University of Virginia Library

Take-Home Temptations

The obvious prerequisite to any successful
honor system is a high sense of personal honor
among those who live within it. Without that
personal honor there can be no "honor
system" - there can be only a judicial code
expressly forbidding specific actions which
would not have to be expressly forbidden if
the sense of honor did exist. Trusting that
such a sense of honor does exist among
students of the University, our Honor
Committee as yet continues to cling to the
legitimate, "spirit"-oriented type of system
instead of establishing the codified type of
system which is no honor system at all.

In doing so, however, it makes every effort
to protect that crucial sense of honor in the
individual student from assault in the form of
temptation or carelessness. Thus we must sign
statements to check books out of the library,
sign statements to get our forgetful colleagues
into athletic contests: we are advised to leave
extraneous materials out of a classroom in
which we are taking an exam and to leave the
classroom only if absolutely necessary, and
then briefly; professors are not allowed to give
the same test on separate occasions and
expect to keep it secret and they are encouraged
to require students to take their tests in
the assigned classrooms. In short the Honor
Committee has done all it can to "help" us
preserve our personal honor by eliminating as
many threats to it as possible, in particular
when those threats are in the form of unnecessary
temptation.

One important case, however, has been
overlooked. The practice of allowing students
to take tests home to take on their own time
at their own leisure is conspicuously dangerous,
especially when they are expected to take
the tests under the same conditions as if they
were in the classroom. They have the questions,
but they are not supposed to look at
them until they finish studying. Once they
look at them, they are expected to take the
test without interruption or conversation, in a
specified time. Only their honor stands between
them and a simple little act in the
safety of privacy which might enable them to
pass the course.

Just as it is folly to drop a glass to see if it
will break, it is folly to put someone's honor
to such an unnecessary and grueling test. Just
as some glasses are bound to break, so some
people's honor is bound to give way under the
strain. If that honor is what the Honor System
must depend upon to continue to exist, it is
suicidal for the Committee to allow it to
undergo such tests, especially when they are
so unnecessary. They are a tremendous burden
on super-conscientious students who fear
that they might overhear a question before
they finish studying; they are dangerously
tempting for students who are fearfully uncertain
of their own honor; they are too easy
to take advantage of for students whose
"honor" only motivates them when it is
expedient.

We urge the Honor Committee to make a
statement on take-home tests as soon as
possible. We hope it will not merely advise
against them, as it does against some other
"dangerous" situations, we hope that it will
rather forbid them unless they are of the
open-book variety. To do so is only fair to all
the students involved; to fail to do so is to ask
for trouble.