University of Virginia Library

A Consensus Of Honor

After Sunday night's honor trial in which a
first-year student was dismissed for stealing
several drinks from an open vending machine,
a feeling of intense bitterness and disbelief
swept parts of the McCormick Road
Dormitories and through the student body in
the School of Law. By Monday afternoon,
this response grew to outrage and resulted in
the Honor Committee's ten school presidents
and Vice-President of the College declaring a
null verdict for the previous night's trial.

In making the reversal the Committee
declared that "While such behavior might well
be construed as dishonest, the Honor
Committee feels that the current student
generation does not consider this act so
reprehensible as to warrant permanent
dismissal from the University. After full
consideration of all facts and circumstances
related to this specific case, the Honor
Committee does not believe that this
student's behavior can fall within the
jurisdiction of the Honor System as it now
exists."

We applaud the members of the
Committee for realizing that their Sunday
night decision ran counter to the feelings of
many of the current student generation. It
would have been much easier for them to play
the role of martyrs and endure the castigation
of their fellows than admitting that mistakes
can be made. The beauty of the Committee's
actions is that errors can be reversed even
though the Honor System as it is stated on
the official Blue Sheet does not permit this
type of trial reversal.

The whole incident points up the necessity
to not only reevaluate particulars of the
Honor System, but to engineer fundamental
reforms to bring it more in line with current
student opinion. The System will be a
breeding ground for injustice if it does not
rest on a sound consensus of opinion with the
student community. All of us have our own
individual definition of what would and what
would not be an honor offense, an offense so
reprehensible that it would result in
permanent dismissal, but the System must
only encompass those acts on which there
exists a consensus.

Without defining "a consensus of student
opinion" we would be avoiding the heart of
the issue. We believe there will always be a
few students who will rebel at the thought of
any Honor System at all, but that almost all
of us agree that some acts - cheating and
plagiarism - clearly demand classification as
honor offenses. Undoubtedly there is more
debate over stealing and lying (which is
defined as a "knowing misrepresentation
intended to induce reliance by another").
Nothing should be included within the scope
of the Honor System which 10-15 percent of
the students do not feel merits the penalty
involved. As long as we hear great outcries of
disgruntlement that the System is too limited,
we are fairly confident that a decent
consensus exists; but if there is an
undercurrent of a significant minority of
students who feel that the scope is too broad,
clearly injustices could occur.

We believe that two changes could and
should be made in the Blue Sheet
immediately. The single penalty of expulsion
runs counter to all our notions of the
purposes of punishment for those who break
the rules of a society. We believe that a year's
dismissal for all offenses would encourage
future honorable behavior in the guilty
student involved and at the same time allow
him to be re-integrated into the University
community. The current penalty denies any
hope of reforming the individual so that he
could return to his fellows a better man. It
precludes any "second chance" on the
presumption that the community would
suffer too much by having "dishonest"
individuals return. It rests on the false belief
that the man who commits an honor offense
will forever remain a "rotten apple." If in the
rare occurrence that the once convicted
student committed another offense, he would
receive expulsion.

Another clear change that needs to be
made within the System is the addition of
more flexibility for the Committee in
deciding cases on the degree of the accused's
actions. The Blue Sheet states that "lying,
cheating, stealing, and breaking one's word of
honor are, however, clearly infringements of
the Honor System." It also states that the
System is concerned solely with those
offenses which are considered as dishonorable
by the student generation involved." The
absolutism of the first statement must be
clearly removed so that the flexibility implied
in the second statement is apparent to those
who are deciding a student's fate. It must
allow for a degree in a student's actions.
Stealing a drink from a machine or a dime
from a phone booth should not be an honor
offense, but pilfering the wallets of suite mates
or an examination prior to the test date
should. There are degrees that the Committee
must consider. There are forms of dishonesty
that are not commensurate with the blight an
"honor offense" affixes to a person's name.

Certainly the "coke" case shows that the
Committee needs to discover more ways to be
attuned to students' feelings. There should be
a year-round dialogue on the system but how
can students participate if the proceedings of
the Honor Committee are held in a Star
Chamber atmosphere? The Committee has to
do a better job of making each student
participate more directly in the system. Open
trials should be encouraged. Every second
weekly meeting of the Committee should be
opened to any student who might like to
make a presentation.

This year's Committee has attempted
through a major poll to discover elusive
student opinion. The results should allow the
Committee to soon evaluate the whole scope
of the Honor System.

We believe that our immediate
recommendations will be borne out by that
poll as soundly in line with current student
opinion. The thought that a student could so
nearly be expelled for such a petty offense
should prompt the Committee to changes that
would provide for more flexibility so that this
does not happen again.