University of Virginia Library

Two-Party Survey

The Honor System — Does It Work?

By Carroll Ladt
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

This is the first of a two-part story
on the Honor System. In interviews
with students, faculty, and administrators
taken over the past three months
Mr. Ladt has tried to determine both
their feelings and their criticism about
the Honor System.

Does it work? This seems to be
the first and foremost question in
everyone's mind about the Honor
System. Ironically, this is perhaps
the hardest question to answer-if
indeed it can be answered. What
are the criteria for a value judgment
upon the success or failure
of the Honor System? Can we
say it works because 10 students
are expelled each year or is it a
failure since many students are not
caught? Can 40 per cent of the
student body not accept the system,
yet abide by the rules out of fear?
The only obvious fact is that unless
the students support the system it
will not work. As Henry Massie,
president of the Law School, said,
"It will work as long as the students
want it to, but it doesn't
take many people to destroy it."

There are already enough people
living under the system who can
easily destroy it. Sometimes those
who most flagrantly abuse it escape
the consequences. Three boys
did so last spring semester when
they stole $300 worth of new books
out of Newcomb Hall Bookstore
and then resold them for a tidy
sum. They are still on the Grounds.
First-year math courses are easy
to cheat in because for the tests
only a few definitions need to be
known in order to make a high
mark. A number of first-year men
last year would bring the formulas
in on a scrap of paper and then
flush the evidence down the
toilet.

More common is the practice of

signing the attendance sheet for
one's absent friends. One group
of six young men had it worked
out so each only went to class
every two weeks. Fraternities, too,
often get in on a group act, especially
with poodah files. These
are legal as long as the means
of obtaining the tests are legal.
Three fraternities, however, have
the habit of requiring each of their
pledges to copy a certain number
of questions on tests which are
forbidden to be taken from the
room "in any form." Back at
the house the questions are compiled
and the complete test is duly
filed away for the benefit of the
brothers.

How many students then do not
want, or do not believe in, or
do not abide by the Honor System?
It was impossible of course to interview
every single student and although
we tried to get as representative
a sample as possible it is
not fair to draw factual conclusions
from these interviews because of
the inherent fallibility in any survey
such as this. We were, however,
able to categorize our responses
into three groups: those who believe
the system is working, those
who accept it but with reservations,
and those who are against it.

The majority of first-year men
fall into the first group and typically
they said they "believed in it
completely." As one third-year
law student from Princeton said,
"I think it works very well and
have no objections to it at all."
Student leaders are strong supporters
of the Honor System. When
one was asked how he thought his
classmates responded to it, he
reported that the "majority of them
accept it very well because this is
an academic community and they
can see the benefits of it. They
like the idea of competing fairly."

But the largest group was the
one that accepted the Honor
System with reservations ranging
from questions regarding the
severity of the penalty to the use
of it in the graduate schools. "Yes,
I feel it is fair considering the alternatives
(no Honor System), but
I think the punishment is too severe
to apply in every case...feel it's
unreasonable...it ought to be on a
graduated scale." The spectre of
the finality of expulsion for a
"trivial" action haunts a great
many of the critics of the system.
The single penalty was labeled as
irrational and too severe for
every violation; permanent expulsion
in every case is, said many,
unfair.

The final group is made up of
those who are against the Honor
System. The majority of these
held the opinion voiced by a third-year
College man who said,
"People here at Virginia are no
different than anywhere else and it
is absurd not to think there isn't
going to be cheating here. Most of
the people I know feel there is a
lot of lying, cheating and stealing
here." There are a great number of
people who feel the Honor System
is an imposition on their personal
beliefs; others think it is a "pain
in the neck."

Tomorrow, how the Honor System
is criticized by Graduate Students and
its acceptability in a modern society.