Why You Should Oppose the Honor Committe's Proposal

On January 21 UVA Magazine published an article about the new structure proposed for the University Honor System. For those who don't know, the UVA honor committee is basically an ultra-small-scale student judiciary. They are tasked with the executive and judicial powers regarding a single law: That students should not lie, cheat, or steal. The interpretation of this law, the penalty for violating it, and the means of conviction are decided by student body referenda. Currently, honor code violations are reported to the honor committee then committee officials investigate the accusation. If sufficient evidence of a violation is found then the student is then placed on trial. Should the jury of randomly appointed students convict the accused, the student is then expelled from the university. Otherwise, no discipline is enacted. The University refers to this "expulsion or nothing" policy as the "Single Sanction". The is also the opportunity for a "Conscientious Retraction" whereby students may admit to a violation before they are aware of suspicions, and in this case mild diciplinary action is taken. The new system will work in this way: The Conscientious Retraction will still be available, but in addition there is an option for an "Informed Retraction" which allows students to admit guilt of a violation after an accusation has been made and in return receive the lesser sentence of a one year suspension. Should the student go to trial, however, the Single Sanction still applies. The proposal also suggests that the jury be elected, rather than randomly selected.

The Committee feels the current system to be nonfunctional in promiting the student body as a "community of trust". Much of their issue is justified with the following statistics:

1. 74% of students feel positively about the Honor System, but 63% are hesitant to report violations, citing uneasiness with the single sanction.
2. 42% of students say that they would report on Honor offense, but of those who think they actually witnessed an Honor offense, only 5% said that they reported it.
3. 38% of faculty strongly support the Honor System. Another 35% support it, but with reservations.
4. 80% of faculty feel cheating was very uncommon or uncommon in their own classes, but that opinion drops to 56% of faculty when considering cheating at the University as a whole.
5. After faculty members refer a case to the Honor System, only 20% still strongly support the system.

1. I agree that 74% is a poor number. If the University is going to point to the student-run honor system for a recruitment tool (as they do), then much more than 3/4 of the student body should support it. I agree that this motivates investigation into honor system reform. I find no issue with the second number, however. The single sanction causing hesitance for reporting a violation provides evidence that it is also effective in deterring students from committing egregious violations.
2. These numbers may only show that there is a form of self-regulation among the students. I am sure that if you consider the honor code as stated then 100% of the student body has both committed and witnessed an honor code violation (who's never lied?). From there, only 42% of the students claim to have seen violations which are bad enough to be classified as potential violations. Finally, only 5% feel they have witnessed violations bad enough to warrant expulsion. The jury for honor committees is instructed to account for severity of the act in its consideration, so it seems much of this advance work is performed by the student body, rather that wasting students' time in trials.
3. Who cares about the faculty? If the University is going to be proud of the fact that the students run their own honor code, then the opinions of the professors and administrators is irrelevant.
4. My issue is with one word: "feel". I feel that asking professors to "feel" statistics is going to produce a high degree of error. Furthermore, I feel a more robust honor system will likely not change this "feeling".
5. See point 3.

The article also uses a case study to show that the current honor system encourages behavior contradictory to its own purposes (which I find valid). That is, it is optimal for a student to lie during trial in order to dodge conviction rather than fess up to the crime and be expelled anyway. This error is then further magnified by the inconsistency and supposed gullibility of the random jury of students. While the Committee is correct in their exposition of the contradiction, there is still one present in their proposed system. That is, they've committed the mortal sin of any justice system, presumed guilt. Their case study only considers the student who cheats then tells the truth, and the one who cheats then lies. What of the student who is falsely convicted? While creating any justice system one must consider the tradeoff between convicting as many guilty persons as possible, and convicting as few innocent as possible. The authors of the U.S. Constitution valued this latter point much more strongly, whereas the Committee seems to have completely ignored it. In addition to violating the relatively successful precedent set by the Founding Fathers, this proposal is itself a violation of the community of trust is seeks to establish and maintain. While a community of trust is not given a definition, I will say this means that it is an overwhelmingly safe assumption that any member of said community is currently being honest. In this proposal, the Committee is assuming guilt of any student to reaches trial.

I also contest the latter point from the above paragraph, that the jury is easily convinced by the lies and inconsistently enforces the honor code. I think an elected jury (as the Committee suggests) is undesirable here for the same reason it is undesirable in our federal justice system. The goal is to be judged by peers. The qualities of students who would likely successfully run for these positions is likely a poor representation of the student body as a whole. These will be people who likely hold a lower threshold for severity, and risk being desensitized to repeatedly expelling students. An executioner has but so many tears to shed. Any time the ultimate penalty is given (I'm channelling my inner Hermione here) it is best to have a wide-eyed and naive jury, as they better understand the punishment the accused faces, and how the community would respond. If you see high variance in your metric, do what any good engineer would do-- increase your sample size. The law of large numbers shows that a bigger jury will be a more accurate and consistent representation of the student body. I think that another issue here is the secrecy maintained in the conviction process. Unless permission is given by the accused, no names, proceedings, or other information on the trial is published, precluding the establishment of any precedent. Perhaps giving some degree of precedent to the student body (or at least the juror) will help achieve this much desirable consistency. (In my argument here I have ignored the fact that the Committee never defines what they mean by inconsistency)

One of the key proponents of the new system is that a student will have the opportunity to plead guilty with the "Informed Retraction". This also contradicts the effort to preserve a community of trust. With the option to plea, the students who take the option will be those most certain to be convicted, that is those who have surely violated the honor code with greatest severity. Those who go to trial are those who believe that they have a defense, perhaps based on the relatively mild severity of their hypothetical actions. Therefore this new system allows opportunity for return of those committing gross violations of the community of trust, while favoring the permanent removal of those with more mild violations. In the end, students with justifiable defenses may end up taking the safer Informed Retraction option and thus unjustly receive punishment, while those who take the risk to try to defend themselves may end up worse off than the classmate who outsourced his capstone.

While the current system may be imperfect, I find the Committee's proposal to be reprehensible. I find their motives, methods, solutions, and arguments to all be grossly misguided. I think this proposal will indeed lead to a boost in reports to honor code violations, but I do not understand why this is necessarily a desirable metric. I also think this will lead to a boost in convictions and retractions, but again hold the same issue. Finally, the Committee's proposal contradicts its own purposes as well as those laid in the Bill of Rights of the United States (a set of Amendments which this state required be present before permitting our government's rule). For these reasons, I strongly oppose this proposal for modification of the University Honor System.