University of Virginia Library

A "Time" Kudo

(Excerpts from a TIME magazine article Sept. 9, 1966
discussing cheating in everyday life.)

". . . in a few schools and colleges, there is practically
no cheating at all. Perhaps the most famous of these
is the University of Virginia, where an honor system
was first established in 1842. Virginia is old-fashioned
enough for the old ideal of 'gentleman' to be given
some meaning. A code of honor, says Dean Hardy
Dillard of the Law School, 'demands not that an individual
be good, but he be unambiguously strong-a
quality generally know as character. The man who
lies, cheats or steals is fundamentally weak.' It may,
in other words, be morally wrong to gamble but completely
honorable. dishonest things is to cheat.

"At Virginia all examinations are unsupervised. If
one student suspects another of cheating or otherwise
acting dishonorably, he is bound by his loyalty to the
school to investigate the matter secretly and speedily
and, if still convinced of the other's guilt, accuse him
to his face; if no convincing explanation is forthcoming,
he must demand that the other student leave the University
with 24 hours. The accused can do so—and no
one else will ever know why—or he can appeal to an
eleven-man student committee. The enduring success of
the honor system is attested to by the Virginia National
Bank, which claims that its branch in Charlottesville,
which heavily populated by University of Virginia alumni,
has the lowest incidence of bad checks of its
42 branches."