University of Virginia Library

Geographic Restrictions

It is ironic, however, that the Honor
System should attain its greatest
jurisdictional breadth, and perhaps the
peak of its punitive effectiveness, on the
eve of a period of fundamental
degeneration of the "Honor Spirit"within
the student community as a whole. The
degeneration was reflected in part in the
May 1969 decisions by the 1968-69
Honor Committee, after long and intense
deliberation, to restrict the scope of the
System to "student life"—geographically
defined by the boundaries of
Charlottesville-Albemarle County—and to
eliminate entirely from the System's
jurisdiction the misrepresentation of
one's age in the purchasing of alcoholic
beverage. Despite the largely theoretical
qualification that a student inducing
reliance on his status as a University of
Virginia student to gain dishonorable
advantage was committing a breach of the
Honor System regardless of his
geographic location the May, 1969
pronouncement marked a substantial
reversal of the Morrison Committee's
definition for scope enunciated less than
five years before.

An examination and evaluation of
statistical records on enrollment and
dismissals is of value in tracing the nature
and extent of the System's degeneration
after 1965. Below are listed the numbers
of Honor Committee dismissals for each
academic session from 1960-61 to
1970-71 (as of May 1, 1971):

                     

1960-61	14
1961-62	13
1962-63	15
1963-64	17
1964-65	11
1965-66	21
1966-67	13
1967-68	10
1968-69	7
1969-70	3
1970-71	9

And yet enrollment figures show an
increase of over 135% during this same
decade, from 4599 student in the fall of
1960 to 10,852 in the fall of 1970.
Unless one is willing to argue that there
was during this decade, and particularly
after 1966, a marked decrease in
incidences of dishonorable behavior
within the University student
community, then the negative correlation
between a rising enrollment and fewer
dismissals would seem to imply some
negative conclusions about the evolving
statue of the Honor System in the latter
half of the decade. There is considerable
evidence derived from dismissal records
moreover, to justify the assertion that
from 1956 to 1971 there occurred a
gradual but consistent narrowing of the
de facto scope of the Honor System
which proceeded independently of, or
perhaps in spite of, public statements by
the Honor Committee. Of 55 dismissals
from 1956-57 to 1960-61, 56 percent
involved academic offenses, i.e. cheating
and plagiarism; from 1961-62 to 1965-66,
62 percent of Honor Committee
dismissals involved academic offenses;
from 1966-67 to May 1, 1971, 81 percent
of dismissals involved academic
violations.

The reasons for this degeneration in
overall effectiveness of the Honor System
which became increasingly obvious after
1966 are certainly many, complex and
interrelated. And a successful discussion
of these multifarious influences would
most likely involve a broad-ranging
analysis of the ethical, religious,
economic, and political dispositions of
recent generations of University students.
The present writer will only point briefly
to a definite trend of at least a decade's
duration towards the increasing
complexity, institutionalization, and
frustration index of American
life—University life certainly included,
the consequent widespread lack of any
intense feeling of loyalty on the part of
the individual to his community or to its
seemingly remote institutions, and
therefore a contemporary emphasis among
students on personal liberty and freedom

of action. Related to and part of this
trend has been an increasing emphasis by
American youth on social equity, or
personal interaction and its ethical values,
i.e. on a "situational" or relativistic
approach to ethics, which assigns great
importance to sensitivity, warmth, and
communication, to the disparagement of
the rather static and chauvinistic concept
of inner-directed personal integrity and
honor.