recent student body was not
only much larger but much more heterogeneous, and for the
first time included many women and blacks. Whereas in earlier

101. The Seven Society's mysterious symbol, visible only to passing airplane passengers, appeared suddenly
in 1966 on the dome of newly completed University Hall.

days there was prevailing uniformity of background, with
matriculates coming overwhelmingly from Virginia and other
southern states, there was in the sixties and seventies far
greater ethnic, geographic, and ideological diversity.

Like all human institutions, the university's Honor System
evolved with the times. In the College the Honor Spirit
burned brightest, for it was there that the first-year men were
given orientation at the beginning of the session. In the
graduate and professional schools, to which students came
from all corners of the globe, it was relatively difficult to indoctrinate
the newcomers. They were more mature, and those
who had attended other colleges and universities which were
without honor systems often had formed their own opinions
on the subject before they arrived at Virginia.

Possible modification of the university's revered institution,
such as the introduction of graduated penalties or a jury system
for trials, were being considered, although such drastic
modifications had been voted down more than once by the
students. Restriction of the system to purely academic matters,
such as cheating and plagiarism, also was being viewed as a
possibility.

Older alumni deeply lamented the necessity for changing
the system in any material respect, but modern trends dictated
certain alterations already made, and others were conceivable
for the future. In the oft-quoted words of Thomas Jefferson,
"Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress
of the human mind." The University of Virginia which he
founded has been unable to avoid the application of this principle
in the evolution of its Honor System.