University of Virginia Library

Take-Home Honor

I would like, to begin with, to
disagree with your recent editorial
which condemned take-home tests
as a strain on the Honor System.
This is a position which I fear is
typical of those who would place
the Honor System, for and of its
own sake, above all else. It is my
own feeling, however, that the
Honor System was developed to
liberate us, to enable us to develop
our own honor to its fullest in an
atmosphere of trust. Were
take-home tests truly a strain on
the Honor System, this should not
be compared to dropping a glass to
see whether it will break but rather
to a glass which, when put to the
normal use for which it was
intended, shatters. A glass, a book
or an instrument, when it fails to
fulfill its purpose, must be replaced
or repaired.

Our Honor System is supposed
to create an atmosphere in which
we can be trusted. The fact is,
though, it allows us to be trusted so
much that we are not able to
arrange our own final exam
schedule - which students in other
schools, who spend more time
living by and less time glorifying in
their trustworthiness, are able to
do. But our Honor Committee has
decreed that after 24 hours a
professor must draw up a new test
- otherwise it is a 'strain' on our
system, I think it is time for us all
to have a hard and long look at our
Honor System, before we find that
it has shattered in our unconcerned
hands. And I would hope that The
Cavalier Daily, as a responsible
forum of student opinion, will play
a part in ensuring the strength of
our Honor System, through open
and unafraid discussion. The most
dangerous foe of our system is our
own fear to examine it honestly.

I would be most grateful myself
if someone could tell me why the
system is such that we can't arrange
our own exam schedule, and why
the Honor Committee doesn't
conduct a poll to see if the student
body as a whole prefers the Honor
System as it is, or whether the
students might not prefer to see it
altered in one way or another,
perhaps by limiting it to our
academic concerns or by providing
some flexibility by allowing more
than the one ultimate punishment
now handed out to everyone who
slips up-once and gets caught.